Chapter 8: The Promised Land

The allure of Silicon Valley draws Signavio into the heart of global tech innovation. This chapter reveals the culture shocks, the inspiration, and the boundless ambition that defined the next leg of their journey.

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Transcript

I traveled on a budget, as always. With the most horrible flight connections through Amsterdam and Paris, it took 30 hours before I finally landed in San Francisco. Exhausted and disoriented, I had no idea how to get from the Palo Alto train station to my final destination in Sunnyvale. Thankfully, I managed to reach Oliver Hanisch, who was heading up the German Silicon Valley Accelerator program. Despite how tired I was and instead of taking me directly to Sunnyvale, he took me to a bar where the floor was carpeted with pistachio shells. We sat down and had a couple of beers.

Oliver was also instrumental in helping me find an apartment - an eye-opener in terms of just how absurdly expensive everything in California was. I ended up sharing the space with two other participants from the accelerator program. Boris ran Nelou, a design fashion platform, while Atul managed Fair Observer, a crowd-sourced politics website.

Silicon Valley was like another planet in many ways. When I walked around the neighborhood, people would stare at me from their cars, seemingly puzzled by someone actually crossing the street on foot. Even mundane things were different - chewing gum tasted like toilet cleaner. The house we stayed in felt like it was built from cardboard. But what surprised me most was the work culture. I had imagined Silicon Valley as a place where people worked through the night. Yet, many people left work early around 5pm to have a barbecue or relax with TV.

We lived across the street from our office, the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale. Every morning, I just walked over.

The office was a fascinating place. More than 200 startups operated within its walls. The entrance showcased colorful logos and big signs celebrating former tenants, highlighting notable acquisitions or IPOs. Elon Musk and his first company, PayPal, had been based there before their acquisition by eBay. These stories were legendary, fueling the collective sense of ambition and possibility. Naturally, I liked to imagine that Elon Musk had sat in my cubicle at some point.

The sentiment in the Valley was infectious: anyone could make it. This was where the future was born.

I tried to soak it in as much as I could. I attended all the networking and pitching events in our building (and there were many of them). I went to meetups and presentations at Stanford. I visited the campuses of all the big names in tech. LinkedIn was down the road, Google and Facebook not far away, Apple around the corner, too. I went to hackathons to build the next cool travel app or crazy gadgets, like robots that would detect the location of your face and then spit out whisky shots in your direction.

When I arrived in California, I had about 150 contacts on my LinkedIn - I soon had over 500. I met so many smart, driven, and inspiring people, and I relished the long discussions about what might become the next big thing in tech.

Money was flowing around like crazy. Every day, there was another funding round: hundreds of thousands for a promising idea next door, millions for a startup just gaining traction down the street. Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion dollars - despite the company having zero revenues and only 13 employees - that was the talk of the town. It was insane.

The Valley was a magnet for people from all over the world. If you had an idea too outlandish for your home country, Silicon Valley was the place to test it. Take Pavel from Slovakia, whom I met at a random event. He showed me his app, called m.dot, which let users build websites on their phones. He arrived in California in April, secured venture funding by June, and sold the company to GoDaddy for fifteen million dollars a year later. Bam, just like that. These stories were everywhere.

My mentor, who had sold his company to Borland, now lived in a stunning mansion on top of a mountain. His neighbor? Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple.

The so-called legends of tech turned out to be regular people, too - the kind you’d run into at a local Starbucks, wearing the same worn-down sneakers as me and geeking out over the same tech topics I loved.

In the Valley, the sky truly seemed to be the limit. Everyone seemed to know someone who had turned a niche business idea into a multimillion-dollar success that reshaped the world.

The question wasn’t: Will it work? It was: What’s stopping you from making $100 million dollars in revenue this year? Granted, very few startups ever achieved that, but the question itself fueled big dreams and big bets.

In Germany, the approach to building things was much more cautious. Quality, careful planning, and long-term sustainability were the focus. But in Silicon Valley, you claimed you’d invented the next big thing, believed it, and then made it happen - or failed spectacularly along the way, like most did.

While I was inspired by the energy and boundless optimism, I couldn’t help but appreciate what we had at Signavio that many Valley companies didn’t - substance. We had real customers with real pain points, who paid real money for a product that actually solved their problems.

In the Valley, many companies operated inside their own type of bubble. They solved problems that were specific to the local ecosystem, hoping others around the world would eventually face the same challenges. For instance, specializing in Wi-Fi infrastructure for company-sponsored commuter buses traveling between San Francisco and the Valley? Sure, why not assume every company would one day sponsor such buses. Or creating a dog-walking service for employees who brought their dogs to work but were too busy coding? Yeah right, why not imagine this would become a universal issue.

Some companies seemed outright absurd to me. One of them had incredibly fancy offices in downtown San Francisco and was founded by three designers. They had signed up for our 30-day trial, and I was curious to meet them.

It was a place buzzing with cool people. Housed in an old warehouse, it featured a massive central space that felt more like a hip lounge than an office. A young employee greeted me and gave me a tour. We passed by a huge stack of Apple computers, still in their boxes. When I asked why they needed so many, he replied, “These are for next week’s new hires.” They had 200 employees and were planning to scale to 800 within the same year.

The company’s business idea was one of the strangest I’d ever encountered: Their community members bought an air mattress, put it on their kitchen floor and then rented it out for a nightly fee to strangers. 

You have probably guessed it by now - yes, the company was Airbnb in their early years.

“Have you used our service before?” my guide asked. When I said no, he launched into what could only be described as a full immersion. Their office featured replicas of apartments available for rent on their platform. The emphasis was on recreating the Airbnb sentiment repeatedly for their “community members” (they avoided the term “customers”).

One setup caught my attention - a handwritten note propped next to fresh flowers, creating what they called a “moment of truth” in the member journey: 

“Dear Sophie, 

Welcome to my place! Too bad I can’t greet you in person; I had to work this afternoon. Why don’t you check out the new deli around the corner? I love their avocado sandwiches and smoothies. I’ll be back around 7pm, happy to show you the city if you like. In the meantime, please feel at home. Welcome to San Francisco! 

Best, Peter.”

Back in Germany, customers would often give me a factory safety briefing or proudly showcase their latest piece of machinery. This was something entirely different.

My contact continued, “Here at Airbnb, we only care about one thing: the experience of our members. Otherwise, we will just be the next hotel booking website. Airbnb is special and it always should be. I know you are the process guy and I appreciate all the work that you do with Signavio. However, please remember that business processes must only serve one thing: help us scale the great experience we offer today and help us improve it even further over time.”

I realized that I had just discovered a completely different angle to process management. Back home in Germany, companies looked at their business processes to either drive compliance, making sure everyone followed the rules, or efficiency, doing the same things but just 15% faster and 8% cheaper.

Airbnb introduced me to a new perspective: using process management to translate customer experience into an operational model and strategically design an organization around its customers. It was a groundbreaking concept for me.

Airbnb was the first customer where I observed this approach, but it eventually spread to other industries like insurance, telecommunications, and even manufacturing. The role of process management professionals evolved - they were no longer the hidden figures in the basement, patching problems and enforcing rules. They became the architects of the future organization, driven by customer experience and innovation.

I had a wonderful time in Silicon Valley, learning something new every day. The time zone difference with Germany actually helped me disconnect from what was happening back home. Most days, I’d have a quick check-in call with the Signavio team. Gerrit kept the customers coming, Nico and Willi ensured the software was running smoothly, and Torben handled the back office. Everything seemed under control.

The distance wasn’t without its challenges. As Karolina later reflected, “Gero was working very hard, not just on the expansion but also managing the time difference. The U.S. workdays would bleed into evenings in Berlin, so it was a lot to handle.” 

As she was getting ready to go to bed, I was still in the middle of my day. The nine-hour time difference was challenging.

Then came a longer phone call with Karolina. That’s when she dropped the news - she was pregnant!

Oh, that was unexpected. We were 18 months into our relationship and I knew she was the one. But kids had not been on the agenda so far. I said “Wonderful, we are going to have a California baby!”

Karolina was slightly more stressed. She wasn’t feeling well, and the thought of having a baby far from home was not an option for her. 

“No way,” she said firmly. “I give you six more weeks to sort out whatever you need, and then you come back to me.”

The time pressure hit me like a wave. I didn’t want to return to Berlin empty-handed. So, I turned my focus to building “Signavio, Inc.” with even greater urgency.

The administrative work for establishing our U.S. presence was completed quickly. But the real challenge was hiring a team.

We were still a bootstrapped company, so funds were limited. I decided to hire just one person to start - a generalist capable of handling everything from sales to customer service.

Fortunately, I got lucky. At a pitch event in Sunnyvale, Will Thomas approached me after my presentation. I had discussed how business performance often functions like a black box - you need to understand what’s inside to make meaningful improvements. I used one of my favorite examples from my McKinsey days: a telecommunications company trying to deliver a new internet connection, with countless steps, teams, and systems that had to align but often descended into chaos. Will resonated with this example, having worked with telcos himself.

We met several times, and it became clear he was the right fit for us in the U.S. 

Will, welcome to the team!

He was eager to learn and quickly immersed himself in the Signavio world. Before long, we were conducting our first joint customer calls and enabling partners interested in working with our software.

Soon after, I flew back to Berlin to be with Karolina.

Up until that point, we’d been in a long-distance relationship - she lived in Warsaw, and I was based in Berlin. We’d often debated whether we should live in Warsaw, which would mean me leaving Signavio, or in Berlin, which would require her to leave her job.

In the end, Karolina decided to move to Berlin. Her best friend, who happened to be Torben’s girlfriend, had also relocated there, which made the transition easier.

Suddenly, my one-room studio apartment, a modest 30m² space, felt impossibly small. It hadn’t been a problem before, as I spent almost all my time at the office. But with a baby on the way, we needed a bigger place.

Thankfully, we found a great apartment just around the corner and moved in by the end of summer. Our new neighbors were around our age and ran a hip-hop clothing business from home. We shared a small rooftop garden, which they maintained with impressive dedication.

One day, my neighbor frantically called me over. Google Maps had just updated its satellite images of Berlin, and the new high-resolution photos revealed all the cannabis plants growing in our rooftop garden. We had to quickly remove them to avoid any trouble with the authorities.

I never smoked myself, but I have to admit - I was impressed by their crop. An unexpected inner-city farm, filling the air with a sweet aroma whenever they indulged.

That same summer, we also kicked off an important tradition for Signavio: Code Camp. By this point, we had grown to a team of 20 people and wanted to spend a week together away from the daily grind, immersed in the countryside.

We found a small hippie farm and rented a bus to transport everyone. When we arrived, Will, who had flown in from California to join, was eager to settle in. Fortunately, the Wi-Fi on the farm held up just enough for us to hold a web meeting with one of our prospects - a stroke of luck, given our remote location.

As evening fell, business wrapped up, and we shifted into relaxation mode. Coincidentally, another company had held an offsite event at the farm shortly before us and left behind large quantities of their product: the company was Jägermeister. This added an unexpected element of fun to the next few days.

During Code Camp, we organized hackathons. Most of our team members were software developers, and it became a chance to explore new ideas and experiment. At the office, we had attempted “funny Fridays,” inspired by Google’s concept of giving developers 20% of their time for personal projects. It hadn’t been very effective for us - there was always too much work to finish. But Code Camp offered a better structure: a complete pause on regular product development, ensuring everyone could participate guilt-free.

One standout project came from Sven Wagner-Boysen, one of our talented engineers. He experimented with Google’s new speech recognition services, teaming up with colleagues to develop “Process on Voice” - a voice-controlled interface for process modeling. You could say, “First, put butter in the pan and drop the egg,” and the tool would model the process onscreen. Will joked, “Great, now I can even model business processes while I am driving my car.”

We never productized Process on Voice. Still, I loved crazy prototypes that pushed the boundaries of what software can do for you. More than 10 years later, with the arrival of Generative AI, I still proudly showed the Process on Voice video and people thought it was a pretty recent prototype.

Our commitment to usability often came down to the small, thoughtful details. QuickModel, for instance, became a simple and intuitive way for our users to model processes with a Microsoft Excel-like interface - something our customers continued to rave about for years.

While developers immersed themselves in hackathons, our sales team used the downtime for training and workshops, improving skills and strategies to bring our software to more users.

Code Camp was just so much fun. It was the mix of this remote place, a great bunch of people and unwinding from the daily craziness that made it special. Those who overslept often woke up with Edding pen designs on their faces - a tradition that, thankfully, never found its way to social media.

Back in the office, we faced some serious operational challenges. Customer support, for example, was still a mess. The “Supportarschkarte” was passed from one person to another each day, and hardly any support tickets were resolved. It felt like an impossible problem. Everyone hated handling support, myself included.

Then one day, Torben had a flash of inspiration: why not hire someone specifically for the support role? I thought it was a terrible idea - who would willingly sign up for that job?

Reluctantly, I agreed to give it a shot, and we posted a job ad. We decided to call the position “support engineer” to make it sound more like a technical, development-oriented role.

To my surprise, the response was overwhelming. Many applicants actually loved doing support. Finally, we could retire the dreaded Supportarschkarte.

Meanwhile, Software AG continued to pursue us, though this time the interaction was more positive. They had recognized the need to transition their software to the cloud and were exploring how to best achieve that goal.

At the time, we were considered the leading cloud-based process management solution on the market - “leading” in the sense that there were really only two options: IBM’s basic offering and ours. The rest of the market was still rooted in desktop-based products.

Whether or not it was related to my conversation at CeBIT, Software AG developed a serious interest in Signavio. Their Corporate Development team even reached out to gauge whether we would be open to selling the company.

In all honesty, we probably would have considered selling, had the price been right. I estimated that around €5 million euros would be enough for me to retire comfortably. Given that the four of us owned roughly 20% of the company each, a total sale price of €25 million euros would have likely sealed the deal.

Unsure how to navigate a merger and acquisition (M&A) process, I reached out to Julian Riedlbauer, a frequent poster on gruenderszene.de, a popular German news site, about fundraising and acquisitions. He showed immediate interest and agreed to guide us through the process. We crafted a strong management presentation and prepared for our meeting in Saarbrücken.

We went in with confidence, thinking we were the cool, savvy cloud experts. We didn’t just present our product and its architecture; we took it upon ourselves to lecture them on what, in our view, made a great cloud company. Looking back, we probably didn’t know nearly as much as we thought we did.

Half of the room in Saarbrücken consisted of product people who had worked on the ARIS team since the 1990s. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t impressed. Acquiring us would have meant replacing parts of their own homebuilt ARIS stack, and that was a bitter pill to swallow. Predictably, the discussions went nowhere.

In hindsight, it was for the best. Imagining what it would have been like to sell to Software AG; what a horrible thought. Overtaking them in the market throughout the coming years was so much more fun!

On 12/12/2012, our son Jakub was born. It was a magical moment - the birth of a happy, healthy little human. Karolina and I were overjoyed. I knew it should have been a cue to spend more time at home. 

“Looking back,” Karolina said, “it was a whirlwind. I was still wrapping up my projects, and Gero was working like crazy with the U.S. expansion. But when Jakub arrived, everything shifted. We knew we had to create space for our new dynamic.”

Instead, I took just one week off before diving headfirst into the year-end sales push. I tried to balance work and home life better, but I fell short.

By the end of the year, we closed with €1.8 million euros in revenue and a team of 25 employees. It was clear we were on to something special.