My experience in for parts: Motivation, Partners, Planning and Starting:
So there were two of us left to establish the company: Wolf and myself.
As a passive partner, Dr. Peter Schnupp had agreed to participate. Peter had been one of the three Softlab founders and his reputation in the sector was excellent. For him, his investment in our company was a kind of “seed capital”, for us, he was a true friend and counsellor.
InterFace Computer GmbH with their managing director Claus M. Müller was our strategic partner.
Our statute was very simple, just like our business model. My main area of expertise, “data communication” was to be our business theme, which is why we called the enterprise “InterFace Connection”.
What was important for Wolf was “UNIX”. In the long run, we had the goal of developing a product in the near future. Apart from that, we wanted to establish a safe turnover, earn sufficient money and expand to a reasonable dimension with a few employees.
The foundation was after Christmas, the start of business activities was planned for April, 1st. I took good advantage of the time in between: I managed to recruit a business assistant (Heidi). She was brave enough to join a two-man-team in their startup phase and help to establish a new firm.
Above all, I went out to look for work orders for Wolf and myself. It was my ambition to start transactions right from the 1st of April. That was (allegedly) very simple. What was not quite as easy was looking for more employees. Nobody was eager to work for a company that did not even exist yet.
In between, I also wrote down how a comfortable text system based on UNIX would have to look (that was later to be HIT).
Then came March, 15th, 1984, with two weeks to go until April, 1st. All of a sudden, both assignments I had taken as a given for myself and Wolf were cancelled.
RMD
P.S.
After many telephone calls, we managed, after all. One of my friends (Rudi) had some advice for me. His enterprise was unable to provide for a project they had contracted for, which meant that I could have that position from April, 1st. And Wolf was able to join Siemens for the SINIX development in mid-April as their UNIX guru. He was one of the central know-how carrier of that project, which he remained as long as he stayed with us in Munich.
All went well. We both had a phenomenal wage-per-hour and money changed hands like crazy. Since our basic wages were rather low (the fixed wages were poor, but the success bonus was pretty high), we made great profits. We were soon able to employ both graduates of computer science studies and students and develop HIT. By our standards, we were really a huge success!
However, the further development of the company was totally different from our original plans (incidentally, that is what usually seems to happen). Our strategic theme “data communication” soon ceased to be of any more interst. Instead, UNIX and CLOU/HIT gained monumental importance.
P.P.S.
The pictures are from the southern side of the Peleponnes (east coast). They were taken when we crossed the pass from east to west (of course by bike).
Loading ...