Every day we work with CEOs and Founders of the world’s leading tech and tech-enabled companies to help them scale, innovate, and shape the future of tech. These are their stories.
Carsten Behrens – Managing Director & Founder of Modell Aachen GmbH
Modell Aachen GmbH is a market leader in the development of interactive management systems. Since its foundation in 2009, Modell Aachen GmbH has grown into a leading software provider for collaborative and process-oriented business management. With a dynamic team of over 60 employees and a customer base of more than 1,600 organizations worldwide, the company offers Q.wiki – a platform that helps businesses design their management systems to be interactive, transparent, and employee-driven.
Earlier this year Modell Aachen received a Strategic Growth Investment by Fortino Capital, a European-based investor focused on high-growth B2B SaaS companies that leverage artificial intelligence – advised on by Drake Star.
What is your focus within the Tech space?
Most companies have Quality Management manuals, management system documentation, or process landscapes that are outdated, incomplete, and not integrated into everyday work. They do not add any business value and are often only used for audits and certifications.
We see interactive management systems as a dynamic and collaborative communication platform for structured management information (formal structure) and best practices. Our approach is therefore a symbiosis of process management, knowledge management, and social collaboration, which results in organizational clarity at all times, enables all employees to fully contribute their potential, and ensures that best practices are performed consistently and compliantly.
Our software and approach are already used to manage nearly half a million people in around 1,500 companies. And every year, that number grows by about 40%.
How did this transaction benefit your business and impact the Process Management Software sector?
With our interactive management systems approach, we are facing an open market with a lot of white space. In addition, we have already been able to drastically reduce the effort for structured management communication with AI, which strengthens our market position. Thirdly, despite our international relevance, we have so far operated exclusively in the D-A-CH market.
Fortino is the ideal partner for us to systematically leverage the huge growth potential and develop Modell Aachen GmbH into the European market leader of management systems software. As a strong partner, they can support us with:
- Financial strength if investments to accelerate / secure growth are appropriate
- A strong advisory team (AI, GTM, hiring, finance, marketing, pricing, tech, etc.) specialized in our domain
- A strong network of companies, entrepreneurs, and consultants
Share anything that you want to share that we didn’t cover, e.g., lessons learned, current industry perspectives, etc.?
After 16 years of bootstrapped company development, the feedback from bankers and potential investors was a wonderful confirmation of our own assumptions and our performance.
We always assumed that we were a very well-organized, tidy and performing company with smart people. Internally, we were also convinced of our software development and the technical and organizational maturity we had achieved in all teams. We also believed that we had a lot of market potential ahead of us and had positioned ourselves very clearly in the market with a clear vision.
But it is always something else when external parties confirm your internal estimation and underpin it with a company valuation that significantly exceeded our expectations.
About Drake Star
Drake Star is an award-winning global tech investment bank that has completed over 500 transactions since 2003. The Drake Star global team of experienced professionals and senior advisors across offices in New York, Munich, London, Paris, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berlin, and Dubai* focuses on mergers & acquisitions and corporate finance services worldwide in Software/SaaS, HR Tech, Digital Services, FinTech, Digital Media, Industrial Tech, Consumer & Retail Tech and Mobility & Sustainability.
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