innFactory is characterized by a strong founding team. That’s why we want to introduce the founders of innFactory in short interviews.

Name:

Tobias Jonas, Co-Founder and CEO

Education:

Master of Science, Computer Science

Favorite quote:

If you can dream it you can do it.

innFactory celebrated its 4th anniversary last month. How did the idea and founding of innFactory come about in October 2017? How did you know co-founders Anton and Maximilian, and how did you know that Anton and Maximilian were the right partners for you?

Computer science and programming fascinated me early on. At 12, I started trying to teach myself my first programming languages and implemented some smaller projects. After graduating from secondary school, I started an apprenticeship as an IT specialist for application development at Kliniken Südostbayern AG. In vocational school, I met Anton, who had started a parallel apprenticeship as an IT specialist at Kathrein Werken. After our joint training period, our paths separated until 2013, when we both gained our first entrepreneurial experience as freelancers in a joint ETL project alongside our computer science studies. Until the end of my master’s studies, I worked on many different projects as a cloud engineer. As an additional side gig and hobby, I had then discovered organizing FH parties and was also active as a DJ in the region. This way, I could spend all day and all night doing things I enjoyed. Through mutual friends, I then met Maximilian and organized some parties with him as well. That we could be a good fit was a gut feeling that proved true. In general, the three of us are very different characters.

The idea for innFactory GmbH was already born back then, and the logo had existed since 2015. I wanted to found a company that, on the one hand, works with the most innovative IT technologies and, on the other hand, employs the best people with a passion for technology. Everyone should be able to develop in this company in a way that best fits their personal life situation. I didn’t want to be pushed into a corner technologically by management but simply wanted to develop the best solutions for complex problems.

At this point, however, it wasn’t clear how we could make money with such a company, because we had neither a complex problem nor a single customer. So we started writing a business plan for our product idea “croGoDeal” and even won the business plan competition at TH Rosenheim with it. With our idea, we wanted to save retail and thus lay the foundation for innFactory. In retrospect, our product was doomed to fail from the start because we focused far too little on the target group and the market, only on the technology. We were far from a Minimal Viable Product (MVP). It was more like a Technology Product Without Value. However, we were able to learn a lot from these mistakes for the future, and even though we discontinued the product development of “croGoDeal” before the GmbH, we founded innFactory. Together with Volksbank Rosenheim Chiemsee, we wanted to develop our next product. This time as an MVP to try out how the product is received in the market and what things we need to change for success. This is how our RoboAdvisor “Laura AI” was created. Since this time we had completely underestimated the sales cycles and politics in finance, we decided to enter the consulting business with a focus on cloud computing and big data alongside the product business. In the area of consulting services, we were able to celebrate initial successes quickly, and our contracts became bigger and bigger, and the team continued to grow. In parallel, we developed more MVP ideas, some of which have developed into real products on the market. An example of this is our Covid-19 testing and vaccination software “Cotema,” which we were able to sell to companies like Munich Re, Rossmann, and Microsoft. To this day, we operate a mix of product and service business and are still 100% self-financed without external capital.

When did you first have the idea to start a company?

I founded my first sole proprietorship in 2013 because as a working student in the region, I couldn’t find anywhere the technology combined with the desired company culture that I had imagined. Not many were dealing with cloud computing at that time, but for me, it was already the future in which I wanted to develop personally. As already mentioned, I wanted to find a company that, on the one hand, deals with the latest technologies but, on the other hand, is inspired by company cultures like Google’s. At that time, only in e-commerce with Techdivision was there a company whose culture I could have identified with. However, technologically my interest was elsewhere at the time. So it quickly became clear that I had to found my own company if I wanted to offer all these things for myself and our future team.

What would have been your Plan B for the future if you hadn’t founded the company? Where would you have liked to work?

I had no Plan B and was convinced from the beginning that it would somehow work out.

What were the biggest difficulties and hurdles that you had to overcome as CEO on the founding path?

The biggest hurdle was certainly the first customer or the first customers because, at the beginning, as a founder, you have neither a network nor demonstrable references.

What would you do differently in retrospect during the founding phase?

In hindsight, you would probably do many things differently. Above all, I would always implement product ideas together with a reference partner and not program them for months in isolation. Often an MVP is enough to gather feedback.

What surprised you about running a company or what didn’t you expect/underestimate?

At the beginning, I always thought that the best product or the best technology always wins. By now, I know that more goes into a successful product. We certainly all underestimated the political forces at work in some markets.

innFactory has its office in the Stellwerk18 startup center in Rosenheim. Did the location of the startup play an important role?

Definitely! As already mentioned, at the beginning we had neither references nor a sales network. Through Stellwerk18, our first partner and current customer, VR Bank Rosenheim, became aware of us. Special thanks also go to the current 2nd Mayor of the City of Rosenheim. Daniel Artmann, during his time as network manager, supported us and other founders at Stellwerk18 in building our own network of entrepreneurs in the Region 18. Both sides always benefited from this. For example, this is how we came into contact with Siteco, one of our largest consulting customers. Florian Wiesböck is now continuing this work consistently. In my view, a valuable institution in the region.

What was your first programming project and how did you come up with it?

At 14, I started programming my own CMS (jDev1). I then used this for my first own website “jonas-design.net” (based on jDev1 from 03/07/2007). I also created other smaller websites and clan pages with it for acquaintances. I even gave my mom a website with a guestbook for her birthday, to which I had invited all relatives to leave a small post. I was inspired by Joomla and, in addition to a template engine, also programmed a plugin system. There was, for example, a news plugin, an AJAX chat plugin, a guestbook, a counter, and whatever else was modern at the time. In the course of this project, I was able to learn an incredible amount about software development. Back then, all from books, because Udemy and YouTube didn’t exist in this form yet.

Where do you see the biggest challenges and opportunities for the company in the coming years? Where do you see innFactory in 5 years?

I think as innFactory grows, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the company culture as it is today. Processes will also become increasingly important since everything has to work within our framework. That’s why I’m glad we’re currently introducing ISO9001 and thus at least have a standardized process for our software quality. I think we can grow significantly in the next 5 years and spin off products into their own subsidiaries if they are promising. A mix of product and consulting will probably only work up to a certain number of people in the team. Currently with 16, it’s still manageable; with 25 or 35, probably not anymore.

What does your work week currently look like?

My week is very diverse and usually has significantly more than 40 hours. It’s always a mix of software architecture, cloud computing, and communication with employees and customers. In the evenings, as far as Corona allows, you can often find me at various events networking. In general, I have to keep an eye on the projects assigned to me, help decide on important architectural decisions, and plan early how the team can implement the tasks. Especially in software development, I try to give our developers as much decision-making authority as possible and stand by their side with suggestions as an expert.

What is your favorite programming language and why?

My absolute favorite is still Scala. I appreciate the possibilities of functional programming based on the JVM. This allows real problems to be abstracted very efficiently, and due to the proximity to Java, you still have the possibility to integrate and use all kinds of Java SDKs when needed. All major backend systems at innFactory are therefore programmed in Scala, and only for smaller services do we fall back on NodeJS, Go, or Python, for example. I’m very curious to see how Scala 3 develops.