Most people spend a lifetime on chasing big dreams. 31-year-old Hanno Renner achieved his ambition in merely six years. Such is the story of rapid growth of one of the most valued European start-ups today. On top of that, Renner achieved a net valuation of more than Rs 46,000 ($6.3 billion) crores for his company when at one time he was left with a mere Rs 14,000 ($226) in his bank account.
Renner’s software company Personio has broken barriers and emerged as a mammoth in no time. But this was a make-or-break venture for Renner, who was close to bleeding dry before the first real funding for Personio came along, as he recently revealed to a global news outlet.
German startup Personio was co-founded by Renner back in 2015 along with three fellow students – Roman Schumacher, Arseniy Vershinin and Ignaz Forstmeier. He met his co-founders while studying at the Center for Digital Technology and Management in Munich. The idea behind the billion-dollar-baby emerged from the grievance of a friend of the co-founders who was having a hard time running HR processes as the CTO (chief technology officer). What was needed was a new kind of software and so the idea behind Personio was born, a software company focussing on needs of SMBs (small and medium businesses).
Building their first product was not easy. Four students with no resources and infrastructure started working from wherever possible in the college campus as they couldn’t afford an office. They when the first customers started coming in, they put the revenue into establishing the company by renting out a small office, hiring some employees and purchasing their first software licenses.
The big turnaround came the next year in July 2016 when they were going in for funding. However, things were so dire at the time, that their company’s account was down to just 200 euros before they received their first investment of 2.1 million euros. Renner recalled in the interview, “I still have a screenshot from that bank account: We had like a couple of 100 euros left in the bank account before we then received our first round of funding, which was 2 million [euros] at the time, but it was really interesting how tight we were managing until then.”
Since then, his company has gone from strength to strength. It has raised more than $500 million from investors till now.
What started out of sheer nothing is today a company that directly takes on the IT giants like SAP and Salesforce in the market. What started with four students now has more than 1000 employees and is valued at more than Rs 46,000 crore ($6.3 billion).
