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Time is flying. At the end of this month (November 2024) it will be one year that I have dived fully into JahnTech, my own company. Let me recap some key moments and developments and give you some insights.
But before that we need to go back in time much farther. Almost 28 years to be precise. In January 1997 I had started my first company and of course it was all about IT. My main occupation at the time was going to university. And I truly hated almost everything about that. So eventually I ended up with the idea to do something else as a kind-of compensation.
I sold custom-made PCs to individuals, which was still quite a good market at the time. But the main revenue came from working for businesses. My most prestigious customer was Deutsche Bank, where I had established good relationships with some folks at the regional IT organization. So when they needed someone to replace a lot of PCs in their branches, that's what I did. In today's money I made about 50 Euros per hour and the substantial travel time was fully paid. For a student that was a lot of money :-).
Ever since I had the idea somewhere in the back of my mind to do something like that again. And last year a great opportunity presented itself. It didn't need a lot of thinking for me to grab it. So here we are ...
The start was rough. Less than a month after having left Software AG, they announced the sale of the webMethods product line to IBM. Don't get me wrong. I do think that the new home makes a lot of sense in many ways. Yet it affected the timeline for almost all of my prospects. Plus my former colleagues obviously needed to figure out a lot of details for themselves.
But overall that was more like a hiccup. So I had quickly decided to embrace the change and find out for myself where it actually offered news chances. The biggest one in my current line of thinking is the fact that IBM's brand and sales power will broaden the webMethods customer base. How can that not be great news for me.
To be continued ... |
