Bastian Nominacher knows how to set up a business. He is co-founder of the Munich start-up Celonis: a good ten years old and worth more than ten billion dollars since this summer – a so-called decacorn in the start-up scene, the only one in Germany. The company is considered one of the leading providers of process mining. His software digs up the data that every process leaves behind in a company, identifies the weak points and makes recommendations. Nominacher speaks about business models in a new online course for students. The program called Makers of Tomorrow was launched by the Federal Chancellery. The course aims to inspire students from “non-start-up subjects” for entrepreneurship.
Eva-Maria Meijnen from the start-up Plus Dental, which sells clear aligners, also appears in the online course. Before joining the start-up, she worked for a DAX company for a long time. “To change was the best professional decision of my life. Unfortunately, much too late,” she says during the virtual presentation of the program. When she finished her studies at the beginning of the noughties, she lacked the imagination of how to build and start a company and “also the role models.”
“I had to learn everything from my own mistakes.”
Johannes Reck from the tourism platform Get Your Guide wants to encourage others to start up: “In a time of social transformation, as we are currently experiencing, the greatest risk is not to take risks.” When he started Get Your Guide in 2009, there was no one with whom he could orientate himself. “I had to learn everything from my own mistakes, and we made many, many mistakes,” says Reck. “I believe that this knowledge already exists today and that these mentors are available.”
Nominacher from Celonis thinks the idea of bringing students and founders together to inspire more young people to start their own innovative company is “great”. He knows from his own experience how helpful suggestions from experienced and successful founders can be. Celonis is a spin-off from the Technical University of Munich. The online course is a “useful addition”, says Nominacher, because the courses are aimed at students of all disciplines and not just the “classic courses” of many founders such as business administration. “Anyone who is afraid of new things, of constant change or of setbacks, will find it difficult to establish,” says Nominacher. Founders shouldn’t be too quickly discouraged by setbacks and build a company together with one or two others, he advises. It doesn’t have to be a decacorn right away.