The history of wunschlösung part 3

In our little series, we want to give you an insight into how our founders Simon, Christian, Thomas, Carl-Gerold and Thomas got to know each other and how the founding of wunschlösung came about.

Chapter 3: "wunschlösung? As a name? Really now?

So Simon, Christian and Thomas knew each other before and a basic idea was there too. So what did they do with it now?


In search of complementary skills and what is called a market access, the three talked to many people. From Christian's circle of friends, Carl-Gerold (CG for short) joined the group. In his earlier life, CG had already worked on the board of Royal Mail (letters) and then Österreichische Post AG. In 2012, in his mid-50s, he had joined the non-profit association for which Christian worked on the board parallel to his studies. "I am looking for a meaningful voluntary task" he had said on the answering machine. Eight weeks later, CG and Christian flew to East Africa to join the project and began working together to professionalise the structures in Uganda and Germany. The association had quickly grown to over 400 members in Germany and over 1,400 participants in Uganda after a few major awards and corresponding press hype.


CG and Christian quickly realised that they were on the right wavelength and that working together was not only fun but also successful. Since Simon and Thomas also got on well with CG, the young team had gained 20 years of "senior management experience". The question of whether "the boys" were serious about their start-up was no longer an issue at the first acquisition meetings thanks to the 1.93 metre tall "silver back".


The second Thomas from the circle of former colleagues then also joined the group. Thomas, Thomas and Simon got to know and like each other during some projects in the Jena e-commerce environment. Also equipped with a fair amount of experience, he completed the founding team with his expertise as an IT project manager, his love for sales and many valuable contacts and ideas.


The team was in place, the will to found the company was there - and the preparations began. After a whole series of weekend and evening meetings, everyone had found their role and the "important" things such as name, logo and corporate design had been clarified.


Speaking of names, a short list emerged from a wildly brainstormed list of probably 150 name elements and combinations. The discussions got tougher until Simon threw the word "wunschlösung" into the room. After a relatively short discussion, this seemed to be a name that both sounded likeable and embodied the intention: to build cool individual software projects. Fun Fact: wunschlösung was of course not on the list of carefully prepared name ideas.


The right logo idea was then quickly found: The genus Taraxacum, which belongs to the daisy family - usually referred to as dandelion - seemed ideally suited. After all, who doesn't remember their own childhood and the wonderful tradition of blowing away the fluffy white umbrellas, followed by squinting their eyes and silently reciting a secret wish? It was bad enough that first the Father Christmas thing and then the Easter Bunny disappeared into thin air. The "dandelion wish" has come to stay!


And why is wunschlösung not written in capital letters? Because a lower-case "w" in the logo would nestle more smoothly with the dandelion and also stand out better in texts.


Team: Check.


Idea: Check.


Name: Check.


Logo: Check.


The only question was whether anyone out there was interested in the offer. Of course, initial talks had already been held to put out feelers. But for a functioning business model, in addition to the "problem-solution" fit, you also need the "product-market" fit. Or to put it another way: It's nice that someone has a suitable problem for wunschlösung, but is there also the matching willingness to pay for it?


The plan was to get by without an investor and to "bootstrap" the whole thing, as they say among founders. If there are no paying customers after 6 months, you don't deserve it. So we put together a pitch deck (or as the SMEs would say: "company presentation") and went on the hunt for customers. Due to the good network and the IT and e-commerce reputation, the search for the first paying project customers was fortunately easier than feared. And many of these cooperation partners from the early days are still regular customers of wunschlösung today.


Individual software development with a focus on B2B was thus the first offer with which wunschlösung was finally founded on 14 January 2015.


In the next part of our series, you will find out how things really started and continued.