Before Personio raised its first real money, the company's bank account held about 200 euros.
Hanno Renner told CNBC as much, years later, when the company was valued at more than US$6bn. The founders first had to pay outstanding invoices, a standard condition of a funding deal, and the money that remained was barely enough for a week of lunches.
They had no office, so they built their first product wherever they could find space at college.
It was an odd place for a man who had spent his student holidays crossing oceans. Renner earned a yachtmaster's licence so he could work as a skipper, and during college breaks he was paid to sail boats around the world. He said it was intense and a harder job than most people think. It paid for his studies in industrial engineering and technology management at TU Munich and the CDTM, the entrepreneurship centre where he met his three co-founders, Roman Schumacher, Ignaz Forstmeier and Arseniy Vershinin. He also spent time at Columbia University in New York.
In 2015, soon after graduating, the four started Personio. They had no office, so they built their first product wherever they could find space at college. The idea was dull in the best way: HR software for small and medium companies that were still running on spreadsheets and email.
What almost nobody saw was how they paid for the early months. Customers paid for the first version, and the founders used that revenue to buy software licences, rent a small office and hire a handful of people. Word of mouth did the selling; reports describe growth from around 20 to over 100 companies in 2016. Only then, in July 2016, did a EUR2.1m seed round arrive, with Global Founders Capital among the investors.
A US$12m Series A led by Northzone followed in 2017. In January 2021 a US$125m round made Personio a unicorn; by autumn that year it was valued at US$6.3bn, and in 2022 at US$8.5bn. By 2024 it served about 12,000 customers in 70 countries and employed roughly 2,000 people.
The cost of that climb is that every later valuation had to be defended. The 200 euros are a useful reminder of what the company was made of before anyone was watching.
A founder who has skippered a yacht across open water has already learned to keep sailing when the shore is out of sight.