From his office window in Chemnitz, Martin Böhringer can see a forklift rental and a car repair shop. He told Business Punk in 2024 that this is exactly why he likes it. Berlin, he said, is the startup mainstream, and moving there would have been too easy.
He was not new to the game when he made that choice. What few people mention is that Staffbase was not his first company. Böhringer and his friend Lutz Gerlach had already built another startup, Hojoki, before they started again. They met at TU Chemnitz, where Böhringer studied business informatics and Gerlach business administration. Both went on to finish doctorates there. The idea, Böhringer has said, practically took shape on campus.
A phone in the pocket was the only channel left, and big companies badly wanted one.
They added a third founder, Frank Wolf, who had worked at T-Systems in Dresden. In 2014 the three launched what was, in the simplest description, an employee app. The first six months were spent with a handful of chosen customers, some with five employees, some with half a million.
That range tells you the problem they were circling. Most workplace software assumes a desk and a company email. Nurses, drivers, shop staff and factory workers have neither. A phone in the pocket was the only channel left, and big companies badly wanted one.
The cost of staying in Saxony was explaining it. Investors asked, again and again, why a software company lived in Chemnitz. Böhringer has said the question faded only once the large funding rounds arrived. Frank Wolf eventually moved to New York, about three years in, and opened a second office, so the company could sit near its biggest customers while its engineers stayed home.
The rounds did arrive. General Atlantic led a $145M Series D in March 2021, then a $115M Series E a year later that valued Staffbase at $1.1bn. In May 2022 the founders were named Saxony's entrepreneurs of the year. Total money raised stands near $300M.
Now Böhringer talks about an IPO, but in an unusual way. In 2025 he described it not as an exit but as an extended financing round, a way to pay back early investors while the company keeps growing.
That is the quiet thread through the story. The two men who had one startup behind them chose the same town, the same friends and the same campus for the second attempt. For a first-time founder, the lesson is not that location does not matter. It is that you can pick the place you understand best and make everyone else come to you.