Munich Startup: What is your StartupWhat problem are you solving?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert, Co-FoundersManaging external personnel is a major challenge for companies: complex, time-consuming, and fraught with compliance risks. Pactos is a solution. AI-powered platform, which enables companies to fully, digitally and legally manage external workers – from procurement and deployment planning to invoicing – including compliance checks, individual process adjustments and integrations into existing systems.
Instead of emails, Excel spreadsheets, and isolated solutions, there's a seamless, audit-proof workflow: Companies can define their personnel requirements. Based on these criteria, the system generates a list of available or potential new suppliers. The suggested candidates can be compared and scheduled for deployment. Finally, time and services are recorded, and invoices are automatically verified. The result: up to 70 percent less manual effort, greater legal certainty, and complete transparency regarding the costs, quality, and availability of external resources.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: The European market is substantial, worth over €230 billion, yet much still operates analogously. In practice, many companies continue to manage temporary staff via email, file storage, and phone lists. This leads to inconsistencies, a lack of transparency, and compliance risks. Pactos replaces this patchwork approach: suppliers propose candidates directly within the system, approvals are fully automated, equal pay and maximum assignment periods are automatically monitored, and time and performance records and invoices are checked based on predefined rules—all within a central dashboard.
Open interfaces connect ERP systems, HR systems, time management systems, and other systems used in practice. This creates a single, reliable overview of all applications for purchasing, HR, specialist departments, accounting, and compliance.
Shared experiences as a starting point for Pactos
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: We met on the selection day at WHU and have been working closely together ever since. Philipp brought practical experience from nursing and logistics and witnessed staff shortages and analog processes firsthand. Antonio was previously a founder. Our discussions often revolved around the skilled worker shortage and its consequences. Later, in our consulting work, we saw the same patchwork of Excel spreadsheets and emails with unclear responsibilities surrounding external staff, resulting in high manual effort and significant risks for companies. After more than 200 conversations with companies and initial pilot projects, Pactos was born: with the aim of managing external staff as cleanly and efficiently as internal employees.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: The topic of external staff is extremely broad and affects many departments within the company. Especially at the beginning, we constantly had to prioritize: Where can we create the greatest added value, and where do we start specifically? At the same time, we had to balance regulatory compliance, data security, and enterprise-level suitability without sacrificing usability for less digitally savvy users.
As young founders, we also faced the challenge of gaining the attention of large corporations with our new solution. Trust isn't given freely; it has to be earned: through pilot projects, solid references, and a product that we have consistently developed based on the real-world needs of our users.
Clear growth targets and the path to becoming the European market leader
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: In twelve months, we aim to further automate core workflows, for example, improved invoice and document verification, intelligent supplier pre-selection, and proactive compliance assistants, as well as seamless integration with other inventory and time management systems. A broad rollout to customers in the DACH and EU sectors in industry, logistics, and healthcare is planned.
In five years, we envision Pactos as a European powerhouse for managing external personnel, having set new standards for companies and their external workforce.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: We experience Munich as a strong B2B location with direct access to industry, logistics, and healthcare. The density of potential enterprise customers, partners, and talent is high, the paths to investors are short, and the local ecosystem is constructive and action-oriented.
Munich is ideal for our topic of “external personnel end-to-end”: central location, a lively community and short cycles between product feedback from the industry and implementation.
Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: Today, we're more of a hidden champion: We solve the complexities surrounding external staffing for large companies. In the coming years, we want to leverage this advantage and, with our solution and strong partners, expand significantly and become a rising star. Our goal: Pactos should become the go-to solution for external staffing in Europe – simple, secure, and transparent.
