Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Hannes Hanusch, Unikube: We are Hannes Hanusch (36, BA International Business Management), Michael Schilonka (31, BSc Computer Science), and Robert Stein (29, BSc Computer Science), the founders of Unikube. I know Michael through family connections – our wives are cousins. Robert and Michael met from their computer science studies and have always philosophized together about the important questions of software development.
When it comes to software development, we are absolute cloud-native enthusiasts. Cloud-native means developing applications entirely for cloud environments. And thinking outside the box, we came up with the idea of implementing our own platform to simplify access to cloud-native development with Kubernetes. We released version 1.0 of our SaaS platform and CLI (Command Line Interface) called Unikube as an open source project in September, which we are particularly proud of.
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Hannes Hanusch: It's not easy to succinctly summarize the challenge our product Unikube addresses, especially when you're not talking to software developers or DevOps engineers. Put simply, Unikub helps developers focus on what they do best: writing code! Thanks to Unikube, developers no longer have to delve into complex Kubernetes logic or deal with infrastructure. Unikube standardizes and automates the application development process for service-based architectures running on Kubernetes. This means, among other things, significantly more efficient software development, faster onboarding, better testing, and error-free deployments.
Solution revolutionary good
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Hannes Hanusch: We can deny that in good conscience. Our idea doesn't really exist on the market yet! There are a few standalone solutions and a few other approaches that solve parts of the problem, but we haven't yet found a platform that truly thinks through the process from end to end. We ourselves have encountered several challenges while developing with Kubernetes and so we started looking for a solution. Initially, to make our own developers' work easier. However, since the solution was so revolutionary and the cloud-native approach to software development is on the rise, the idea of making the platform accessible to others was a logical one.
Munich Startup: Has there ever been a point where you almost failed?
Hannes Hanusch: To be honest, finding investors is and always has been a task that cost us a lot of time and energy. Because our product is very complex, it can't be explained in a two-sentence pitch. And even experienced developers sometimes can't imagine how Unikube will work in practice. But nevertheless, we never let failed investor talks discourage us. We always knew that our idea was extremely good and that we would make many teams very happy with our Unikube platform in the future. The project is therefore still self-financed, and accordingly, we have to think very carefully about where to spend money.
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Hannes Hanusch: In one year, we want to have the first 50 pilot projects mapped to the platform and be at the point where these pilot customers will never want to develop without Unikube again. Ideally, we will then have found our "product-market fit."
Unikube aims to become a standard in cloud-native development
In five years, we would like to have expanded internationally and be active in a market like the US, hopefully with a three-digit number of employees. We want Unikube to become a recognized standard in cloud-native development. We are also big fans of open source development and want Unikube to make a significant contribution over the next five years to accelerating the progress of other projects and making them more accessible to fellow developers.
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Hannes Hanusch: In general, Munich is well positioned when it comes to the startup scene. Especially in the B2B and enterprise software sector, Munich probably even has an advantage over Berlin. Other startups from Munich also inspire us, such as Celonis, Personio, Demodesk, and Userlane. All of these startups also work with infrastructures running on Kubernetes.
Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?
Hannes Hanusch: We see ourselves more as a hidden champion, as our product isn't so easy to grasp at first glance. We don't sell anything you can physically touch. Getting people excited about complex technologies requires significantly more perseverance and drive. But we have that. Companies like Celonis demonstrate that even complex B2B products that require a lot of explanation can really take off. The day will come when every software developer in Germany knows what Unikube is. We're convinced of that.
