Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Workpath: Workpath is a SaaS platform for results-oriented strategy implementation. More specifically, our software connects key metrics with the associated outcomes to close gaps between strategies and their actual execution. This is a simple description of the OKR method. With our software and training offerings, we aim to create greater agility, focus, transparency, and engagement across various areas of an organization, enabling real added value to be achieved more quickly. In essence, this connects employees' daily tasks, ongoing projects, and KPIs with and aligns them with the company's overarching strategies and goals. We call this outcome management.
In recent years, we have increasingly noticed that, despite the increasingly complex and dynamic market environment, many established companies still rely on old organizational structures with rigid, centralized decision-making. More flexible and adaptable market participants have had a clear advantage, especially since the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, we have set ourselves the task of combining the most important tools and organizational models of the digital pioneers into one holistic software solution This is explicitly designed for enterprises. Workpath thus provides a helpful basis for agile working to meet the demands of today's world.
“We tailored Workpath to the needs of large European companies right from the start.”
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Workpath: Currently, there are two types of providers of OKR management solutions: Some offer purely administrative tools that serve to coordinate strategies from a management perspective. These tools often have no real, measurable impact on company success, partly because employees are not involved in the processes.
The other group, the user-centric providers, cannot always meet the high demands of large companies for a tool of this type. This includes platform management, data security, and the protection of employee privacy. From the outset, we tailored Workpath to the needs of large European companies and focus on user-friendliness and employee engagement. Our software intuitively guides teams through the process of goal planning and implementation. Through cross-organizational alignment, anchored in the OKR framework, corporate strategies can be broken down into individual levels. We actively support our customers with templates, learning content, and an integrated analytics suite so that they can better understand their processes and evaluate strategic progress.
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Workpath: The co-founders of Workpath worked in startups and in venture capital before founding the company. It was precisely in this environment that we realized early on how rapidly the world of work is changing and that many large companies are far from adapted to the agile market of the future. While working together within the same company, we quickly discovered a shared interest in sustainable organizational models and new forms of collaboration. We sought ways to leverage our experience to demonstrate how fundamentally leadership and processes in companies must change in the digital age. The result was the founding of Workpath. Just a few months later, we convinced our first customers with the first version of our tool – not least because of its exceptional user-friendliness. Since then, our goal has been to use Workpath to solve key problems facing companies.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Workpath: After making the decision to found Workpath, we quickly took the first steps. Since we had already worked with larger companies, we were able to finance the first 20 to 25 employees from our own revenue. At the same time, we faced the challenge of finding sufficient investors for our vision. This was the only way our startup could continue to grow and thus create the opportunity to continuously improve our product. We then raised a total of approximately €15 million in venture capital from experienced VC investors in two financing rounds.
“It is essential for us to learn from our mistakes”
Munich Startup: How are things going?
Workpath: The changes of the last few years, triggered not least by the pandemic, have prompted many of our customers to become more actively involved in agile corporate governance and outcome management. We were – thankfully – able to benefit from this with our software. We've acquired several new customers, but we've grown significantly over the past two years, especially with our existing customers. Workpath is now represented in more and more units at some of our customers, such as SAP and Bosch, to better coordinate them.
We are also proud to continue to grow as a team and now have over 120 international talents on board.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Workpath: We highly value Munich as a startup location. It's no coincidence that the city is the second-largest startup hub in Germany, right after Berlin. This has helped us find many talented employees here. Furthermore, the location has also provided an incentive for some to relocate their lives here. The many other, partly established, tech companies based here create a kind of ecosystem with diverse networking opportunities. Accordingly, the talent market is also very large, and it's not always easy to attract potential employees, especially when competing with a large corporation. But at Workpath, we've found a solution for this too: the option of working remotely in general. The pandemic has established our work model, and collaboration runs smoothly. One positive consequence of this is that some employees work remotely in principle, which gives us the opportunity to build a highly international team. This allows everyone to learn something completely new from each other, making collaboration even more exciting.
Munich Startup: Risk or security?
Workpath: The clear trend: risk. Despite our rapid growth, it's just as important as it was on the first day to be able to make decisions quickly, and when in doubt, it's better to learn quickly than not to try something. Not everything always works out 100 percent, which is why we embrace a culture of error. It's essential for us to learn from our mistakes and emerge from each one with greater experience.
Nevertheless, we are naturally aware of our responsibility. With over 120 employees, no matter how risky you are, you can't rush into any decision. We will not put our employees or customers at risk with our decisions and will always be a safe and solid partner. It is important to us that this will not change in the future.
