Munich Startup: The last time we spoke, you were particularly proud of one metric: zero employees or customers had left you by then. Were you able to maintain this level of satisfaction?
William Barkawi, ClearOps: Almost! Although things are chaotic in other areas, as they are in every startup, things are running quite well in the two areas of employee and customer satisfaction. This is also because customer centricity and people first are simply two of our three core company values.
Our customers and employees appreciate the family character that we as a company embody, rather than the typical growth-at-any-cost approach. But that’s probably mainly possible because we’re still bootstrapped and therefore independent of institutional expectations. In fact, we haven’t lost a single employee at our core locations in Germany, USA, Portugal, and Costa Rica. At the same time, it should be noted that we originally built our technology hub in St. Petersburg. Due to the political situation with Russia, we were forced to relocate this location to Portugal. We helped some of our Russian employees move to Germany or other countries. Due to personal circumstances, not everyone was happy with the move, which is why we had to accept resignations. On the customer side, we unfortunately experienced some churn, but all others and new ones remain on board with long-term business relationships.
Why lengthy hiring processes pay off for ClearOps
Munich Startup: What obstacles have you encountered?
William Barkawi: We’re quite selective about who we hire and who we don’t. This leads to really quite lengthy hiring stages. The positive aspect is that it’s reflected precisely in employee tenure and people’s long-term enthusiasm. The downside, however, is that we simply have to invest enormous resources into making a good hire. What’s challenging for a founder with such rapid growth is, on the one hand, being personally approachable for everyone equally and, on the other hand, ensuring that the entire team works together toward the same direction. The right use of the OKR framework has helped here, but we also need to become more efficient.
Last but not least, we try by all means to motivate every employee to really engage creatively and constructively with the product. Far too often in various companies, you see employees who don’t directly deal with the product not feel responsible for it either. Staying innovative and demanding that is a challenge, especially as you grow. For example, we try to foster and demand creativity from each individual through hackathons, idea sprints, quite proactive product management, and other measures.
“From a software to a platform to a data company”
Munich Startup: How has your solution evolved?
William Barkawi: Everything continues to be about our vision “We keep the world of machinery moving”. Last year we initiated a quite exciting three-year company journey. From a software (2023) to a platform (2024) to a data company (2025) is the strategy. We unfortunately can’t break down the details of what lies behind that publicly. Our goal is to establish ClearOps as a global ecosystem for connected aftermarket supply chains. So we won’t rest until every machine, every dealer, and every manufacturer is part of the ClearOps ecosystem for a world that never stands still. On the one hand, this enables digitized and automated demand planning as well as global availability of spare parts and services – i.e., complete networking from the production line through dealers and technicians to the machine in operation.
We are expanding quite rapidly from our original industrial machinery focus to automotive, trucking, and much more. It really gets exciting with data-driven business models, everything around predictive analytics, customer lifetime value analytics & exploitation, and more. We want to grow aggressively, invest in research, and above all transform, no matter how complex the supply chain behind it may be.
Seeking investors after a long bootstrapping phase
Munich Startup: And what’s the financial situation like for you?
William Barkawi: We have decided against investors for various reasons in recent years. Despite continuously doubling every year, we’ve always operated extremely capital efficiently. This isn’t an emotional decision; investors certainly have many advantages for us but also disadvantages. So far we’ve done well without, which of course has also brought many challenges and concerns. However, to take ourselves, our product, and our global presence to the next level, we’re currently exploring the financial options out there. From previous investor conversations, the market is proving to be quite fruitful for a company like ours. However, the prerequisite for this is that we really feel comfortable with each other. We wouldn’t raise funding just for the sake of money; instead, we’re focused on real strategic added value together.
Munich Startup: What learnings have you been able to take away as a founding team so far?
William Barkawi: Actually, I’m alone, but I have to admit that the employees at ClearOps are all so committed they might as well be co-founders, which is really huge. I think the most important learnings from 2023 are the following:
Growth is not automatically scaling: The biggest challenge is actually not to confuse growth with scaling. We’re growing fast, but scaling requires an absolute standard product, repeatable processes, and a globally interlocking team. We’re on a great path here, but it’s also paved with hurdles. Sometimes the product grows faster than sales, sometimes our sales people sell more than we can deliver, and sometimes our HR lags behind. 2024 is entirely about global scalability for us and will therefore be even more exciting than previous years. We must by no means see the growth of recent years as a sign of a perfectly running company; rather, as an impetus to become more efficient in the right places.
Three important learnings from 2023
Sales is a numbers game: Coming from founder-led sales purely through networking and direct outreach to a globally scalable sales apparatus in Europe, America, and Asia has been and continues to be quite draining. When it comes to sales and marketing, there’s far more to it than I initially believed. Processes, technical infrastructure, and automation form the foundation on which an expert team of marketers, SDRs, AEs, and co. can build. Building a scalable demand generation, lead nurturing, and closing machine is super exciting, but should never be underestimated. You can hardly believe how many thousands of lead touchpoints are actually needed to close just ten customers. You can’t build that sustainably and scalably without the right infrastructure, a top team, and the necessary mix of analytics and pragmatism.
Focus: In my opinion, the biggest difficulty is really focusing. Being opportunistic as a startup is in the nature of things, especially when you’re self-financed. Nevertheless, you should be careful not to stray too far from your ICP and core product. I myself have always initially viewed occupying a niche as too small, while a niche actually has nothing to do with size. It has to do with focus. Focus on a specific target customer with a specific pain point. Hypergrowth doesn’t result from uninterrupted opportunism and selling many different products on numerous markets. Rather, it comes from focusing on an area where you can quickly gain customers and serve them successfully, build a reputation with tangible results, and grow from there. Examples of successful focus are companies like Amazon, which initially only sold books, and Netflix, which started with DVD rentals.
A niche is therefore not necessarily small, but rather defined by similar demand and replicable supply. Even though we as a company are always doing many different things at once and will continue to do so in the future, it’s important to focus on our sweet spot. While this could still be a multi-billion-dollar market, it’s sometimes not as obviously accessible as other areas.
ClearOps wants to become the next unicorn quickly
Munich Startup: What role did the Munich ecosystem play in your journey so far?
William Barkawi: Unfortunately, a quite small one. While I have many friends who have founded companies themselves, we’ve had very little to do with all the well-known organizations like CDTM, UnternehmerTUM, and others. We’d like to change that this year, but haven’t received enough attention so far.
Nevertheless, Munich as a location is of course super. Many of our employees come from startups and therefore know the landscape very well; the labor market is simply perfect for us. We’ll be moving to a significantly larger office this year and would like to use that to reposition ourselves in terms of PR and employer branding. So far we’ve been flying quite under the radar or primarily active in our target industry. But this year we want to put much more emphasis on outward-facing employer and investor branding. And I as a founder would also like to help support other aspiring founders.
Munich Startup: What milestones are you working toward next?
William Barkawi: I’m sure most founders say this, but I’m more than convinced that ClearOps has the right team, the right product, and the right market to become a unicorn relatively quickly. That’s the big milestone the entire team is working toward. On an annual level, we want to continue growing at least 100 percent, not only touch the American and Asian markets but really efficiently develop them. On the product side, we’re investing massively in research on purely data-driven business models; with a platform that brings together all machines, dealers, and manufacturers, there’s really gigantic exciting potential. We also want to bring the entire global team back together and organize a joint team offsite in the mountains.
