Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert, co-founders: Managing external personnel is a major challenge for companies: complex, time-consuming, and full of compliance risks. Pactos is an AI-powered platform that enables companies to manage external workers in a fully digital and legally compliant manner – from procurement through deployment planning to invoicing – including compliance checks, customized process adjustments, and integrations into existing systems.
Instead of emails, spreadsheets, and isolated solutions, there’s a seamless, audit-proof workflow: companies can define their requirements for needed personnel. Based on these criteria, the demand is distributed to stored or new suppliers. The proposed candidates can be compared and scheduled for deployment. At the end, time and performance are recorded and invoices are automatically verified. Result: up to 70 percent less manual effort, higher legal certainty, and full transparency over costs, quality, and availability of external resources.
Munich Startup: But that’s been around forever!
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: The European market is worth over 230 billion euros, but many processes still run analog. In practice, many companies manage external personnel via email, file storage, and phone lists. This leads to media breaks, lack of transparency, and compliance risks. Pactos replaces this patchwork: suppliers propose candidates directly in the system, approvals are fully automated, equal pay and maximum lending periods are automatically monitored, time and performance records and invoices are verified according to rules, all in a central dashboard.
Open interfaces connect inventory management systems, HR systems, time tracking, and other systems from practice. This creates a single, reliable record of all deployments for procurement, HR, departments, accounting, and compliance.
Shared experiences as the foundation for Pactos
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: We met at the selection day at WHU, and we’ve worked closely together ever since. Philipp brought practical experience from healthcare and logistics, experiencing staff shortages and analog processes firsthand. Antonio was previously a founder. In our joint discussions, we focused heavily on the skills shortage and its consequences. Later, in consulting, we saw the same patchwork of spreadsheets and emails with unclear responsibilities around external personnel, involving high manual effort and tangible risks for companies. After more than 200 conversations with companies and initial pilot projects, Pactos was created: with the ambition to manage external personnel as cleanly and efficiently as internal staff.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: The topic of external personnel is extremely broad and affects many departments in a company. Especially at the beginning, we had to prioritize repeatedly: where do we create the most value and what do we start with specifically? At the same time, we had to balance regulations, data security, and enterprise capability without losing usability for less digitally savvy users.
As young founders, we also faced the challenge of getting a hearing at large enterprises with a new solution. Trust isn’t given freely – you have to earn it: with pilot projects, solid references, and a product that we’ve consistently developed according to the real requirements of our users.
Clear growth targets and the path to becoming the European market leader
Munich Startup: Where do you want to be in one year, where in five years?
Antonio Zill and Philipp Eckert: In twelve months, we want to automate core workflows even more, for example improved invoice and document verification, intelligent supplier pre-selection, and proactive compliance assistants, as well as seamlessly connect additional inventory and time tracking systems. A broad rollout is planned for DACH and EU customers in industry, logistics, and healthcare.
In five years, we see Pactos as a European powerhouse for external personnel management that has set new standards for companies and their external workers.
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 path to investors is short, and the local ecosystem is constructive and action-oriented.
For our topic of “external personnel end-to-end,” Munich is ideal: central location, a vibrant community, and short cycles between product feedback from 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 chaos around external personnel for large companies very concretely. In the coming years, we want to use this advantage and go much broader with our solution and strong partners to become a shooting star. Our goal: Pactos should become the first choice when it comes to external personnel in Europe – simple, secure, and transparent.
