Dirk Hoerig, co-founder and boss of the software company Commercetools
Image: commercetools
From Germany, Dirk Hoerig supplies companies such as Lego, Disney and Volkswagen with the cloud software for their online business. SAP is also among the competition – with software that Hoerig once helped develop.
Dirk Hoerig proudly stands in Times Square in New York at the beginning of May and points to a huge screen on the Nasdaq Tower. The American technology exchange congratulates the software company Commercetools on $100 million in annual recurring revenue. This makes the Munich-based company one of the first German start-ups to achieve so-called “centaurs” status – a term that is quite new even for the start-up scene and which many investors now consider to be more meaningful than a company’s valuation. Hoerig posted the picture on the LinkedIn career network. He is the boss and co-founder of Commercetools.
The company isn’t even listed on Nasdaq — occasionally the index simply congratulates companies active in the US market on reaching certain milestones. This shows the importance that Wall Street attaches to the company – although only very few people in Germany should know about it. The online shops of the US mobile communications provider AT&T, Audi, Disney, Lego, VW and BMW, among others, run on the Commercetools software.