How a passion can transform into a successful business

The world-famous physicist, Albert Einstein, famously stated that he “had no special talent”, but was “only passionately curious.” It is debatable as to whether he may have been understating his own attributes with this assessment. However, it remains undisputed that passion has a significant influence on the success of a person or, indeed, a company. After all, an aspiring business typically starts with enthusiasm for a particular topic. We’ve taken a look at some exciting companies from all over Bavaria, and the ideas that drive them.

MyMuesli from Passau (Food)

In the summer of 2005, three friends were standing in front of a muesli shelf in the supermarket and can’t find anything they like – even though they love muesli. There’s always an ingredient in there that one of them doesn’t like. That’s when they came up with the idea for really good organic custom muesli – in other words, homemade muesli. Alongside their studies in Passau, Hubertus Bessau, Philipp Kraiss and Max Wittrock pressed ahead with their idea and, in the spring of 2007, launched MyMuesli online. Today, the products are available in many European countries and, of course, throughout the German-speaking world.

Maloja from Rimsting near Rosenheim (sports fashion)

An unforgettable snowboarding day in Maloja, a small Swiss mountain village, was the motivating moment for Peter Räuber to found the sports fashion label, Maloja. Between 2001 and 2004 the idea slowly began to manifest, before then becoming a reality: today Maloja is an international player in the field of ski, cross-country, outdoor and cycling clothing as well as streetwear. The brand now has a particularly large number of fans not only in its native Bavaria, but also throughout Europe, North America and South Korea.

Planstack from Augsburg (Software)

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Planstack founder – Linda Mayr – worked within the construction management entities of turnkey residential construction projects. She loved her job, but the customer service and coordination of the construction partners was extremely time-consuming. Her solution: launching Planstack in the year 2019. The software helps building owners and project developers to digitalise their processes, thereby rendering them simpler and more reliable.

Smart City System from Fürth (Smart City)

Packed city centres have long been a real modern-day issue. It’s not unusual when on the hunt for a parking space for it to take ages. Smart City System is Europe’s quality leader for digital parking systems. As a full-service provider for digital parking, the company led by founders, Stefan Eckart and Christian Schlenk, offers easy-to-install sensor technology and software. It improves and simplifies the recording, management and utilisation of parking spaces for cities, residential and commercial customers.

Consolinno Energy GmbH from Regensburg (Energy)

Founder, Klaus Nagl, always wanted to have a good answer should his children ever ask him what he has done for our planet. This is how the idea for Consolinno came into being. The company itself has been making its contribution to achieving the Paris climate targets with IoT solutions since 2017. As the key to the energy transition, it helps to increase energy efficiency, reduce consumption and costs and cut emissions.

Favendo from Bamberg (real-time localisation solutions)

Today, it is considered entirely normal for us to be able to locate things: our order with Hermes, our telephone, mid-air flights and so much more. Triggered by the release of iBeacon by Apple, the vision of Richard Lemke, the founder of Favendo is to make searching for things as easy as possible. The company specialises in indoor real-time tracking with centimetre-precise positioning – e.g. in warehouses or on construction sites – as well as navigation within buildings.

Examples like these clearly demonstrate that a passion can give rise to great companies that grow and prosper in Bavaria. It is not just domestic companies feel at home in Bavaria; numerous companies from abroad are also continuing their success stories in the Free State. Read more about this here on our Homepage.