15 years of makandra

Founder and CEO Thomas Eisenbarth focuses on a flat organizational structure without hierarchical levels. The collegial, enthusiastic environment at makandra is well received: In 2023, our team grew by 10 more members. With currently 59 employees, we are an engaged player in Augsburg's IT community.

Thomas remembers the beginnings of makandra as if it were yesterday. Together with his fellow student Henning Koch, he worked on a project on agile software development methods during their computer science studies. After successfully completing their project, they decided to continue their collaboration and found makandra. They probably couldn't have chosen a worse time to start – right in the midst of the financial crisis in 2009. 

Regardless makandra mastered the initial challenges and took a pioneering role in the technological niche of web development with the Ruby on Rails programming framework. Within the first five years after the founding, we evolved from a "traditional software forge" to a web, technology, and business consultancy. This was partly due to our technological focus, which enabled us to work unusually quickly while achieving long-term stable results.

Although we experienced rapid growth and expanded our field of operation early on, strict revenue targets were never our focus. Instead, we prioritized quality, technical excellence, and organic, sustainable growth – values that remain unchanged to this day. Our projects and resulting long-term client relationships were always meant to align with makandra's values. Particularly during economically challenging times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, our diverse client base proved to be advantageous. From major DAX 40 corporations like Volkswagen and Audi to small yet exceptional one-person businesses like Wissensbox, across industries like building cleaning with Pura or environmental accounting with GREENZERO – for makandra, what matters is the fit with our partner, regardless of their location, industry, or company size.

The past 15 years at makandra have provided Thomas with a multitude of impactful experiences. What stands out most in his memory? Certainly, the first major pitch at Audi, a client makandra has been serving for 10 years now. Long-term client relationships have enriched the past years with insights into various industries and trustworthy, pleasant collaborations.

He smiles when he thinks back to business trips to Barcelona or London with co-founder Henning. Amid juggling customer inquiries and business meetings, there was even sometimes time for a brief moment of relaxation on the beach. The move to the new office in 2023 is also a defining event for him, marking a new "era" for makandra.

Since its founding in 2009, our business areas have expanded, the number of employees has grown, we have moved to new office spaces, but one thing has not changed: makandra's core and the values we focus on.

The year 2024 has a special significance for us as we celebrate makandra's 15th anniversary. There is probably no more appropriate time to pause and reflect on the past, while at the same time looking to the future with excitement.

As for what lies ahead, we have a well-defined direction in many aspects. The aim to create technically excellent, stable, and long-term maintainable solutions for our clients remains unchanged in the future. Likewise, open and honest communication with clients will remain a solid aspect of our corporate culture. makandra aims to continue growing organically and sustainably in the future.

As the education of trainees in web development and DevOps Cloud Engineering is an integral part of our company, we aim to bring in 10% new trainees annually. The goal is to pass on our knowledge while maintaining a focus on the quality of training and technical excellence. "Growth at any cost" is not practiced here because it is much more important for us to ensure that the corporate culture does not suffer from personnel or business expansions. It is a requirement for us that everyone in the team can work well together and fits together. Professional competence alone without interpersonal skills does not fit with us.

We want to continue operating in the areas where our core competencies lie and remain faithful to our technology stack. Our focus on projects in web development, product development, DevOps, and UI/UX design will remain unchanged. However, we have also made further plans. For example, in the future, we will also offer trainings and workshops as part of the "makandra academy" to pass on the expertise we have accumulated over the past 15 years. Additionally, we want to focus more on the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) area and support companies with projects that are still in their infancy. Following internal experiences with our "DeskBot" software and customer projects such as the environmental accounting of GREENZERO, we would like to take on other challenging MVP projects.

Thanks to our 15 years of experience in Rails development, we can achieve impressive speed in product development. We are able to deliver fully functional and ready-to-use software to our customers in just 100 days. We want to demonstrate this more frequently in the future.

With makandra's 15-year anniversary behind us and a clear view of the future, we are ready to take on new challenges and continue living our core values. Our history is characterized by growth, innovation, and a strong sense of community. We look forward to continuing to develop high-quality solutions for our customers and sharing our knowledge. The next years promise exciting developments, and we are ready to tackle them with enthusiasm. Thank you to everyone who has accompanied us on this journey, and here's to another successful decade for makandra!