Interview with founder Stephan Huthmacher on the change to the Management Board

At the beginning of 2025, you will hand over the role of CEO to your long-standing Management Board colleague Benjamin Schulte and move to the Supervisory Board. What were your reasons for taking this step?

First of all, the succession plan was no coincidence, but the result of a process that has been ongoing over the years. I am delighted that Benjamin has agreed to take on my role and see it as an essential step in shaping Comma Soft’s sustainable future. With his expertise and entrepreneurial mindset, he is the ideal CEO for this. Of course, my age also plays a role – I will be 70 in a few months’ time – but far more important for me was the conviction that now is the right time to take this step, and not in a few years’ time.

What exactly is this process?

The process began in 2009 when, 20 years after the company was founded, our Supervisory Board asked me the question: “What would happen to Comma Soft if a brick fell on your head tomorrow?”. This direct and concise question set something in motion in me. I realized that I didn’t have an answer ready. I realized that my previous way of running the company alone was not compatible with my goal of sustainable, future-proof and sustainable management.

So the ‘brick issue’ 16 years ago was something like the initial spark for thinking about a new, more sustainable management structure?

Frankly, yes. But the path from realization to solution was anything but easy. For example, I failed when I tried to bring in external managers. They were highly qualified, but didn’t fit in with our culture. The turning point came when I asked myself one day: “Why go far away when good things are so close?” We had so much potential here …

So you’ve shifted your focus inwards?

Exactly. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had known the person I had been looking for for so long for years and that I really appreciated working with him. What’s more, Benjamin Schulte’s entrepreneurial mindset and his professional and emotional expertise made him a perfect fit for Comma Soft and for me. And because Benjamin and I also clicked on a personal level right away, he and I became an increasingly close team. It worked so well that in 2016 I asked our Supervisory Board to appoint Benjamin to the Management Board as COO.

What has changed for Comma Soft and for you as CEO since 2016 as a result of this expansion of the Management Board?

A great deal. This was the first real pattern break in the management of Comma Soft. And you can really take the word “pattern break” literally. For the first time in the then 27-year history of Comma Soft, I was no longer solely responsible for the operational business of Comma Soft. This was a first in the history of Comma Soft, which, in retrospect, had the effect of a booster for our development to this day and will certainly continue to shape us.

For me, the expansion of the Management Board was far more than just a relief. It created new synergies and took our work on Comma Soft to a new level.

In what ways was it a new level?

In many ways. But the most important thing was that both Benjamin and I quickly realized that we needed to broaden our long-term focus in terms of resilience, entrepreneurial thinking, sustainability and grandchildren’s ability.

The most resounding result of our internal strategic considerations was the shared conviction of how much potential we had at Comma Soft itself. This is where we started and initiated extensive further training and development programs, which were immediately accepted by all our employees and followed through with great commitment. These initiatives created a new internal dynamic and uncovered new potential.

How exactly did the internal training and development initiative affect the broadening of the management base at Comma Soft?

The training and development program showed us what potential and skills we had developed. The outcome of this process confirmed our strategy and encouraged us about three years ago to establish a second operational management level below the Management Board: Executive Management.

To put it briefly, this decision turned out to be a six in the lottery! The four Executive Managers, who together with Benjamin form an operational top 5, have grown together to form a strong team that interacts seamlessly with each other and is strong in implementation. What’s more, the business units and their team leaders are also doing an excellent job.

Did the new management structure fulfill your expectation of sustainable leadership? In other words, were you no longer worried about the brick?

Yes, that’s one way of putting it. The fact is, looking back, I see the introduction of a second management level under Benjamin Schulte and the team leader level as a key moment in the recent history of Comma Soft. These two levels enable us to broaden our professional base even more than before and thus be in a position to successfully implement large global projects such as the Daimler Truck Separation project. This impressed our client so much that we won first prize in the “Technologies” category of WirtschaftsWoche’s “Best of Consulting” contest in November 2024.

Thanks to the new management levels, we have a much broader management team at Comma Soft. And our fantastic economic development shows just how well this meshes and blends together to form a powerful unit. It is the basis for everything else.

Was this restructuring of management the decisive reason for your move to the Supervisory Board?

Absolutely. This transformation has fundamentally repositioned us and strengthened us in the long term. We have never been as resilient as we are today. At the end of 2024, the year in which we celebrated our 35th anniversary, the perfect moment had come for me to take the next step and initiate the transition to the second model break. I couldn’t have wished for a better time to hand over to Benjamin Schulte and for my new role within Comma Soft. Brick or no brick – Comma Soft is now in a better position than ever and has everything it needs to actively shape its future.

How do you see your new role on the Supervisory Board?

Even after several weeks in my new job, I can say with conviction: my role is changing, but my special connection to Comma Soft remains. I will always remain a family entrepreneur. Comma Soft is and will remain my life’s work and my purpose in life.

As spokesperson for the entrepreneurial family, I will continue to advise and inspire Benjamin Schulte and the management and support them with my knowledge and experience.

The core of my new role is that I am now working even more on the company than before, rather than in it. By making room for the next generation, I also want to create space for new ideas, new knowledge and new ways of thinking. At the same time, I am also creating space for myself, as I have already experienced positively over the past weeks. For me, this is not a farewell, but the beginning of a new creative phase.

So when I turn 70 in a few months’ time, I won’t be retiring for a long time yet. My energy reserves are full, my curiosity remains high and, as I mentioned earlier, I will remain active as a member of the Supervisory Board for the benefit of Comma Soft. And I’m already doing more of what I’ve been doing in recent years anyway: Maintaining my existing relationships in the business world and making new contacts to support our customer acquisition.

Comma Soft celebrated its 35th anniversary last fall. What was it like back then, in 1989? How did you come up with the idea of founding Comma Soft?

Well, it was a time when you first had to find a phone booth if you wanted to call someone on the move. Not only did you have to have the right change, but you also had to be very lucky that it was intact or free. The “World Wide Web” did not yet exist. And it was the time when companies began to realize that they were facing a huge change that would turn many things upside down and backwards. For most people, “computer workstation” was still a foreign concept and client-server architecture was something whose advantages we first had to convince the companies and authorities as our customers.

As for me, I founded Comma Soft as a research assistant and PhD student in physics. I actually had a certain amount of expertise in this emerging technology from my early work with high-performance computers at the Institute of Physics at the University of Bonn. And when I accompanied the representatives of a large federal authority on a visit to CeBIT and provided them with technical advice, I recognized the potential of electronic data processing, i.e. IT, for companies. Even then, I could see that it would soon develop into a highly dynamic information technology. At our physics institute, I found highly motivated colleagues who had also tasted blood and were curious about the future. My wife Sirkka joined me in the marketing department – nothing stood in the way of our joint foundation in my old apartment in Dechenstraße in Bonn. And when we moved into our own offices soon afterwards, we knew we were on the right track. The rest is history.

Was there something like an ideal guiding star, something like a vision for the young Comma Soft?

Yes, there was. This is important because what we are today and what defines us as Comma Soft certainly has something to do with what we were like when we were founded.

From the very beginning, we have always broken new ground and opened it up for our customers. In doing so, we consistently followed our vision: to bring the right information to the right place at the right time and make it available at the touch of a button. As I said earlier: to think in terms of IT and not in terms of EDP – that was our guiding star, not only in the 1990s, but also over the last 35 years. Bill Gates summed it up in just four words at the Comdex trade fair in early 1990: “Information at your fingertips”. The fact is: we didn’t know back then where the road would lead us. We were all the more convinced that this was the future and that we were at the beginning of a major development.

How would you describe Comma Soft’s role in the development of IT in Germany? Or is it presumptuous to ask this?

Not at all. Thanks to our special mix of curiosity, creativity and technical excellence, we were already early birds in many areas back then. I’ll simply mention the introduction of MS client-server technology for the first major customers in Germany, our involvement in the development of the Systems Management Server here and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, the in-memory technology that we developed and Infonea®, the dynamically networked knowledge management tool, when the term “knowledge management” was just emerging. These and other examples from our company history show that, from the very beginning, we breathed our motto “Push the Limits” with every pore of our existence and lived it in every thought and idea we had.

What makes Comma Soft special in your eyes – apart from the employees, the expertise and the customers? Is there a meta-level or a deeper layer? 

Indeed there is. We often talk about our “Comma DNA” – a solid core of values such as openness, trust, transparency and very high quality standards. Our people-oriented corporate culture not only shapes the way we work together, but also how we understand our customers and solve their challenges. In my view, mutual understanding and appreciation are crucial here: we understand and appreciate each other internally, our customers appreciate us for what we do for them and how we do it – and we understand their needs, sometimes even a little more than they understand them themselves. This connection is the key to solutions that we not only develop, but also implement quickly – with immediate added value for our customers.

What does Comma Soft mean to you as a family business? 

It’s actually quite simple: as a family business, we were and are only committed to ourselves – and our customers. This independence enables us to think in the long term and with an eye to the future instead of focusing on short-term profit targets.

As a family business, we bear responsibility – not only for our employees, but also for the sustainable support of our customers and the development of competition-critical solutions. Furthermore, as a family business, we guarantee consistency and continuity, both for our employees and for our customers. In a world as volatile and unstable as today, this is a value that benefits not only our employees, but also our customers.

What role does the business family play in this?

An increasingly important one, because we are also evolving as a business family. With my son Kolja Dreger and myself on the Supervisory Board, we as a business family are living this responsibility even more consciously. We see this as an even greater obligation to play an even more active role in shaping the future of Comma Soft.

Our family remains permanently linked to the company and its development and stands for continuity and reliability. We have laid this down in a carefully drafted family constitution. It also sets out our self-image as an entrepreneurial family, that we see ourselves essentially as trustees of Comma Soft. Our focus is not on self-interest and the interests of the owners, but solely on the future of Comma Soft and on sustainable business practices.

A look into the future: what do you wish for Comma Soft?

Comma Soft has everything it needs to be successful in the coming decades: strong leadership, an outstanding team and a clear vision to be at the forefront of technological development in order to secure competitive advantages for our customers through innovative solutions and excellent consulting quality. My wish is that we continue to see boundaries as opportunities, to keep pushing them with courage and new thinking and thus to develop real innovative strength for our customers. I am proud to have initiated this long, exciting journey and proud to remain part of it – as a companion, driving force and passionate advocate of our life’s work.

Thank you for the in-depth interview and for the energy and passion you have invested in the company over the past few years!