All beginnings are small: The smartPerform founders tell their story

All beginnings are small – and often more exciting than you think.

In our first anniversary interview, smartPerform founders Werner König and Jens Gerken look back on the early days: Where did the idea come from? What hurdles were there? And what drove them to keep going anyway?

One thing quickly becomes clear: “We wanted to revolutionize the world” – and it was precisely this vision that laid the foundation for what would later become smartPerform.

Werner König

Co-founder of smartPerform. Today Professor for Interaction Design and Usability at Worms University of Applied Sciences.

How did the idea for smartPerform come about?

Werner König: Well, there is the history before smartPerform, practically. We were both at the University of Konstanz and studied there, together with others, and did a seminar paper there.

Jens Gerken: But we also developed an idea for a zoomable user interface. A new zoomable operating system, if you like, that you could use to access your data on the – at that time PC, there were no smartphones yet. In such a way that you can always find everything and know where it is, because you can simply zoom in and then the right application opens directly. That was the basic idea.

Werner König: Well, the concept was developed 20 years ago. The basic idea was much bigger. We wanted to revolutionize the world – as you do when you’re that young. But we actually knew that these were of course initial research ideas and more on a conceptual level. But to illustrate this, we made visual prototypes relatively quickly. And at some point, there was also the change where I came to ICT as a bit of an innovation driver, advising agencies and informing customers about new technological possibilities. It wasn’t just hardware, but also software. And there were two customers who wanted to present something completely different at upcoming trade fairs. They wanted to be innovative and, above all, respond individually to their customers. And that can be done very differently interactively. So the question for smartPerform was relatively quick: How can I respond to my customer and impress and inform them – in a way that suits them and not in a storyline that I may have developed five hours beforehand without knowing what my customer actually needs?

What remains is the vision.

Even if the big idea of “revolutionizing the world” initially “only” resulted in the first prototypes – it is precisely this courage to rethink that makes smartPerform what it is today.

The next part of our anniversary interview is all about thrills – everyone who starts a business knows them:
From spontaneous assignments in the USA to live appearances on television to pilot customers who placed their trust in us from the very beginning. These projects have shaped and challenged us over the last 15 years – and allowed us to grow.