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Nine years of running other people's e-commerce projects as an agency, then a from-scratch rewrite nobody thought was needed — and a partner channel that took four years to work and now sources 35–40% of every new deal
80% growth in 2022, historically 80–110% a year, still over 50% above the 100M mark · about 600 employees · CAC payback about 13 months against an industry benchmark of about 17 · burn roughly one third of newly added ARR
"The bad news is it takes 10 years to build a successful enterprise business. The good news is it's only 10 years." He was told this early, dismissed it, and then lived exactly that timeline — nine years of agency work before the product even started.
Fewer bars = easier, cheaper, or faster for an AI-assisted solo builder. Editorial judgments based on the case details.
In 2001, studying in Munich, Dirk Hörig ended up in a shared office with a then-tiny company called Hybris, by pure accident — a friend he played volleyball with, Dennis Werner, wanted to build something on the side. They deliberately chose a mixed agency-and-product business rather than inventing a startup idea, on the logic that they should gather experience first. Six months later they were building the first large German online shops for Henkel, Puma and Edeka, mostly on Hybris software, and simultaneously building extensions, modules and integrations for Hybris itself — effectively an outsourced product team for the platform vendor. They also built and operated Red Bull's entire e-commerce business, including large parts of its online marketing, around the time Sebastian Vettel started in Formula 1. He describes the whole period as a hobby to pay the rent while studying, which turned into having to be in the office at 8am instead of on the training pitch at 7. By 2010 they had realised over 100 commerce projects and had helped build the underlying software. That is the asset. In 2006 they founded the company and started trying to retrofit cloud thinking onto existing software; in 2010 they concluded they were pushing a heavy ball uphill and decided to rewrite e-commerce software from the ground up. They built for two years, launched properly in 2013, and now do over 100 million in software revenue with about 600 people. Our read: nine years of paid market immersion is the unglamorous input that everyone skips, and he names it explicitly as the primary success factor.
commercetools did not start with an empty address book. Between 2001 and 2010 the same team ran the agency: over 100 commerce projects for companies including Henkel, Puma and Edeka, plus Red Bull's entire e-commerce business, which they built and operated, and extension and module work on Hybris itself.
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Data credibility: Founder interview in German on the Unicorn Bakery podcast, recorded at the commercetools office. Every figure is founder-stated in conversation; no filings, dashboards or third-party data are shown, though he notes their metrics are benchmarked internally against shareholder-supplied data on 500-600 series B and later companies. Founder-stated and unaudited: over 100 million in software revenue, 80% growth in 2022, a historical growth band of 80–110% a year, still over 50% growth above the 100M mark, about 600 employees, over 2,500 certified developers at partners, 35–40% of new business initially partner-sourced, a channel-to-sales headcount ratio of roughly 1:7 to 1:8, CAC payback of about 13 months against an industry benchmark of about 17, burn at roughly one third of newly added ARR (about half last year), cash-flow-positive quarters this year, 7–9 month sales cycles, 250–300 vendors in the category, roughly 1.8 billion held by SAP, Salesforce and Oracle in the attacked segment, over 100 client projects delivered before 2010, a $1.5-style small-investor cap table cleaned up in 2013, and one acquisition about eighteen months before the interview. ⚠️ Currency is never stated. The transcript says only "more than 100 million"; the episode title says "100M Software Umsatz" and the company is German, so euros is the likely reading — but the transcript does not say so and we have not converted anything. Treat all monetary figures as currency-unspecified. ⚠️ Auto-caption garbling is heavy in this transcript: the company is rendered "Commerce Tools", "kümmerstuhls", "Pommes Tools" and "komme aus Tools"; the founder's name is garbled to "der König" and is taken from the episode title as Dirk Hörig; "Hybris" appears correctly but "die mahnverkehr" and "die mahnt" appear to be Demandware; "celones" is Celonis; "Tina Ex" with "André Christ" is LeanIX; and figures spoken as "50 Mio eher" / "Meera" are ARR. Verify every proper name before publication. The interview is dated — it discusses 2022 as the last full year and references recession and war in Europe — so treat it as a snapshot from roughly 2023, not a current statement. No churn, ARPU, per-customer revenue, gross margin or customer-count figures appear anywhere.
The product's first revenue came out of an existing business rather than from a standing start.
The flywheel is the partner channel, which Hörig names as the primary network effect in enterprise software. Systems integrators have done implementation work since the 1970s, they hold long relationships with the same buyers, and they are often the first people asked when a company starts evaluating a replacement.
There were two stretches without feedback here. The first ran from 2010 to 2013: they decided to rewrite commerce software from scratch and built for two years before launching properly, while everyone in their network told them the market was already solved — 250 vendors, the largest with market caps in the billions.
The rest of this breakdown — 10 more sections — is in the Unicorn Club, with every section of all 1,335 ideas: first customers, first dollar, the flywheel, and the silent stretch.
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