Start-ups are considered fast, flexible and creative; they thrive on small teams, flat hierarchies and quick decision-making processes. Over the coming weeks, we are delighted to present a series of short interviews with some of these industry powerhouses, all of whom were showcased in the 2024 Start-up Zone.

Today we start with endereco, a German company based near Würzburg, and founded in 2014. Managing Director Robert Rieser and his six employees are all about data. In the public transport sector, in particular, this provides crucial information on customer movements, passenger behaviour and capacity planning, all of which can be used to schedule routes and timetables in advance. But in order to be reliable, that data must be properly maintained and protected. That’s why endereco develops Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products to check and validate customer data. We spoke to Robert Rieser and asked him about current industry topics, and the challenges faced by today’s start-ups.

It's great that the Deutschlandticket or ticket subscriptions from local transport associations can be purchased online, but unfortunately mistakes can happen. Customers often enter their address information incorrectly, which then leads to massive and costly reworking by the companies concerned. This is where our service for automatic and intelligent address validation offers a major step towards digitalisation. Furthermore, we believe that far from putting jobs at risk, our system will allow employees to focus on more important and more fulfilling activities, rather than manual address data validation and correction. The issue of fraud is also one which needs to need to be addressed, especially with the Deutschlandticket. Here, our bank data validation can help prevent attempted fraudulent activity and also acts as a deterrent thanks to an in-built security and verification mechanism.

What are your experiences as a start-up with regard to external factors: Are there hurdles that make life difficult for you as a young company or, conversely, boosters that help you move forward?

As a SaaS company, we operate in a very dynamic environment and are fortunate to be growing quite quickly but organically, too, thanks to the quality of our services and growing demand for low-effort data verification. As a result, we’ve been able to hire three new employees since last year. However, we also realise how difficult it is to find good employees. But thanks to a fully remote working model (all employees work from home), a great work-life balance and a great team, we definitely can offer advantages over other employers.