Orgo S

Max Bowermicer came to the HR software problem through direct experience. After studies at King's College London and early scaling experience at a Rocket Internet company that went public, he worked as a consultant focused on procurement and restructuring. His big breakthrough came when he moved to help scale a tech organization from 15 to 160 employees over three years, supporting international expansion. During that experience, the pain was obvious: there was no one-stop tool to digitize HR and manage the complexity of scaling organizations. Max saw the gap in the market and decided to build Orgo S.

Launching in February 2017, Max and his co-founding team—which included four founders (two technical CTOs, CEO David, and Max on the commercial side)—built an MVP with a modular architecture. The product was designed to handle recruitment, onboarding, offboarding, holiday processes, and general HR workflows. They priced it at five euros per employee per month, keeping it simple and flexible enough for startups to pick and choose which modules they needed. The target customer was clear: high-growth startups with 30-120 employees that were scaling rapidly and couldn't rely on spreadsheets anymore.

They stayed in stealth until April 2018, when they launched with their first customers. Max and the co-founders tapped their extensive personal networks to identify ideal early customers—startups they knew that matched their ideal customer profile. "We had an MVP that was very unique. So you need to look at, okay, what do I have as an MVP and what type of customers or potential customers are in my network." This network-first approach meant the first 10 customers came through trust and friendship, with clear expectations set on both sides and zero churn from day one.

Once they moved beyond their immediate network, they tested AdWords but found their real growth engine in affiliate partnerships. They created deals with comparator sites, paying 15% of annual contract value (ACV) on a monthly basis. With customers paying around $300/month ($3,600 annually), that meant roughly $450-500 per affiliate-sourced customer. The model worked beautifully: even after paying the affiliate commission upfront, they achieved a 2-3 month payback period—genuinely healthy unit economics. To fund the growth, they raised just under $1 million total: approximately $500k in equity in the first round and another $500k in convertible debt. Max chose debt for the second round to avoid the bureaucratic hurdles of another priced equity round while letting angels and syndicates come aboard without guessing at valuation.

By the time of this interview (roughly 5-6 months after launch), Orgo S had grown to 25 B2B customers comprising 700-800 total users, generating approximately $7,500/month in recurring revenue. Their team had scaled to 12 people spread across Berlin and Madrid. The average customer size was around 60-70 employees, putting the average customer at roughly $300-350/month. With zero churn, no downgrades, and affiliate CAC recovering in 2-3 months, Max had found product-market fit in the high-growth startup segment and was scaling efficiently.