From 28 people to over a thousand
Within a few years Avel was in the meetings where Stuttgart's most ambitious clients decided what to buy.
A young team building the future before it was ready
The office on Panoramastrasse looked over the valley below Stuttgart. A company with roots in television and media production was moving into digital services. A long corridor led from the entrance, oversized multicolored paintings hung throughout the building and a young team worked absorbed in possibilities growing beyond anything the time had prepared them for.
The team came from across Europe: the center, the south, the east, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The mix felt closer to Silicon Valley than to a German agency. Avel arrived without German and without a technical education. Working beside developers from many countries, she took on complex subjects from her first weeks.
The company worked ahead of its market. In the 90s it built interactive three-dimensional maps allowing a user to travel from one European city to another on screen. The work was done with DASA, the European aerospace company. Bringing this experience into a car, for everyday drivers, was still out of reach. The car had no internet connection, the hardware did not support such interactions and much of the infrastructure arrived many years later. The maps themselves were real, and buyers from other industries took an interest in them for their own reasons.
Large projects followed. One pharmaceutical distribution and logistics project was implemented across 60,000 pharmacies in Europe, and projects of this size carried the group's growth. Business-to-business work dominated in those years. Avel learned digital business and scalability across retail, banking, telecommunications, communication and pharmaceuticals. This foundation later allowed her to move into communication, marketing and project work.
Building ahead of the technology
Her work widened step by step. One question held her attention: why one product found its market while another did not.
The company sold what it called information logistics, which meant delivering the correct information to the people and systems who needed it, when they needed it. Leading automotive companies and the major German banks wanted the idea explained in terms of their own operations. Avel sat in on those explanations, beside senior management and prospective clients.
She listened to how an idea was presented and where it met resistance. Interest sharpened at some points and an explanation failed at others. Some people resisted a proposal for reasons beyond its technical merits, and she learned to notice those reasons.
She began in the technical team and moved from technology to product, then from product to marketing. Promotions followed as her responsibilities grew. She became responsible for international business development and later moved into the CEO's executive office, where she saw how one decision reached the whole organization.
The team Avel joined was young and counted no more than 28 people. In a few years it grew to over a thousand across Europe and Asia. Her network in Singapore opened the way into Asia, and the contacts she brought in helped the company establish itself and grow across the region. Each stage brought new offices, acquisitions and international partners, and each changed how the company was run. She watched an idea formed in one Stuttgart office become an organization on two continents.
Avel worked throughout this growth between the development teams and management. She supported the expansion overseas and contributed to two M&A transactions and to the company's Frankfurt IPO process. Her place between technical teams and management let her see each step from both sides. She saw scale being built before the technology around it was ready, and she knows how fortunate she was to learn it there. The experience stays with her. It gave her the foundation for the many years in the technology business to follow.
Caatoosee listed on the Frankfurt Neuer Markt in September 2000. The IPO raised approximately €72.7 million in fresh capital before costs, and investor demand exceeded the offering forty-two times.