Interview on the occasion of Syngenity's third anniversary

Syngenity GmbH was founded as a start-up at the end of 2019 and has developed into an established company in the fields of TISAX® consulting, information security and cloud security (C5) over the past three years. We wanted to know from the two founders Bastian Härzer and Sven Bartelsen, what makes the success of your company and why networking is so important, especially for start-ups.

Dear Mr. Härzer, dear Mr. Bartelsen, what was your business idea and where do you stand today?

Bastian Härzer: The topic of "cybersecurity" will affect us all more and more in the future.  Even when we founded our company three years ago, we had clear ideas about how we wanted to act as a solution provider and saw our opportunities in it. But putting an idea like this into practice is a completely different step that we took together, because we both complement each other very well in our thinking and actions. Each of us brings something to the table that the other doesn't have in this form - so we complement each other ideally.

Sven Bartelsen: Our focus is information security with emphasis on TISAX®(a registered trademark of ENX), which is becoming increasingly important for OEMs in the automotive industry and is increasingly required by suppliers. Having worked in automotive IT for many years, we understand the environment and can therefore offer practical solutions. This approach is very well received by our customers, which can be seen very clearly in our company development: We are growing steadily, also internationally, and are profitable in the process. With our consultants, who work in parallel as TISAX® auditors and TISAX® trainers, among others, we cover the topic 100 percent.

In retrospect, what challenges have you faced since your founding until today? What tips would you give others along the way?

Sven Bartelsen: Our company was founded shortly before Corona. Looking back, Corona and the associated "New Work" has not hurt us at all. Rather, it has shown how dependent we are on functioning and secure (!) IT. And this awareness has led many companies to realize that something needs to be done about IT security.

Bastian Härzer: We have been growing exponentially practically since our founding. Fortunately, almost everything has also gone off without any serious errors so far. So we can only advise every start-up or founder to make decisions and accept mistakes. The right attitude towards errors, i.e. an internal error culture, is conducive to this.

You have managed to found a company and position this successfully on the market. Looking to the future, what are your next steps?

Bastian Härzer: Our long-term goal is definitely to grow sustainably and establish ourselves permanently in the market. We also want to further expand our social commitment, which we started in 2022, because in the current political and ecological situation, we consider it indispensable as entrepreneurs to also think about this and engage in a meaningful way. For example, we have made our offices available as accommodation for guests from Ukraine for 5 months. Furthermore, we participated in a tree planting campaign and trained an employee to become a CSR manager. We would like to use this knowledge to develop and apply concrete CSR measures. Currently, we have received a certificate from the Familienpakt Bayern for family-friendly companies. As such, we offer, among other things, flexible temporary employment models and very good social benefits, in order to be able to attract women in particular to the topic of cybersecurity. The proportion of female employees at our company is currently just over 50%.

What role do networks play in the success of a company and what prompted you to become a partner in the Automotive cluster?

Bastian Härzer: The right contacts are an absolute must-have, especially in today's business world, in order to be successful in the market in the long term. Corona has shown that although many things can now be done digitally, they still do not replace personal contact and exchange. We made a conscious decision to become a partner in the Automotive Cluster because we recognized the benefits that the network offers: First and foremost, access to companies, institutes and services related to innovations in the field of mobility. With the support of the cluster, we were able to develop the event format " TISAX® - Prototype Protection Special ", which is taking place for the second time this year.

Thank you very much for the interesting conversation.