“We create a perfect copy of reality”

Today’s guest could easily have taken over his parents’ bakery in Forstern, Bavaria, which the family had owned for over 100 years. He could have just become a regular consultant at McKinsey. Or a good project manager for the Bavarian broadcasting company – because the three Celonis founders, including Bastian Nominacher, got their eureka moment through a project with public broadcasters.
Celonis is the only German Dekacorn – a start-up that is valued by investors at over 10 billion dollars. It’s now 13 billion. The Munich company is a specialist in what is known as process mining. One of the big tech trends is hidden behind the buzzword: With process mining, all of a company’s data is examined and made visible and understandable.
A kind of “X-ray machine for company data”, as the founders once put it. Or “a Google Maps for company processes”. Yes, and now Celonis calls itself the world market leader in the field of execution management, has over 3000 employees and over 5000 projects or “implementations”, as the “Celonauts” call it.
Nominacher tells me if Celonis could become the new SAP, how he explains his job at folk festivals and why a Japanese professor urgently needed his help.