Dusseldorf In 1998, entrepreneur Ralph Dommermuth brought one of the first German Internet companies, 1&1, to the stock exchange. In the podcast Handelsblatt Disrupt with editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes, he reports on how the company survived the dot-com bubble, why many steps in his career were a coincidence and how Dommermuth now wants to set up a fourth German cell phone network. It is “not the big vision or the big strategic approach” that is behind his successes, he says – rather “they are topics that I think will work in the long run”.
The business model of 1&1, today a subsidiary of United Internet, worked. When it was founded in 1988, the group was still a software distributor. In the years that followed, Dommermuth developed it into one of the largest communications and digital companies in the republic. The company now also sells mobile phone contracts for which it uses the Telefónica (O2) and Vodafone networks.
However, Dommermuth does not see himself as a “free rider”, as Telekom boss Tim Höttges once described him. “A free rider is someone who rides without a ticket,” he says. “Ultimately, we are tenants.” Höttges can only describe his customers as such because they rely on Telekom for delivery. “If that were a normal supplier relationship, then you wouldn’t talk about your best customers like that,” he says.
Matthes and Dommermuth also talk about the origin of the entrepreneur’s career. In the 1980s, Dommermuth began an apprenticeship at Deutsche Bank in Westerwald, but never wanted to work there. Instead, contrary to grandmother’s advice, he worked as a freelancer in the neighbor’s computer shop. At 20 he bought his first Porsche and founded his first company. Today Dommermuth is a multi-billionaire.
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More: The previous episode of Handelsblatt Disrupt can be found here.