2014
Berlin calling TLTR: Moved to Berlin, opened office, launched Airfy for SMB/guest WiFi. Built cloud-based WiFi with central controller for 2,000+ SMB customers. Designed plug-and-play, provider-agnostic, remote-managed systems. Learned to build stable tech for chaotic environments. Long-Version In 2014, at 28, we packed up from the quiet hills of Allgäu in Bavaria and headed to Berlin’s electric pulse. New city, new office, new mission. We launched Airfy, a sub-brand aimed at small and medium businesses (SMBs) and guest WiFi networks. After years of powering military and industrial systems - rugged, secure, unyielding - it was time to pivot. Cloud-based WiFi with central controllers was the new frontier. A chance to bring our grit to a broader stage. As always, we built it from the ground up. I hired a tight-knit team, led the system architecture, and we crafted a network controller that managed over 2,000 paying SMB customers from a single platform. No middlemen, no shortcuts. Just us, coding and testing until it was bulletproof. The goal was ambitious: plug-and-play WiFi that worked out of the box. No IT staff needed. No complex setup. Provider-agnostic, fully remote-managed. It had to be seamless, no matter the environment -cafes, hotels, or small offices with zero tech expertise. Designing for messy, real-world chaos was the challenge. We engineered for failure, built systems that thrived in unpredictable conditions, and still delivered stability. Every access point, every connection, every update had to be effortless. It pushed us to rethink everything. From hardware to software, we obsessed over simplicity without sacrificing power. That year was a turning point. Airfy wasn’t just a product. It was a leap into a new WiFi world, one we’d shape over the years to come. Berlin’s energy fueled us. The city’s raw, creative chaos matched the spark I’d felt since my punk days, now channeled into cleaner lines of code and bigger dreams. 2014 felt like a fresh start. Airfy marked a shift, proof that we could scale ideas, not just operations.
