Gründen.nrw is North Rhine-Westphalia's official entrepreneurship platform — funded by the NRW Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy (MWIKE) and built around founder profiles, financing pointers, consulting referrals and competitions. It also runs a podcast.
In Folge 7, both ThreeB IT founders sat down with host Fabio Greßies. The episode is on gruenden.nrw (German + English landing) and on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Deezer.
The episode
- Title: "Wir gehen jeden Tag mit einem Lächeln ins Büro und so abends auch wieder nach Hause"
- Host: Fabio Greßies
- Guests: Thimo Buchheister (CEO / founder) and Thorsten Brügge (COO / co-founder)
- Duration: 16:01
What we talked about
A non-trivial fraction of the episode is about culture, not technology — which is the right way around for a podcast aimed at would-be founders. Topics covered:
- Removing paper from business processes — the founding mission of ThreeB IT, anchored in the logistics customers we started with
- Virtual classrooms and school digitalisation during COVID-19 — what working with educators during the pandemic looked like from the vendor side
- Open-source collaboration with US tech companies — early visibility into how the .NET ecosystem actually moves
- International tech conferences and trends — including the TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2019 experience the company had a year earlier
- Company culture and work-life balance — the anchoring quote, from Thorsten, that became the episode title
About Gründen.nrw
The platform is the official MWIKE-funded entrepreneurship resource for the largest German federal state by GDP. The editorial filter for the podcast skews toward founders with:
- A clear thesis
- Regional anchoring in NRW
- Demonstrated traction past the idea-stage
Other episodes in the same series have profiled, for example, Ch.Batsch Verfahrenstechnik (solvent recycling), circuly (subscription commerce for physical products), and Novihum (soil restoration). ThreeB IT fits as a Münsterland-based software house with a clear paperless-office and process-automation thesis, surfacing during the COVID period when the topic was unavoidable.
Why this kind of coverage matters
For a Mittelstand software vendor headquartered far from any major German tech hub, the Gründen.nrw podcast is the closest thing to a regional credibility signal recognised by the regional ecosystem we recruit and sell into. It's the same logic as the WESt Gründungsgeschichten profile — the regional infrastructure recognises the regional company, which is the basis on which the company eventually gets recognised more broadly.
Listen
Direct MP3: MWIDE_threeB_IT.mp3 — 16 minutes, in German.
Or via the podcast app of your choice (Spotify / Apple / Amazon / Deezer) by searching for Gründen.nrw or #NeueGründerzeit Nordrhein-Westfalen.