freiheit.com invests in Portugal
and opens an office in Lisbon
The founder and managing director of freiheit.com, Claudia Dietze, explained to BusinessIT that the company’s name means ‘freedom’ in German and is «related to open-source software which started spreading when the company was founded». The idea «was to be one of the best in the world, not the biggest».
LISBON WAS A NATURAL CHOICE
Claudia revealed how they proceeded. Before leaving Germany, they investigated which places had the best universities and selected three cities: Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon: «During four weeks, we travelled, we worked in coworking spaces, we had meetings with the founders of other companies and withthe chambers of commerce». The choice was «easy» because it became obvious that Barcelona «was not the right location since most people there are foreigners». With view to Madrid, the situation was different. However, the city was «not open enough for international business». Lisbon «was a pleasant surprise. Everybody was enthusiastic about our idea of opening an office here and wanted to help us with the first steps». In addition to this, two of the main clients had teams or development centres in Lisbon: Daimler (through Mercedes) and Volkswagen. Until the end of the year, the company will «hire fifty new professionals». However, it is essential for freitheit.com to find people with «the right skills and the right attitude», in other words «they have to be curious and not afraid of being pioneers», emphasised the executive. From Germany, freiheit.com has brought four engineers because the objective was not to open a subsidiary «but to open an office at eye level with Hamburg, with the same culture and with the best engineers».