20 Years of IntraFind
The Stops on the Way from Start-up to Established Software Manufacturer
October 20, 2000: IntraFind Gets Its Start
IntraFind was founded by Franz Kögl and Bernhard Messer. The office at the time was located on the Munich Software Campus, which was run by the Software Offensive Bavaria, an initiative of the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs offering young companies not just physical office space but also coaching from experienced high-tech managers. Forming sound software companies with long-term growth prospects from creative ideas was typical for the software campus at the time. In any case, IntraFind is a successful example of that after 20 years!
2012: More Space for Innovative Ideas
Over time, the two-man team consisting of Franz Kögl and Bernhard Messer grew into a larger company. Over many periods of growth, first with a small office of our own, then an additional space outside of Munich, in 2012 it was high time for a larger office that would provide the IntraFind team with enough space to develop new ideas.
After eight years and more than 60 employees, the office on Landsberger Strasse in Munich is now also slowly reaching the limits of its capacity. But the transformation to a digital workplace is still allowing IntraFind colleagues to work with dedication and commitment on the next generation of IntraFind products – in March 2020, the company successfully switched to a work-from-home model.
IntraFind in Numbers
2014: Faster, Better, Further – Switch from Lucene to Elasticsearch
Seven years ago, the time had come – we made the switch from our first indexing kernel, Lucene, to the more scalable Elasticsearch. But the basic principle remained the same – we are building a complete product for enterprise search around the Lucene/Elasticsearch engine, with everything that goes with it. An enterprise-ready solution with numerous connectors to data sources. And like it has from the beginning, it continues to feature our internally developed, high-quality linguistics and ever-increasing AI algorithms, security concepts, and complete user interfaces.
With it, we provide a perfect insight engine for companies that they can used not just to find information, but also to identify connections and make the data usable.
2017: Go West – Founding of IntraFind Inc.
After convincing an increasing number of major European customers of the value of our solution and our expertise, the company went international in 2017, when we founded the US subsidiary IntraFind Inc. with headquarters in New York. Since then, we have been acquiring and servicing North American customers from this location.
The Changing Face of the IntraFind Logo
2019: First Listing in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines
Thanks to the use of innovative technologies and much more, IntraFind has been honored to be the only German company listed in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines since 2019.
“We are naturally very proud that Gartner added us to the Magic Quadrant,” says Franz Kögl, Board Director of IntraFind Software AG. “We see this honor as acknowledgment of the high quality of our products and the innovative power of our expert team. But it is also an incentive to keep developing excellent solutions that support companies in their decision-making processes.”
2020: The Future Securely in Sight
“Much has changed in 20 years. To stay successful and continue growing, we have to keep developing our products and evolving as a company. We have to adapt and scale both organizational structures and processes. We are definitely not a start-up anymore, but rather an established product manufacturer with a customer base, some of whom have been using our solutions for more than 15 years,” explains Franz Kögl.
“Even though we’ve grown from a one-man developer outfit at the start to an international team of developers, a passion for new ideas and concepts is still the engine that drives us to develop good, sustainable products, just as before,” adds Bernhard Messer.
Impressions from the Last 20 Years
