Back to the roots: Kyte expands its engineering and product team in Munich, Germany

Nikolaus Volk Nov 27, 2020

We are super excited to officially announce the opening of our new (currently virtual) Engineering & Product Office in the beautiful capital of Bavaria. Here, we’d like to take a few moments to reflect and shine some light on the reasoning and what that means for the entire Kyte team.

Why we chose Munich

First of all, there are a few very obvious reasons:

• We are a true technology company and there is simply amazing technology talent in Munich given the presence of two elite universities (Technische Universität and Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität) with world-class computer science and engineering programs at both of them. In addition, Munich has become a true European tech hub and more and more tech companies have discovered Munich as their European office location.

• There is great and diverse entrepreneurial talent in Munich, in particular in the high tech sector (greetings to our dear friends at Luminovo, Celonis, Fernride, Personio, Demodesk, ParkDepot, …). Incubators and university-affiliated programs such as Xpreneurs, the LMU Entrepreneurship Center, the CDTM and Manage&More/UnternehmerTUM have already been proven as excellent sources for talent here at Kyte. If you are affiliated with one of these programs, we will almost certainly fast track your application and take a closer look.

• Munich is the heart of the German automotive industry. BMW is headquartered here, AUDI is just around the corner, and countless automotive suppliers are also around. The transportation infrastructure in Munich is one of the best systems in the world, and we like to be part of an ecosystem and environment that shapes the future of transportation.

Beyond that, there are certain personal touch points that made the decision ultimately very easy for us:

• Francesco and I met in our engineering studies at the Technische Universität München, we had our first so-called “company jam sessions” on mountain bike and climbing trips in the Bavarian Alps. We also received initial angel funding from business angels from Munich.

• In addition, California and Bavaria are naturally close neighbords in a lot of dimensions - mountains, climbing, surfing the Eisbach River Wave, … there are direct daily flights between San Francisco and Munich (not during Covid19), which will make the connection between the two offices even easier.

Ultimately, we believe Kyte can combine the strength of Silicon Valley’s venture capital, proximity to software technology decision makers and partners with the excellence and talent access of the Munich engineering ecosystem.

How we are starting

For now we are operating 100% virtually in Munich given the Covid19 situation, but very soon we will be opening a physical location; we are already looking out for spots! I couldn’t be more excited to already have 3 strong engineering/product folks on the ground in Munich: Rafael, Pedro and G. (not announced yet). They are already rocking the show and are moving mountains.

Kyte markets and offices.

What the perks are for team members in our Munich office

We offer all of our Munich based engineers and product folks the opportunity to spend around 2 weeks a year in our San Francisco office and sponsor travel and accommodation. The goal here is to strengthen the Kyte culture, facilitate jam sessions and workshops, and make sure we work towards even better alignment across teams.

We invite all engineers in/around Munich to take a look at our openings, we are very excited to become a fundamental part of the growing and thriving Munich tech ecosystem. Check out our positions on our Kyte Job Board.

Kyte is coming home - to some degree. We are already looking for our first official Oktoberfest offsites (in a post-Covid world).

Cheers and Prost!

Nikolaus Volk is a co-founder of Kyte.