Sometimes companies spring to life fully formed, engineered down to the rug color by savvy entrepreneurs intent on capturing an untapped market. This is not how our software company Mindjet came to be. On the contrary, when we (Mike and Bettina) founded Mindjet, we never really intended to start a company. In Germany, where we were born, raised, and married, the preferred route to success was to get a good job in a stable company and work your way up the ladder. Then unexpected events put us off of that path for good.
In the winter of 1989, I had just begun my first job as a computer programmer when I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. We and a close circle of friends spent the next year and a half struggling to save my life and won. Or so it seemed. Three years later, a relapse sealed me inside the isolation wing of a cancer ward with little chance of survival. As an ambitious young man facing my own mortality, I resolved to leave my final mark on the world a new breed of software that would turn ideas into images and images into action.
Our initial software laid the ground stone for a multimillion-dollar, award-winning company called Mindjet. More important, the battle against cancer transformed our lives, helping us understand the true meaning of success.
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