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 a software company called Mindjet came to be. On the contrary, the company’s co-founders, Michael and Bettina Jetter, never intended to start their own company. In Germany, where the Jetters 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 the Jetters off of that path for good.

In the winter of 1989, Michael Jetter had just begun his first job as a computer programmer when he was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. Michael, Bettina, and a close circle of friends spent the next year and a half struggling to save his life—and won. Or so it seemed. Three years later, a relapse sealed him inside the isolation wing of a cancer ward with little chance of survival. An ambitious young man facing his own mortality, Michael resolved to leave his final mark on the world—a new breed of software that would turn ideas into images and images into action.

The Jetter’s software laid the groundstone for a multimillion-dollar, award-winning company called Mindjet. More important, the battle against cancer transformed their lives, helping them understand the true meaning of success.