In 2005 memoQ was invited by an internationally well-known translation company to a meeting. We were complete newbies to the industry, young and dynamic with a lot of aspiration but little self-esteem. Nobody knew our name, even the translation company was only an acquaintance from our previous job. They introduced us to a company we had heard a lot about: PASS Engineering GmbH, makers of PASSOLO (yes, all caps!).
Two people came into the room, a shorter man who turned out to be their managing director and a tall, ever-smiling lady who was business development manager. They were amazingly friendly, and yes, they were famous! We were very pleased to meet them.
After the meeting we stayed in touch, and in less than a year we signed a contract to develop portions of Passolo, an HTML filter and a tool to visually rearrange localized UI elements. Did you ever check the Passolo About box? If you have a copy, do so. When we signed that contract, I had no clue that our code would ever make it into our main competitor's software suite...
Now it is 2013, and another contract was signed for a change between
the same parties, however, this time it is an employment contract. We are very happy to have Florian on board as senior developer - I am positive that he will contribute a lot to memoQ's success!
It is a rare event in any company to welcome a person who was so instrumental in the design of a successful tool. The problem with a lot of clever people that you'd like to hire is that they already have their own company, and for a long time Florian was no exception. As he designed Passolo, which later became SDL Passolo, he had to tackle a lot of localization and usability-related problems, and gathered enormous experience with customers as well. Now his experience benefits memoQ.
Florian is no stranger to our company, and he rounds up the family with his joining. In 2009 memoQ hired Claudia Fricke who happens to be his wife. "In bed with the enemy", "Spy vs spy", and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" were the works of art that came to our mind when thinking about them, though we have to confess that Brad Pitt is no match to Mr. Sachse's charm (just a side note to Renato Beninatto: now you got your rival, Tom!). We are very sorry for having spoiled this spy story with a cheesy ending.
