How a German Real Estate Tech Leader is Becoming an AI Company - Powered by OKRs, Jan Hoffmeister

It's been a very diverse day. Many

topics, different industries,

different stories, a lot of experience.

And the next speaker will bring us more.

Do you have the energy for that? still

eager to hear.

Uh it is um real estate this time and

the adoption of AI.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome I

Yan Hoffmeister and his story about

digital transformation.

>> To to our our uh captain managed to turn

the slide the slides. Yan is a great

friend of ours. He's German living in

Switzerland.

>> He's owner of one of super successful

German company. Entrepreneur. What else?

>> You name

father family man.

>> Okay. So we have the slides once again

with huge amount of applause for.

>> Thanks Nicola. So I'm speaking to you

today from a perspective of a of a CEO

and a company founder and somebody who's

running an operational business. So I'm

really not used to talk about OKRs and

agile. Uh normally I rather speak to

customers about how to sell real estate.

So for me this is kind of new also new

and different audience. So um let me uh

explain to you before I introduce myself

maybe a little closer let me tell you um

what we do. Uh Dooms is a platform

founded in 2001. Uh and we help um

companies, banks, uh real estate firms

to exchange confidential documents uh

with with uh business partners and this

is mainly used for running transactions.

So when you do mergers and acquisitions

uh which some of you may know um you

have to share a lot of documents between

the parties and that's the platform we

created and that's the platform we are

running today. We have about 3,000

customers. We really came from a startup

position. We were two people in a in a

smelly office in in Berlin uh back in

the day. Uh today we are 200 people

across 10 offices uh over all over

Europe including Sophia. So we have a

team here. I think there's about 15

people uh not far from here and um yeah

we did all of this without venture

capital but we did it with agile and

OKR. That's not the only reason why we

succeeded but it it certainly helped.

Um, but as you can see, I'm not, you

know, I'm not 30. I've been doing this

for 25 years. And when I went to

university, so I'm just going to click

to the next slide. Okay, that's I just

skipped already this one. Sorry about

that. Um, my first slide, what I learned

at university. So, I started in the

early 90s. Uh, little anecdote. I mean,

I really grew up um on the Iron Curtain.

The first eight years of my life, I

lived in West Berlin looking into the

east. Our balcony was right at the wall

and we looked into the east. So um and

since we're in Bulgaria today, I wanted

to mention this. I started to go to

university in October 1990 and that was

the first semester where actually

students from West Berlin and East

Berlin uh started to study together. So

for me that was a was a really

interesting time. Um and but this is

what we learned. Uh you know classical

management study at the time I studied

finance uh hierarchical organizations.

Yeah, I studied um organizational

theory. It was about hierarchies. It was

about functional organizations. It was

about um it it was about divisional

organizations and so on. Nothing

inspiring there. Um we learned

management by objectives. You set

multi-year plans. You tell the people

what you expect from them early in the

year and uh 12 months later you see what

they have achieved and then allocated a

bonus. Um it was basically waterfall

execution. Also in software development

you made a five-year plan. uh and

hopefully after five years you got what

you ordered. Um uh we made an annual

operational planning of course and uh we

had a multi-year financial planning.

This is what we learned. Yeah. And I

worked before I started my own company

at Zmens a big corporation and there it

was pretty pretty much similar. Um and

then what did the implemented rooms when

I started? It's the same slide so I I

spare you spare you reading the details.

Of course, we implemented the same

because that's what I knew. Yeah. But um

I'm also actually somebody who who

thinks about uh how to change things and

and actually having worked at Zmens for

altogether was over 10 years. Zmens is

also a company with 400,000 employees

that is always trying the latest thing

in academia. So they always try out

what's new. So at Zmens I saw that you

you can try things, test things and see

how they work because nothing will will

stand still. Um and we did the same. So

running rooms like this for the first 10

years with these methods was fine

because we were very small company. Um

everything in control of the senior

leadership. So it it was easy to to make

changes and and to move forward. But as

you as you grow bigger and you go from

10 employees towards 50 employees and

then 100 uh it becomes actually very

different. You you start to build an

organization. You get IT compliance, get

an HR department, uh have a finance team

and a tax team and and end. Um so all of

these things started and we were of

course still organized like this. Um

then uh thankfully I hired some very

talented uh software people uh who

showed me that that the world is a

little different and this is um how how

I started to think differently about

agile and OKR and there were basically

two reasons that that we at the end

decided to implement a different way to

work. Uh and the first one was two

observations. The first one um was our

our CPO that we hired at the time. This

was 2014. um and he introduced the scrum

method into R&D development. Um this is

something that uh that that really

struck with me and we did it uh for the

development team which of course works

very nicely um as uh as as it is

somewhat the closed a closed circle of

activity. Um I think it's more

challenging to run agile outside of R&D

and I will talk about that in a minute.

But we started in R&D, we introduced the

scrum methodology uh and uh already in

2014 and then worked really really well.

But but that was not actually what

brought me to really think about it.

Sorry about that. Um

that was just the first step. The second

step for me was a little more profound.

Uh sorry, I should be pressing this

button more often. Sorry about that. Um

the second observation that I had is oh

now this one is gone. Um I looked at I

looked at at the world outside and I

looked at at the most valuable companies

in the world. So when I in in the year

2000 it was companies like GE, Exxon

Mobile. They were the most valuable

companies in the world. Everybody looked

at them. Everybody admired them. Jack

Welsh was in the 90s the greatest

manager alive. Today unfortunately he

passed away a couple of years ago. Um

and he was driving his company basically

with a big stick. Yeah. And it made huge

progress. I think they had uh I don't

know 20 years in a row every quarter

growing results, growing revenue, uh

growing share price. And this was in the

'9s. That was the way to manage a

company. And all of a sudden uh and this

actually happened in the in the 2010

years. You see these companies coming up

that are starting to be actually the

most valuable companies in the world.

Uh, and they are all very young. Um,

they are all techdriven. They come from

California. Um, of course you know who

they are. It's Google, it's Facebook,

it's Amazon, it's Apple, it's Microsoft.

And these companies are all of a sudden

the most valuable companies in the

world. So I started thinking about this.

I say, what are they doing differently?

They come from nowhere. Yeah, they had a

lot of money to spend. So obviously that

that helped. But it's not only spending

money doesn't guarantee you success. So

that's that's not it. Yeah, they they

were able to capture value um in a very

fast way in a very short time frame. So

I looked at and I was diving into how

they work. They must they must do

something differently that they are so

successful compared to these other

companies that are 50 years old uh have

have a lot more market share, have a lot

more um uh substance, leadership, cash

flow, etc. Uh why are these companies so

successful? And it was very obvious

because they work differently. Yeah,

they work they work in an agile way. Um,

and they work with OKRs. And this is

what was very very clear to me. So I

thought, okay, I'm a mid-size company.

What can I learn from this? Obviously

doing it the way GE does is maybe not

the right thing to do. So I then I

started thinking about um how to uh how

to do this. um and and actually came up

well then read uh measure what matters

by by John Dur and I thought okay AKR is

a great way we can reiterate um our our

goal and our alignment every three

months if things don't work we'll do it

again um so we started doing this um and

you know what of course we failed that

is uh very clear because um how how did

we initially implement it and this is

actually I mean it was my idea I was the

CEO so it's my responsibility

um I didn't have to convince uh uh the

CEO themselves but rather rather I had

to convince the managers. So it's a

different perspective than what you may

have heard before but actually for me

that's just as tough. Yeah. Um and this

is actually how it went. Yeah. So um I

was coming here with new wheels and uh

but people were too busy to con to to

think about that maybe working diff

working differently uh is is is the way

to success. Not doing things the same

way.

The employees are very hesitant and and

I think even today you have uh you have

employees who are um or managers who are

maybe in their in their 50s and they

went to university just like me around

the same time. So they learned the same

stuff and if they haven't progressed

they are still running around with what

they've learned 30 years ago. So um I

think you you you know what I'm talking

about. So in your cases as you as you do

a lot of agile work you have to convince

managers to change their ways. Yeah. I

had to convince my employees to change

their ways. And actually in the

beginning we failed. Um and I will tell

you at the end what my key finding was

here how I solved that problem. Yeah. of

of of having having team members that

are that are resistant and don't want to

change and uh you can think about how I

solved that um I will tell you later.

So at the same time since my topic is

also about AI um so today we are a

successful company using AI technology

uh and we are think reasonably

successful in working agile and with

OKRs it's not directly connected but it

happened at the same time uh so we

started to work on machine learning in

2016 so way way before anybody did um we

tried to build our own LLM our large

language model that was actually a

stupid idea here. Um I think we spend

around maybe one and a half or two

million euros on this uh unsuccessfully.

But maybe it was it was still a good

learning experience to try to build your

own model finding out that it doesn't

work. Um really not knowing what to do

because we there was nothing available

uh until about two years ago when these

new LLMs came out and we finally had the

underlying uh technology to make our

ideas come true. So um I think in a way

we were ready uh to to work on um to

work on on AI uh because we had made

this preparation otherwise we would have

would just be sitting here like oh what

are we going to do now?

Um so this transformation um actually

went hand in hand. So we rolled out over

the last five years we rolled out

various AI um products that are actually

used uh in our in our customers daily

work. That that is actually the

challenge. So it's easy to make an AI

use case that that looks good. But to

bring it into production with customers

is a different story because it has to

be correct. Um it has to work under all

circumstances and it shouldn't crash the

system ideally because it uses so much

um capacity. So all of these things have

to be considered when you have thousands

and thousands of users every day. Uh and

at least we we were able to do this.

Um and the the timeline of these of this

rollout Oh, now it's actually animated.

I didn't even know this. So we started

working in scrum in 2014. Uh we did our

first shot at OKR in 2015. Failed. Yeah.

Was my initiative. Company wasn't ready.

People weren't ready. Didn't work. Um we

hired our first AI engineer in 2016 as I

mentioned. Um and the team which is

actually here in Bulgaria.

We started to work agile in the whole

company and that also coincided a little

bit with the starting pandemic. So

working online and remote also actually

helped you to work agile. Um and then we

took a second ch shot shot at OKR and um

that failed as well.

Sort of failed um because we couldn't

really get it off the ground. So we were

doing doing it and so on and so forth

but it didn't really catch on because

the employee thought it's extra work.

Yeah. I have to do my normal work and I

have to do OKRs and that's not the

point. OKR is the work. Yeah. So, and

maybe there are some functions in the

company where uh where OKR is not the

right method. Yeah. So, we found that

out too and we said there are some teams

in our company that don't have OKRs

because it really doesn't make sense for

them and that's fine too. Um uh and what

what we did was then in 2023 we revamped

OKR and we hired Agile here with BOY and

and Nicola and asked them to help us in

the implementation. uh and it has been

going really well and I think we're now

on a good track that that that our teams

understand um how to incorporate this

into their daily work that it's not on

top of their work it is the work that's

the important part

and today we have 2025 at the same time

and it's really basically in the same

time frames we brought uh our AI/Machine

learning products live and in our

business working with the big banks it

for instance means document translation

So you take a confidential um document

from a bank for instance a loan

agreement that nobody's supposed to see

and you can translate it uh translate it

in real time uh from from Dutch into

English so a banker from London can

review it. So that's the sort of thing

we do. Um and then functionalities

around that auto allocation I'm not

going to go into that maybe interesting

uh the GDPR reduction. Um that's a tool

where you can there's also black lining.

So you you take a black marker and mark

out certain things in the in a contract.

Yeah, this is really important for GDPR.

So you you cannot if you if you take

somebody's personal data like even their

address or their phone number, you're

not allowed to send this to without the

consent of the person. Yeah. And this is

the topic we have um because our our

customers are selling for instance a

building. A building has tenants. So we

have to give the um the content of the

rental agreement to the third party. But

our tool can redact it. So we say redact

the whole data room. Um then all the

confidential files get redacted have

little black lines over them. Uh so the

identity of the person is never revealed

because it's not really needed.

What um I also found then uh interesting

and important is how to build it into

the strategic framework because for me I

have the whole picture of the market and

the company and the strategy in my head

but the team doesn't. Yeah. So we always

have to bring it down how how is

strategy and mission and everything

connected uh into into the big picture

and I want to show that big picture

here. So it basically starts with the

mission and vision. It's about a fivey

year at least has a fiveyear horizon

roundabout. Um and then you go into the

strategy which at least should have a

time frame maybe maybe two years but at

least a year. Um and then uh of course

we do this like everybody else. We do an

annual resource planning especially a

budget. We need a financial budget to

run our company. But this is just a side

note. Um actually not so important. The

execution is based on OKRs and the

execution goes in of course quarterly

circles. And the beauty of it is that if

you make a mistake you can um uh you can

just start over again next quarter. And

that's really the beauty of it versus

multi-annual planning. But at anyway it

always has to be connected. the OKR as

to feed back into the vision and the

mission and that's what we what we spend

a lot of time communicating on so that

everybody understands this in the

company

my key lessons and I think that's that's

here comes my my practitioners view into

this yeah um so my first my first key

lesson is it takes years so in our case

as you saw first introduction of OKRs

2015 uh today we have 2025 we still have

consultants helping us so it's been 10

years. Um, and anybody who thinks uh

that this can be done with a flip of a

switch is probably mistaken unless

they're much smarter than I am.

The leadership has to stand 100% behind

it. Of course, we've heard this all

today, so it's it's nothing new really.

Um, uh, I I was in this case the

leadership, but um, also the leadership

of the other people. So um because any

today we have about 40 managers in the

company. So you need the buyin of at

least um the let's say the top layer. So

the top 10 to 15 people have to be on

board on board with this. And we did

have people who grew up in the same uh

in the same environment that I did uh

who love hierarchies. They love

hierarchies. They love little lines on

orcharts. Uh love to um tell their

employees that they should not talk to

other departments. So all of these

things that are normal in most

organizations we had to uh and what I

did was I let them go. Yeah, that was

that was my solution. Uh if you have if

you are the CEO, you want agile, you

have managers who don't like it, they

have to leave the company. And that's

you can have uh five discussions with

them and and try to convince them. But

uh if they really don't like it because

they like a different way of working,

they should work at a different company.

Yeah. Just like you uh should work for a

different CEO. If you if the CEO doesn't

like this and you want it, um either try

to convince the CEO or just leave, go

somewhere else. There are a lot of

companies out there that that that would

be happy to have you on board. Um and uh

since I'm always very open uh about

these things uh to the people I work

with, I'm still always in good touch

with everybody that ever worked for me.

So even somebody we let go, I can still

have a beer with. Yeah. Because the

reason why they had to go was not

because they're bad people. They just

had a different idea on how to run the

business. It wasn't compatible. Sorry.

Uh you have to leave. Third point, um

you cannot really delegate it. Yeah. So

there the because it's so embedded in

the organization that the champion has

to be the leader. Yeah. Uh of course you

need people to help you run OKR and

agile but uh but you are the I'm the

owner or the person who is in charge.

You cannot say the HR department is

going to run OKR. That doesn't work.

Um,

another thing I learned was so when we

opened the floodgates and said we're

going to work agile basically

self-organized uh you can run your own

agile teams. You can you know what the

strategy is so you know if what you are

planning is in line with our strategy go

yeah find your team and run with

whatever you want to do and it was a bit

bit too much anarchy. So um that was a

little bit too much. Um so and this is

my personal key finding. It also needs

strong leadership. So you at the end of

the day you have to tell the people you

know this agile project you're working

on is not in the it's interesting but

not interesting enough. So please don't

do it or uh somebody starts a project

which of course will never end. Yeah.

it's uh and then you have like a hundred

projects that are running at the same

time uh and sort of are being touched

every two weeks and and you never get

anything done. So um I stepped back from

from letting everything go uh to having

having a firm leadership. So so making

sure basically everything is aligned and

going in the right direction. So that's

my personal finding. Um

and that's the point five here. you you

need to build your own frameworks

because everything I read about agile

and OKR is is is great in theory

probably works in other companies for us

didn't always work so at the end I

thought I was I'm not trying to

implement something that's written in a

book I'm trying to implement something

that actually works yeah and every

company is different every organization

is different every country is different

you got mentalities in different

countries uh so you got to use that uh

and build your own framework which is

what we did and it's not it's not pretty

it's not a blueprint for others. It's

just for us.

Uh

agile and go OKR go hand in hand. Um I

think in many ways maybe OKR is easier

to run if you just have departments like

in the old sense you know department

does certain things they can set their

own OKRs. Agile then goes across

departments across organizations. So it

requires more alignment between the

people. Um and that is also more tricky

in the OKR but nevertheless they got to

go hand in hand.

Last point here on my um uh oh second

last

so again in order for people to

understand how agile fits into the

strategy and the vision they have to

understand the strategy and the vision

and ideally as a leader you shouldn't

change it every five five minutes. So

all of this goes hand in hand. Uh so I

will try to uh spend a lot of time

talking about it. Uh Chrissy can confirm

whether or not this works because she

works for us here in Bulgaria. And uh uh

hopefully the the me I will ask her

after this um presentation whether or

not um it is understood what we're

trying to achieve. But um as a leader

you cannot communicate enough about it

what you're trying to achieve to get

everybody back on the same page. Also,

of course, you're constantly hiring new

people and they got to be brought in.

So, you have to repeat the message over

and over again. Uh, my last conclusion

is that uh basically with with waterfall

all of this would have been impossible.

Classical waterfall planning, no way

because things change so fast and and

I'm I'm inclined to say that uh maybe

maybe now they're changing faster than

ever. also driven by by the eye

revolution that we are seeing is that

things are changing so fast that if you

try to if if you try to work in the old

way with waterfall and and and

multi-year planning, you're not going to

get anywhere because things just change

so fast. You got to adopt. Yeah. And you

need to have the tools to adopt and the

organization to adopt. And we've been

we've been very lucky that we were able

uh to build this um to build this this

setup early on. Maybe it was a bit

random. It was a bit luck. Um, but I

would say it's also our curiosity to

always look for what's new. What's new

out there? What are people doing that

are successful? Uh, don't reinvent the

wheel. Just copy it. Uh, so my last uh

little wisdom here. So if you don't know

where you're going, you might not get

there. Yeah, yogi. It's uh very obvious.

Um, but a lot of people don't know where

they're going and then they're surprised

to where they end up.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

>> I still have a couple of minutes left,

so I'm happy to take any questions that

you have.

>> I'll help with the mic. So, who has a

question for Yan?

Anyone?

was the first one.

Hello. Um, thank you. I think that was a

really good presentation and um, your

um, key lessons learned resonated uh,

with me a lot when I've tried to do

similar sort of things with

organizations. My question to you is on

that u the, the point you mentioned

around leadership taking the first step

and kind of championing it. What sort of

things have you practically uh used to

um get the leaders to that mindset that

they need to change or lead the change

or be the change as opposed to they can

buy something and just install in the

organization?

>> Well, one thing I always do is I bombard

them with with articles and podcasts.

Yeah. So things I find interesting I

share with the people I work with. Yeah.

Say, "Hey, look at this. you know, look

at how Amazon is organizing this and

that and the other. So, that was one way

how I did it. Uh, that was a bit random,

I guess. Um, we did we did actually have

a lot of consultants coming in to give

presentations. So, we did that too. Um,

but what actually led led the change?

Let me think about this a little bit.

Um,

I think they had their own learning

journey. So, they they started to

because they thought, "Hey, Jan's

thinking about this. I should think

about this too." and they had their own

their own learning journey. Uh except

for the people who didn't like it at all

and they didn't have any journey. Um

yeah so so basic basically it was it was

uh making it a topic of conversation. I

think we heard that earlier today where

you say you you got to pave the way

until it starts. So you got to get them

ready by talking about it.

So you can't say oh tomorrow uh next uh

January 1 we're going to do OKRs. you

have never heard about this, but we're

going to do it. So, it was uh it was

more of a of a slow um it yeah, slow

roll out.

Okay, any other questions?

Milen,

>> thank you so much. Uh how when uh did

you learn to make compromises and uh

actually or when somebody in your

company need to learn this how did you

teach them to make compromises?

>> Uh well yeah the compromise part that's

business in uh if you read the books uh

is all completely transparent, beautiful

and and well organized. And my key

learning from life is that the business

is always chaotic because you're out in

the market and the market is chaotic.

You cannot control it. And uh so I I had

to compromise and and I also just like I

learned how to compromise with customers

in the market because I cannot control

it. I learned how to compromise then

with with the teams which led me to um

to implement our own method so to speak.

Yeah. It wasn't me who implemented it.

It was the team together. We said you

know certain things of OKR we do other

things we don't do. Yeah. And agile.

Yeah. And uh to basically custom fit for

our company and and but it took me a

couple of years to learn this which is

also why this whole thing took 10 years.

Yeah.

>> Okay. There was I heard there is a

question from Tetu. Okay.

>> I mean yeah

thank you very much. So it's really

inspiring hearing someone from sea level

talking about transitions taking time.

So my question is and it's really great

to hear it from someone like you. So

>> thank you.

>> Were you always on the opinion that

transitions takes time or you took your

own journey coming to the mindset that

right now if you want to do something it

will take time because right now

nowadays transitions are always like top

down cascaded with really some

aggression or external force. So I just

want to hear your perspective about

that.

>> Yeah. Maybe it's also sometimes in

crisis mode. They think we need to

change something. Yeah. And and I want

to quote here our CPO introduced scrum

at the time. He always said the best

time to plant a tree was 20 years ago

and the second best day is today. Yeah.

And I think that's a really good quote.

Um

so um uh there is no is no miracle here.

I think the maybe you know I also lost

track in the meantime. So we were

starting and then I was also working on

other things and we lost it a little

bit. So I should have stayed on the

ball. Maybe those 10 years would have

been five years. Yeah.

>> But I don't I don't really have a magic

bullet to be honest.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah. Plant the tree. That's what I can

recommend. So start. There's no reason

not to start today.

>> Thank you very much Jan for your great

uh talk here. My question is, as a CEO,

where do you talk to other CEOs about

your great company, about your great

attitude in your company?

>> It's um I I I don't talk to other tech

companies so much. I rather talk to

actually our customers who view us as

the new kid on the block. Yeah. Because

they're very traditional real estate

firms and they ask us how we do it and

we just explain what we do. Yeah. So we

are basically the the oneeyed amongst

the blind. Yeah. And um

I don't really network with other uh

people who have similar problems. Yeah,

I should I should I know but I mean here

I'm here I can meet them but when I I

just came from Munich from the real

estate conference yesterday so uh I

don't I don't meet a lot of people who

who do these kind of things here.

>> Last question.

Okay, you're very far away.

But I'll come. Okay,

>> we got 40 seconds, so hurry up.

>> Thank you very much. Starting my timer.

Um, great presentation indeed. U, I have

a question about the normal employees.

How did they react on the oare?

>> Well, they perceived it as extra work.

Yeah, they thought I have to do this on

top of what I always do. So um it's uh

but I think they were more open than the

leaders. Yeah. Uh because the leaders

were very concerned about their position

in the organization while the normal for

the normal employees it doesn't really

change because the employees want to

work with their peers uh in in agile.

Yeah. And and uh in a classical

hierarchical organization the employee

sometimes is not allowed to work with

their peers in other departments because

the communication goes to the boss goes

to the other boss and goes down again to

the employee. Yeah. And this is what we

had. Yeah. And uh so the uh I would say

the the employee liked it better uh than

some of the leaders.

>> Thank you. I think you really increased

applause. So

we are 5 minutes behind but still let's

quickly change the room if you want to

change the room and then we'll continue

with uh Yoko.

Thank you.