Origin story: 25 years solving the same problem
I grew up wanting to build video games. Instead I have spent 25 years in accounts payable.
I started my career at SAP, like every good German developer, building on their accounts payable module for more than two years — then realized nothing ever ships in big corporations. So in 2000 I left and built my first startup, completely bootstrapped, because I did not know venture capital existed. It was automated invoicing software. We scaled to 600+ clients — Apple, Intel, Siemens, and Aldi were all customers. In 2005 we sold the company: a modest, good exit with no greedy VCs on the cap table.
Then I discovered VC funding a little too well and raised to build Taulia, an accounts payable platform for enterprises. We spent the next 12 years in the Bay Area and did so many rounds we ran out of letters in the alphabet. The company is now processing $50B a quarter. I eventually sold to SAP — the same place I walked out of in 2000.
But every tool I built — and every tool the industry built — only ever sat inside one company. AP tools for buyers, AR tools for suppliers. The actual problem was never inside one company. It is the handoff. That is where invoices get lost, reminders pile up, approvals stall, and people spend their days chasing instead of working.
In Madrid I got introduced to my now co-founders Henrik Gebbing and Philip Stanislaus by a VC. We all had experience in fintech and knew we wanted to build together. We went to the whiteboard and talked about geoengineering and energy — then said, startups are hard enough, let us solve the problem where we have an unfair advantage.
So that is what we are building with Causa Prima: a network that sits between companies and handles both sides of every transaction. The back-and-forth resolves itself. The money moves on the right terms, on its own.