Daniel Birke · Munich
Hands-on product and technology leadership for early-stage companies.
Founder and CPTO with about twenty years in software. I built a multi-tenant SaaS company from zero to around 50 customers and a team of 30, and I still build software hands-on every day.
About
From founder to hands-on product and technology lead.
Started coding at fourteen. About twenty years in software, leadership roles since 2012.
I founded we.io in 2016 and built its product, its platform and its team from zero. After that I served as interim CPTO for a recruitment SaaS provider and led product and platform for Germany, Austria and Switzerland at Europe's largest parking operator.
I work best where one person has to cover product, architecture and delivery at once: early-stage companies and small teams. I write code myself, set the engineering standards and steer internal and external teams.
Founder and builder
Built we.io from zero to around 50 customers with some 250 locations and a team of 30.
Hands-on in a corporate
At APCOA I led the migration of contract parking to Salesforce and built the internal operations platform behind it myself, as the first in-house engineer.
Applied AI in the product
Predictive maintenance with 85% prediction accuracy at we.io, and an LLM-powered recruiting platform with a 25% productivity gain at CTG-Consulting.
Selected work · 2016 to 2026
Four pieces of work, and what each one changed.
From founding a SaaS company to platform work inside a corporate.
- 0 → 30team
Built a SaaS company from zero
Founded we.io and built hotelery, a multi-tenant SaaS platform for hospitality, retail, golf and B2B services. Around 50 customers with some 250 locations run on one architecture: 8 independently deployable packages and 162,000 lines of TypeScript.
Founder & CPTO, we.io · 2016 to 2023
- 85%prediction accuracy
Predictive maintenance in production
Shipped predictive maintenance on we.io. Customers gained 20% in operational efficiency.
Founder & CPTO, we.io
- 43,000lines of TypeScript
Contract parking moved to Salesforce, operations platform built on Azure
Led the migration of APCOA's contract-parking legacy platform to a Salesforce self-service customer portal, from project management to rollout, with a Salesforce partner implementing it. I built the internal operations platform behind it myself: a GraphQL backend and a Next.js management UI on Azure.
DACH Head of Product & Innovation, APCOA · 2025 to 2026
- 25%productivity gain
LLM platform for recruiting
As interim CPTO at CTG-Consulting I defined architecture and deployment strategy for an LLM-powered talent acquisition platform: model selection, data pipeline and rollout.
CPTO (Interim), CTG-Consulting · 2023 to 2024
What I bring
Three capabilities, each with evidence.
What an early-stage company gets with me on the team.
Product and platform, built hands-on
I own roadmap, architecture and delivery together and write code myself.
Evidence
- 162,000 lines of TypeScript in 8 deployable packages at we.io
- Internal operations platform at APCOA built as sole developer, about 43,000 lines of TypeScript
- Maintainer of next-llms-txt
Small teams and external partners
I build and lead teams of up to about 30 people and steer external vendors through clear user stories and standards.
Evidence
- Team grown from 0 to 30 at we.io
- Six-person team at APCOA
- Salesforce implementation partner steered from briefing to rollout at APCOA
- Team of around ten at CTG-Consulting
Applied AI that ships
AI belongs in the product, measured by what it changes for the customer.
Evidence
- Predictive maintenance with 85% prediction accuracy
- 20% efficiency gain for we.io customers
- LLM recruiting platform with a 25% productivity gain
The detail behind each of these is a conversation away.
Experience
About twenty years, newest first.
Aug 2026 – Present
Independent Technology & Transformation Advisor
Self-employed · Munich
Advisory mandate for a Munich-based parking operator until October 2026.
Mar 2025 – Jul 2026
DACH Head of Product & Innovation
APCOA Deutschland GmbH · Stuttgart
Product and platform strategy for DACH; migration of contract parking to Salesforce; internal operations platform built as first in-house engineer.
Sep 2023 – Jun 2024
Chief Product & Technology Officer (Interim)
CTG-Consulting · Hamburg
Interim CPTO; LLM-powered recruiting platform.
Feb 2016 – Sep 2023
Founder & Chief Product & Technology Officer
we.io GmbH (Helion Media GmbH) · Munich
Founded and built a multi-tenant SaaS company.
Jun 2014 – Jan 2016
Chief Executive Officer
Helion Media GmbH · Munich
Engineering mandates for MediaMarkt, Deutsche Lufthansa, TUI, Lastminute.com and RedBlue Marketing.
Aug 2012 – May 2014
Head of Development
plan.net connect GmbH & Co. KG (Serviceplan Group) · Munich
Head of Development with a €10M technology budget; clients BMW, Mercedes, Telefónica and MediaMarkt.
Jan 2007 – Jul 2012
Web Developer to Team Lead
Serviceplan Group and digital agencies · Munich
From web developer to team lead in Munich agencies.
Clients and employers
Who I have worked for.
Employers and own companies
APCOA · CTG-Consulting · we.io · Helion Media · plan.net connect (Serviceplan Group)
Clients served through them
BMW · Mercedes · Telefónica · MediaMarkt · Deutsche Lufthansa · TUI · Lastminute.com · RedBlue Marketing
The approach
Three principles that shape every decision.
Buy what is commodity. Build what differentiates.
Total cost of ownership over five years, not what is fashionable this quarter. Best-of-breed integration where good enough is good enough, custom engineering only where it wins customers.
Architecture follows the business case.
Every platform decision is a business case first. If it does not move revenue, cost or risk in a way we can measure, it does not get built.
Stay close to the code.
I keep coding so that I can judge technical decisions first-hand and never have to take an estimate on faith.
Still hands-on
Still shipping code in public.
I build agentically with Claude Code and Codex every day – prototypes, automations, features, bug fixes. I maintain next-llms-txt, a Next.js package that makes websites readable to AI agents; this site runs on it. I keep coding so that I can judge technical decisions first-hand and never have to take an estimate on faith.
npm install next-llms-txtContact
Let’s talk.
Based in Munich, working across Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the rest of Europe. German native, English business fluent.
Open to founding and early-stage CTO, CPO and CPTO roles, and to Head or VP roles in engineering, platform or product at startups and scale-ups.