Decisively Digital

Chapter 23Derek Roos: Fully Leveraging Your Human Capital

Derek Roos, cofounder and CEO, MendixSource: Derek Roos

 

Derek is the cofounder and CEO of Mendix, the leading low-code application platform, which allows anyone to make applications to digitalize their business. Roos founded Mendix while still in college and has built it up into a global force with more than 1,200 team members and more than 1,000 customers. Mendix was acquired by Siemens AG for $730 million in cash in 2018, and Roos continues to lead the business as its CEO.

Alexander: You are cofounder and CEO at Mendix. How did you come up with the idea for Mendix? What is your mission?

Derek: When I was in business school, I felt constrained and frustrated by business organizations’ inability to create business apps quickly. I was working at an IT-services business while I was a student at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I would be brought in to do some of the grunt work to help initiate a project and wonder, “What if we could visualize the solution to the business application problem and then just push a button to make it happen?” I was training to become a consultant, and it never felt right for me that it was so hard to create applications.

One of my cofounders, Derckjan Kruit, who also worked at the company, shared my vision for wanting to create this “easy” button solution to building business application ...