In the second experience as a company founder, some things are different than the first time, says Osman Dumbuya: "First I grew up with a generation in which it was clear from the start: If we have developed our start-up far enough and gained sufficient visibility, it will eventually sold it to an American prospect.” Today, he has higher expectations of himself and his new company, Incari.

Those who are not necessarily dependent on money for subsistence the second time around then want to “create something that brings change and innovation into the world, with a company that will last in the long term”.

Tobias Piller

Editor in Business.

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The computer scientist founded his first company with a friend in 2006 at the age of 29 and then sold it in 2012 to the American industry leader for around 50 million euros.

Three years later he started a new project with the Incari company, again within the framework of the automotive industry.

Behind this, however, are much more far-reaching ambitions: Dumbuya is striving to replace the operating systems of today's computers, which he says were "planned 40 years ago and implemented 30 years ago" with new architectures.

"We see enormous potential for improvement in security and performance in a number of areas," says Dumbuya.

With more modern architecture, today's computers could operate and communicate more than three times faster.

Interface between people and car

For the time being, the projects at Incari are much more manageable, more concrete and also more advanced.

Even so, Dumbuya is in the midst of the challenges that the big car companies are currently having to grapple with in their new software houses.

"HMI" or "Human Machine Interface" is the name of Incari's specialty in the jargon of technicians.

It's about the interface between people and the car.

Until recently, it was rather simple, with a speedometer, a few levers and buttons or a radio, until more and more was added, from navigation to voice control.

For a long time, the traditional car manufacturers saw themselves more as integrators of these diverse systems than as developers of all the details, until these coordination tasks of different control units and software became more and more complicated.

Then Tesla founder Elon Musk wanted a central controller and software for everything.

So that future – electric and sometimes even self-driving – cars can become living rooms on wheels, German manufacturers are now all working flat out on new, comprehensive and proprietary operating systems for their cars.

The German mentality is both a curse and a blessing

Osman Dumbuya, on the other hand, wants to significantly simplify the work of car manufacturers in one area: His company Incari offers a development platform for everything that is shown and entered on screens in the car, with which car developers without programming knowledge can reach their goals faster.

With it, displays or structures for driver input commands can be quickly and completely rearranged without the developers having to deal with the underlying software in the slightest.

Last year, Dumbuya used a prototype by Anton Piëch, who, as a scion of the Porsche dynasty, is currently developing new cars under his own name, as a demonstration object for his development platform.

"Today, the demand for communication options in the car is no less than that for one's own smartphone or tablet," says Dumbuya.

Customers expect that functions that are taken for granted on mobile phones or at home will also be integrated into cars in the future.

But the lifespan of a car, at maybe ten years, is much longer than that of a mobile phone, for which updates will soon no longer be available.