My Why: How My Mother's Cancer Diagnosis Led Me to Biotech

Some moments split your life into before and after.

For me, it was a Saturday in 2006.

The night before

I had been at a Bon Jovi concert in Munich. Olympic Stadium. 50,000 people. "It's My Life" echoing through the summer night.

I was 26 years old, in the middle of my PhD in biophysics, enjoying life in the big city. Munich felt like home. The labs, the pubs in Schwabing, the energy of being surrounded by brilliant people.

The next morning, I drove home to visit my parents in Kirchleus – a 200-person village in Northern Bavaria. Soccer, beer, forest. The church had been the tallest building for 750 years.

My parents greeted me at the door.

And then my mother said three words that changed everything:

"I have breast cancer."

She was 51.

The world stood still

I had already lost my grandmother to cancer. And my youngest uncle. Now my mother.

The words hit me like a wall. I remember feeling completely powerless. There are no right words in moments like this. I just held her and cried.

She had a severe form of breast cancer. The prognosis was uncertain. Everything I thought I knew about the future suddenly meant nothing.

Then biotech stepped in

Her doctors prescribed Herceptin – a drug developed by the biotech company Genentech. It's an antibody called Trastuzumab that targets a specific protein on certain cancer cells.

It worked. Slowly, she recovered.

That drug saved my mother's life.

And it changed mine.

A new question

Before that moment, I had been asking myself: "What's interesting?"

After that moment, I started asking: "What matters?"

I couldn't develop a cancer drug myself. That wasn't my expertise. I was a biophysicist, not a pharmaceutical researcher.

But I kept thinking: what can I do?

The answer came slowly: I could build tools. Better instruments. Faster measurements. Tools that help the scientists who actually develop these therapies.

Making the invisible visible – so researchers can drug the previously undruggable.

That's why NanoTemper exists

In 2008, my co-founder Stefan Duhr and I founded NanoTemper Technologies. Two PhD students with a technology that worked – and a lot to figure out.

We didn't have a playbook. We didn't have investors. We didn't have a safety net.

But we had a reason.

Every experiment we enabled, every researcher we supported, every drug discovery program we contributed to – it all connected back to that Saturday morning in 2006.

Today

More than 10,000 scientists use our biophysical tools for drug discovery and development. We've built a company with over 400 people, €56M in annual revenue, and a presence in more than 60 countries.

But the numbers aren't the point.

The point is this: somewhere out there, a researcher is using our instruments to develop a therapy. And maybe, one day, that therapy will save someone's mother. Someone's uncle. Someone's child.

That's why I do this.

Your why matters

If you're building something – a company, a career, a project – I believe the "why" matters more than most people admit.

Not as a slogan you put on a wall. As a compass that guides you when things get hard.

And they will get hard. You'll face rejection. You'll doubt yourself. You'll wonder if it's worth it.

In those moments, your why is what keeps you going.

My mother is alive today because a group of scientists at Genentech believed their work mattered. They kept going. They didn't quit.

That's the legacy I want to continue.

What's your why?

Mine is written in those moments when things get hard. If you want to think through yours – and understand how founders in Europe are building differently – I write about this every two weeks. No slides. No fluff. Just stories about building companies with integrity and the future of entrepreneurship. -> subscribe to my newsletter