CIRO Founder Story: Renting out, without all the admin.
CTO & Co-Founder
CEO & Co-Founder
CIRO Founder Story
Renting out, without all the admin.
Anyone renting out property in Germany faces three problems at once: law, taxes, administration. And they all land on the shoulders of the same person every day — the landlord. CIRO changes that. We're a team that knows each of these depths from its own practice — and builds the platform we wish we'd had before we had it.
How CIRO came about
The beginning wasn't a pitch deck, but a conversation among friends.
André had a firm plan to get into renting out property. A classic wealth-building vehicle, long-term returns, everything right on paper. Pascal and Markus, both landlords themselves for years, shared stories from their own early days — honest enough that by the end of the evening André had dropped the idea again. Back to the ETF savings plan. Simpler, more predictable, less risky.
What stuck was exactly this: when three capable people with genuine interest in real estate conclude that getting started is too complicated and too error-prone, that's not a personal problem. It's a structural one. Today Germany is short thousands of homes because potential landlords run exactly this calculation — and decide against the investment. That's precisely what we set out to tackle.
CTO & Co-Founder
André
Principal Engineer at one of Germany's largest e-commerce companies. Responsible for the architecture of a platform that serves millions of customers across Europe every day — a role fewer than one percent of developers in Germany reach. Before that, 20 years of software development in consulting, agency and corporate roles, with projects for many of the large DAX companies. Always with the same standard: thinking things through from start to finish and putting the user's needs at the centre. That exact depth sits in every line of CIRO's code, not retrofitted later.
André brings the engineering. What he didn't have: the renting out. That outside view is exactly his contribution to the vision. He invested in ETFs for years — set up the savings plan, done. When he placed renting out next to it, the break was absurd: the same asset class, a hundred times the complexity. His goal for CIRO: to close the distance between “I want to rent out” and “I am renting out” so far that only the notary stays manual.
CEO & Co-Founder
Markus
Management consultant focused on turnaround, restructuring and post-merger integration. For years his daily work was helping corporations simplify complex processes, rebuild structures, restore efficiency. A landlord himself — and that very dual role was the trigger: optimising complexity away for large companies by day, managing his own apartments with Excel by night. Who can seriously do that alone? The tools for it have stood still for twenty years.
Markus brings what large corporations have afforded themselves for decades: well-considered processes, clear responsibilities, and tools that think along instead of getting in the way. His approach is simple — good tools don't get better through more features, but by removing what's unnecessary.
Tax strategist & wealth building
Attorney & Investor
Tax strategist & wealth building
Pascal
An entrepreneur and tax strategist with a clear focus: lowering his clients' tax burden. A landlord himself, and in daily contact with numerous property managers who bring him the industry's real-world problems. Three perspectives on the same topic — as a strategist, as a practitioner with his own portfolio, and as a sparring partner for those living the day-to-day.
What Pascal sees in practice again and again is the real drama: many landlords leave depreciation completely on the table, accelerated depreciation even more often. Those are often five-figure amounts per year that simply stay with the tax office. And the second point that drives him: many prospective clients avoid further investments — not because the returns don't add up, but because self-managing the existing properties already doesn't work. Wealth that never comes into being because administration gets in the way. These observations flow straight into CIRO — as the question of where the platform really has to relieve landlords.
Attorney & Investor
Denise
An attorney specialising in rental law — close to the conflicts between tenants and landlords every day. And a landlord with her own portfolio, together with her brother. A double knowledge lever: the depth of the lawyer who knows the legal situation, and the pragmatism of the practitioner who knows which legal questions really come up in reality — and which only appear in the textbook.
At CIRO she is the interface that makes the platform prevent conflicts before they arise. Every utility line item, every distribution key, every deadline up to date — including the 2026 rental-law reform. On the ciro.immobilien channel, Denise is the face for all legal topics. Whoever explains the rules should really know them — and apply them themselves day to day. Her line: not a feeling of security, but real security.
CTO & Co-Founder
CIRO Founder Story
Renting out, without all the admin.
Anyone renting out property in Germany faces three problems at once: law, taxes, administration. And they all land on the shoulders of the same person every day — the landlord. CIRO changes that. We're a team that knows each of these depths from its own practice — and builds the platform we wish we'd had before we had it.
How CIRO came about
The beginning wasn't a pitch deck, but a conversation among friends.
André had a firm plan to get into renting out property. A classic wealth-building vehicle, long-term returns, everything right on paper. Pascal and Markus, both landlords themselves for years, shared stories from their own early days — honest enough that by the end of the evening André had dropped the idea again. Back to the ETF savings plan. Simpler, more predictable, less risky.
What stuck was exactly this: when three capable people with genuine interest in real estate conclude that getting started is too complicated and too error-prone, that's not a personal problem. It's a structural one. Today Germany is short thousands of homes because potential landlords run exactly this calculation — and decide against the investment. That's precisely what we set out to tackle.
Principal Engineer at one of Germany's largest e-commerce companies. Responsible for the architecture of a platform that serves millions of customers across Europe every day — a role fewer than one percent of developers in Germany reach. Before that, 20 years of software development in consulting, agency and corporate roles, with projects for many of the large DAX companies. Always with the same standard: thinking things through from start to finish and putting the user's needs at the centre. That exact depth sits in every line of CIRO's code, not retrofitted later.
André brings the engineering. What he didn't have: the renting out. That outside view is exactly his contribution to the vision. He invested in ETFs for years — set up the savings plan, done. When he placed renting out next to it, the break was absurd: the same asset class, a hundred times the complexity. His goal for CIRO: to close the distance between “I want to rent out” and “I am renting out” so far that only the notary stays manual.
CEO & Co-Founder
Management consultant focused on turnaround, restructuring and post-merger integration. For years his daily work was helping corporations simplify complex processes, rebuild structures, restore efficiency. A landlord himself — and that very dual role was the trigger: optimising complexity away for large companies by day, managing his own apartments with Excel by night. Who can seriously do that alone? The tools for it have stood still for twenty years.
Markus brings what large corporations have afforded themselves for decades: well-considered processes, clear responsibilities, and tools that think along instead of getting in the way. His approach is simple — good tools don't get better through more features, but by removing what's unnecessary.
Tax strategist & wealth building
An entrepreneur and tax strategist with a clear focus: lowering his clients' tax burden. A landlord himself, and in daily contact with numerous property managers who bring him the industry's real-world problems. Three perspectives on the same topic — as a strategist, as a practitioner with his own portfolio, and as a sparring partner for those living the day-to-day.
What Pascal sees in practice again and again is the real drama: many landlords leave depreciation completely on the table, accelerated depreciation even more often. Those are often five-figure amounts per year that simply stay with the tax office. And the second point that drives him: many prospective clients avoid further investments — not because the returns don't add up, but because self-managing the existing properties already doesn't work. Wealth that never comes into being because administration gets in the way. These observations flow straight into CIRO — as the question of where the platform really has to relieve landlords.
Attorney & Investor
An attorney specialising in rental law — close to the conflicts between tenants and landlords every day. And a landlord with her own portfolio, together with her brother. A double knowledge lever: the depth of the lawyer who knows the legal situation, and the pragmatism of the practitioner who knows which legal questions really come up in reality — and which only appear in the textbook.
At CIRO she is the interface that makes the platform prevent conflicts before they arise. Every utility line item, every distribution key, every deadline up to date — including the 2026 rental-law reform. On the ciro.immobilien channel, Denise is the face for all legal topics. Whoever explains the rules should really know them — and apply them themselves day to day. Her line: not a feeling of security, but real security.
Every discipline, staffed in depth
Renting out isn't a single specialist topic – it's many at once. Law, taxes, finances, tenant communication, administration, strategy. And they all land on the desk of one single person every day: the landlord. At CIRO, this 360-degree view is built into the team. Development, UX, data, marketing, law, finance, sales, taxes – each of these disciplines is staffed with someone who brings it in depth and with years of hands-on experience, not superficially trained and not on the side. That way CIRO covers every part of the topic completely. No gap the landlord has to jump back into after all.
Marketing
Someone who has played the game on TikTok and Instagram all the way through — with reach in the millions, built entirely organically. That's where the answer comes from for how a platform with our depth still reaches the people it's built for.
Usability
A principal UX designer whose specialty is reducing complex content and processes to the essentials. For a platform meant to be radically simple, that's the foundation, not the finish.
Data Analysis
A data analyst with whom we make decisions based on solid knowledge instead of gut feeling. Which features actually save time, where landlords get stuck — those are questions that need answers, not opinions.
Renting out, without all the admin.
Renting out doesn't fail because of landlords today. It fails because of tools that were never seriously built for them. CIRO is the platform that carries every discipline in the team at depth — engineering, law, taxes, administration, UX, data, marketing — and brings them together for you into one system that operates at the level a large corporation has long had for itself. With the difference that, in the end, you hold it in your hands.