The Customer Is Ready
I won our first big customer. Four months after we requested our EU VAT number, it still cannot start: our German limited-liability company has no number. It is 2026 in Cologne. My boyfriend built the SaaS; I sold it. We have a company, a notary's bill, and no sale.
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Jonas and I are both 26. He wrote scheduling software for home-care agencies at our kitchen table. I took it to trade fairs, called agency directors, and learned to give a demo while a train lurched beneath my feet. A Dutch care group wants to put 400 workers on it. Its director showed me the rollout plan herself.
We formed a GmbH so the company could sign its contracts. At the notary's office, Jonas and I sat side by side while the notary read our deed aloud at a pace I could barely follow. Jonas smothered a yawn. I stared at the clock, thinking about the customer waiting for us to begin. We signed, paid in the required capital from our savings, and waited for the commercial register. When our company appeared there, we thought the waiting was over.
We requested an EU VAT identification number in our tax registration. Our local tax number arrived. The separate EU number did not.
The Dutch group's purchasing department will not release its order until it can validate our EU VAT number. I can send the contract. Jonas can switch on the software. Their director has staff ready to train. But she cannot get us through her own purchasing system, and every week she asks for a start date I cannot give.
At first I said, “Any day now.” After the second month I stopped saying it. After the third, Jonas stopped asking whether there was mail. The servers, the accountant, and our rent still had to be paid.
Today the director called again. Her team is making next month's schedules without us. She asked me to be honest: should she find another supplier? I said I would call her back.
I put down the phone and cried at the kitchen table, furious that I could lose the customer I had spent a year winning. Jonas closed the laptop where his finished software was running. He sat beside me. The VAT number still had not arrived.