What is a Succession Founder?

I picked the term because a word was missing. "Successor" (in German, Nachfolger) sounds like someone who keeps the lights on and doesn't touch the furniture. "Founder" sounds like a garage and a blank page. What I did, and what many others do every day, is neither. It is both.

The definition

A Succession Founder takes over an existing, owner-led company and makes it their own. The company already exists. The work doesn't. You inherit a balance sheet, a reputation and a team that is watching you. Then you decide what this company becomes next.

In one sentence: succession doesn't mean continuing to run someone else's company. It means using an existing base to build your own company, ready for future generations.

Where the term comes from

My grandfather Eduard founded Hendricks in Neuss in 1972. I never planned to take over. I went into corporate and climbed the ladder. At some point it clicked that the most valuable thing I could work on was already there: real customers, real people, decades of trust. Not something to inherit and keep tidy, but something I could make my own. I took over at 27. Today I run Hendricks Group as its third generation, and I don't feel like a caretaker. I feel like a founder.

What makes a Succession Founder

Taking over is founding. Same risk, same ownership, same right to change everything.

Respect for what was built. Understand first, then change. Owners are not sellers. They are people deciding what happens to their life's work and their staff.

Build, don't administer. A company that works deserves a next chapter, not a liquidation.

Think in generations. You build for the next generation, not for an exit, whether that generation is family or not.

Family or outside: both count

A Succession Founder can be the daughter who takes over her parents' business, the corporate executive who buys a Mittelstand company, or the long-time employee who becomes an owner through a management buy-out. What matters isn't where you come from. It's how you lead once you're there.

Why Germany needs more of them

KfW Research counts around 114,000 small and mid-sized firms a year planning to close rather than hand over, to 2029. For the first time, closure planners slightly outnumber those looking for a successor.¹ At the German chambers of commerce, there are 2.4 owners wanting to hand over for every interested buyer.² There is no shortage of good companies. There is a shortage of people who take them over and build.

If you are thinking about buying a company instead of starting one, you're one of us. Read the manifesto, call yourself a Succession Founder, and let's go build.