In conversation with caralegal CEO Björn Möller

I studied business informatics, I’m originally from Thuringia, and I now call Berlin home.

Choosing business informatics already says a lot about me. I was looking for something that combines theory and practical impact. I’ve always been fascinated by technology because it allows you to build things. At the same time, I enjoy working with numbers and understanding business logic. But focusing purely on code (or purely on numbers) would have been too limiting for me. I wanted both.

As a business informatics graduate, I see myself a bit like a civil engineer. An engineer builds houses; I build software. In both cases, you create something tangible, something people can use and interact with. That’s incredibly rewarding!

My roots are in Weimar, where I grew up and played football for SC 1903 Weimar. I still feel very connected to the region.

At the same time, Berlin has become one of the most important cities in my life. During my studies, I lived in San Francisco, New York, and Shanghai—but I kept coming back. Berlin’s mix of culture, entrepreneurship, and energy is hard to match.

It’s simple—I genuinely enjoy what I do.

One book that has shaped me is The Big Five for Life by John Strelecky. It’s about defining what truly matters to you and aligning your life accordingly. What I’m doing today is very much part of that vision.

When you wake up in the morning knowing you’re working on something meaningful, motivation comes naturally. For me, that means helping innovation thrive in Germany again.

There are really two sides to that story.

On one side are Simone Rosenthal and Kathrin Schürmann, who founded caralegal out of ISiCO Datenschutz and the law firm Schürmann Rosenthal Dreyer. They recognized early on that managing data protection in Excel spreadsheets isn’t exactly inspiring - and certainly not efficient. There’s enormous expertise in the field, but it wasn’t being translated into scalable technology.

The other side? For almost ten years, I actively avoided data protection. If the data protection officer walked down the hallway in my previous job, I suddenly became very busy.

Why? Because I didn’t really understand it.

That changed when I had closer contact with the Berlin Data Protection Authority. I realized that the underlying goals of data protection are absolutely valid. These laws exist to protect people, every single day. And many compliance processes can actually be streamlined significantly with the right approach.

That’s when the idea took shape: What if we built a tool that truly supports companies instead of overwhelming them?

Exactly. I met Simone and Kathrin more or less by coincidence through mutual contacts, and we immediately clicked.

They had deep expertise in what needs to be done from a legal and compliance perspective. I had the technical background to turn that expertise into a scalable product. It was a perfect constellation.

Our innovation culture rests on three pillars.

First, expertise. Simone, Kathrin, and our entire team bring exceptional professional depth. They know the daily reality of data protection and understand exactly where processes are inefficient, overly manual, or unnecessarily complex.

Second, customer proximity. We involve our customers closely and intentionally reserve capacity in our quarterly planning for their feedback and requests. That allows us to integrate improvements directly, instead of postponing them for months—as often happens in less agile organizations.

Third, technical excellence. Early in my career, a mentor at Share Now taught me something I’ll never forget: developers always need 20% capacity for technical debt.

Think of it like this: if you keep cutting down trees, eventually your axe becomes dull. In software terms, that means messy code, technical shortcuts, and declining performance. So we deliberately schedule time to “sharpen the axe.” That’s how we ensure we don’t just generate ideas - we actually implement them at a high standard.

Appreciation is fundamental to how we work. This means that I don't simply dismiss suggestions or questions. 

If a customer tells us they don’t understand something, my first reaction isn’t defensiveness, it’s curiosity. What can we improve? How can we communicate more clearly?

The same applies internally. Too often, experienced professionals dismiss ideas from younger colleagues because “we’ve heard that before.” My response is: If we keep hearing it, maybe we should act on it.

I’m also incredibly proud that we’ve built a team of proactive people. They take ownership. They bring energy. They look at challenges and say, “Let’s solve this together.”

And that brings me to teamwork. Even complex challenges become manageable when everyone rolls up their sleeves. That’s something new team members often point out: they feel the collective drive.

There have been many. The launches of our AI assistant and risk management solution were particularly meaningful. We didn’t just digitize spreadsheets, we built what I would call a “digital paralegal.” Seeing that vision come to life was powerful.

Another highlight was our summer event in 2024. After months of preparation, sitting together with our invitees in the sun - it was a simple moment, but incredibly energizing!

Marketing. [laughs]

It may sound trivial, but stepping into a CEO role meant confronting entirely new disciplines. I had to learn quickly, but also humbly accept when I’m not the expert.

I used to think marketing was a checklist: execute ten steps and it works. Now I understand it’s much more nuanced. Positioning, storytelling, timing - it’s an art!

For me, leadership means constantly learning while also knowing when to bring in people who are better than oneself in a specific field.

One topic that remains deeply important to me is the digitalization of healthcare. There’s a personal reason behind that. My grandfather’s cancer was diagnosed far too late. I firmly believe earlier detection could have changed the outcome.

The COVID-19 pandemic also exposed how fragmented data systems can hinder effective diagnosis and response.

With caralegal, we’re also presenting a reliable data protection solution for healthcare. More broadly, our ambition is not just to enable compliance—but to empower companies through data protection.

There’s a difference. We don’t just help organizations meet regulatory requirements. We help them build trust, gain efficiency, and unlock potential.

That’s what makes our vision unique. We want to help shape a world in which companies succeed because of data protection - not in spite of it.