December 19, 2025, 10:05 am | Read time: 5 minutes
The name Marco Börries is probably unfamiliar to most people in Germany. However, in Silicon Valley, the man is not unknown. In software circles, he is better known as “the German Bill Gates.” His company Star Division shook Microsoft’s throne in the 1990s. TECHBOOK tells the story of the young up-and-comer.
Marco Börries leads a completely normal life in Lüneburg for 15 years. The high school student participates in an exchange program that will change his life forever. He stays with host parents in the U.S. During this exchange, he gets to know the world of Silicon Valley. From then on, the young man wants to start a career in the IT world.
Marco Börries also has an idea: Computers are the new typewriters. And what do you need for that? Exactly, software for writing texts. It’s 1985. At this time, Microsoft’s Word is one of the most well-known word processing programs worldwide.
Star Division–A German Dream
At just 16 years old, Marco Börries founds his company Star Division. Since he is not yet fully legally competent, his parents have to sign the entry in the commercial register. The first product of the startup entrepreneur–although the term didn’t exist back then, Marco Börries is one by today’s standards–is called StarWriter.
StarWriter can do everything Word can, but it’s much cheaper than the software from Microsoft. This boosts the fame and revenue of the German company. Just two years later, Star Division reports sales of 1.5 million marks. By 1989, it’s already 8.5 million marks.
Marco Börries works on further ideas to market his software as effectively as possible. Like Microsoft, Star Division also develops a complete office suite with word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software. The package is called StarOffice. Now, this might ring a bell for some, as it later evolves into more well-known offshoots like OpenOffice, LibreOffice, or NeoOffice. All these software packages are based on the original source code of StarOffice.
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StarOffice Connects Innovative Ideas
Of course, StarOffice also costs only a fraction compared to Word, Excel, or PowerPoint from Microsoft. And Marco Börries goes even further. For private users, StarOffice is completely free. Only commercial customers have to pay. This business model is copied many years later by Google with its own office suite.
StarOffice is also among the first programs that can be used online via a web browser. With such innovative product ideas, the popularity of StarOffice rises rapidly. In the late 1990s, Marco Börries achieves a market share of 26 percent with his office suite. This is remarkable, as the German entrepreneur does not have the massive marketing leverage that Microsoft has.
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New Challenges
Success makes one attractive. By the late 1990s, Marco Börries is inundated with offers. IBM wants to license StarOffice for its new OS/2 operating system but ultimately decides on a competitor. Sun is more decisive in 1999 and acquires Star Division and Marco Börries along with it. Allegedly, Sun pays 70 million U.S. dollars for it.
Sun then decides to open the source code and continues to develop the office suite as free software under the name OpenOffice, which is still valid today. Marco Börries leaves Sun after just two years.
With Verdisoft, he founds a new company. The German entrepreneur wants to develop software that helps synchronize data between mobile phones and computers. In the early 2000s, this is a bold step. What today runs more or less unnoticed in the background–data synchronization–is innovative in the early days of mobile telephony.
Yahoo notices this and buys Verdisoft in 2005 for an estimated 60 million U.S. dollars. An investment in the future, as Marco Börries’ company has not yet brought a single product to market at that time. Again, the German entrepreneur moves along. And again, he doesn’t stay long.
By the way: Parallel to Star Division, Marco Börries had already co-founded the company Star Finanz in the 1980s. Through it, he developed the banking software StarMoney, which remains one of the most popular programs in the online banking business today.
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Bankruptcy with Enfore
In recent years, the previously flawless career of the “German Bill Gates” has developed some cracks. With his company NumberFour, founded in 2009, Marco Börries once again pursues a commendable path. This time, he attempts to offer a powerful yet affordable product to counter SAP’s software dominance.
It is not until 2017 that the new company launches such a product under the name Enfore. The software offered is aimed at small businesses such as restaurants, wine merchants, or smaller boutiques. For such companies, SAP programs are too oversized and too expensive when it comes to managing online reservations, the cash register, or the entire ordering system.
But this time, things don’t go as smoothly for Marco Börries. In 2024, Enfore files for bankruptcy. In July 2025, bankruptcy proceedings are opened. The Berlin public prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation against the entrepreneur on suspicion of delaying insolvency.