The billionaire software mogul who doesn’t want his company to grow up

Hasso Plattner didn’t even own a computer when he started his software company in 1972. So Plattner and the team he had brought with him from IBM spent nights and weekends writing code on the screens of their first customer when nobody else was around.

“It was not cozy,” recalled Plattner, who spent the next four decades turning SAP SE into Europe’s most valuable technology company and becoming a multi-billionaire along the way. “It was hard work.”