"I was a thirty-year-old software engineer who could slip into the acute phase of leukemia at any moment and be dead in six months. If I was going to create a legacy, I'd have to do it by sticking to what I knew best."
--Mike Jetter
Sometimes companies spring to life fully-formed, engineered down to the
rug color by savvy entrepreneurs intent on capturing an untapped market. This is not how a
software company called Mindjet came to be. On the contrary, the company's co-founders, Mike
and Bettina Jetter, never intended to start their own company. In Germany, where the Jetters
were born, raised and married, the preferred route to success was to get a good job in a stable
company and work your way up the ladder. Then unexpected events put the Jetters off of that
path for good.
In the winter of 1989, Mike Jetter had just begun his first job as a
computer engineer when he was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. Mike, Bettina and a
close circle of friends spent the next year-and-a-half struggling to save his life … and won.
Or, so it seemed. Three years later, a relapse sealed him inside the isolation wing of a cancer
ward with little chance of survival. An ambitious young man facing his own mortality, Mike
resolved to leave his final mark on the world -- a new breed of software that would turn ideas
into images and images into action.
The Jetter's software laid the groundstone for a multimillion-dollar,
award-winning company called, Mindjet, www.mindjet.com. More important, the battle against
cancer transformed their lives, helping them understand the true meaning of success. Both have
published their story as the book, "The Cancer Code - How a journey through leukemia changed
the way people work." Today Mike and Bettina Jetter live in San Francisco, Calif., and travel
frequently to Europe to stay connected to friends and family.
