From Babylon to PerfectXL
The Starting Point
On 23 January 2013, Felienne Hermans received her PhD from Delft University of Technology with her professor Arie van Deursen on the topic Analyzing and Visualisation Spreadsheets. This thesis is the basis of PerfectXL’s software and working method.
Prototyping
A good idea is not yet a useful product. Not by a long shot. In September 2013, Matéo Mol became managing director of the tiny company. He had studied econometrics, but worked as a publisher at De Volkskrant, among other things, where he always asked himself the question: What does our client really want? So he started at PerfectXL by mapping what spreadsheet builders really need to create reliable models.
Early Adopters
Development needs fans. A crowdfunding in 2014 raised as many as 175 big fans plus the capital needed to fund development. Yes!Delft supporting with know-how and space. International asset manager Robeco was our first fan as a customer. And still the most fanatical PerfectXL users work at Robeco.
Version 1.0
In the first phase of development, PerfectXL was still a single tool. Only later were the components for visualisation, risk finding and comparison developed separately to serve the user even better. In 2015, the first version of PerfectXL was ready for clients
Step by step developing
- December 2015: PerfectXL Server 1.0
- August 2017: PerfectXL Server 2.0
- November 2019: PerfectXL Compare 1.0
- October 2020: PerfectXL Explore 1.0
- October 2021: PerfectXL Highlighter 1.0
- April 2023: PerfectXL Risk Finder 1.0
- June 2024: PerfectXL Add-in in Microsoft App Source
And growing fans
