Having it all from one source is simply more convenient than sourcing a separate provider for every part.
Martin Brehme, Managing Director, Biting Bit GmbH
Most companies that walk through Biting Bit's door in Berlin don't arrive asking to be innovative. They arrive with a problem. "Companies mostly don't come to us because they want to be innovative," says Martin Brehme, the firm's Managing Director. "They realise they have an innovation problem — that in certain places they need to get more onto the road, because nobody has a crystal ball." Founded in 2006 as a pure software-development shop, Biting Bit has spent nearly two decades learning that great code is rarely the thing that makes a project succeed. Today it calls itself an innovation workshop, and its job is less about building the cleverest technical solution than about getting innovation, as Brehme likes to put it, "onto the road."
An Innovation Problem, Not an Innovation Wish
Brehme started programming at the age of ten, and for years the thrill was the technology itself. Then a pattern began to nag at him: some projects, beautifully and quickly engineered, simply didn't land, while others — sometimes less polished — thrived. The difference, he found, was rarely the software. It was the things around it: change management, internal communication, user-centred design from day one rather than as an afterthought.
That realisation reshaped the company. Biting Bit codified it into a method it calls re/DEEM®, a six-stage process whose most distinctive bookends are an honest readiness check at the start and what Brehme calls "momentum" at the end. The principle is to start small, make it measurable, and prove it works before scaling.
The best part is when our clients suddenly walk through the halls with their shoulders back, saying: look, we can be innovative after all.
Martin Brehme, Managing Director, Biting Bit GmbH
The point, he argues, is that innovation is no end in itself. For one client, Berlin Recycling, that meant an AI-driven morning briefing for refuse drivers facing chaotic early starts and complex routes — a personalised "radio" naming each driver and vehicle, folding in weather, traffic and route changes. "The drivers love it," Brehme says. "It's wonderful to see how well it's actually received. Those are the projects we love, because we create real impact."
Survival of the Best Adapted
Brehme reaches for biology to explain why none of this is optional. "It's not the strongest that survives, but the best adapted," he says. "Companies have to be innovative whether they want to or not — if they want to matter in the future, they have to run experiments." The numbers, he notes, are unforgiving: "The half-life of a company in the S&P 500 used to be 50 or 60 years. Today it's only 20." Markets reinvent themselves faster than ever, and even large, tanker-like organisations have to learn to turn.
That is where a partner can help. "We can be the speedboat you send out," Brehme says — the small, fast craft that checks whether there really is an island worth steering the whole fleet toward. It is a role that suits Biting Bit's client base, which skews toward mid-sized and large enterprises rather than early-stage startups, and it explains a portfolio that reaches into the automotive world: the firm built the myVolkswagen work for CARIAD, Volkswagen's software arm, among other projects for large German corporates.
The Hammer and the Nail
If there is one trend Brehme treats with measured caution, it is artificial intelligence. Two years ago, he says, one in ten conversations at digital industry events touched on AI; now it's nine in ten. He is candid about what the technology actually is. "It's essentially autocomplete on steroids," he says — astonishing in what it makes possible, but no oracle. "If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. AI is a hammer now, but you don't always have to drive in nails."
His scepticism is grounded, not reflexive. Studies show many AI projects fail, he points out, because they are "actionism" — motion without a business case. He describes AI's real limitation with a domestic image: ask his six-year-old son to draw, and the brief drifts within minutes from tree to garden. "What you actually hope for from AI is: paint me a picture — and that normally takes days, weeks of concentration. AI can't hold that focus on the core task for very long yet, nor understand well enough what it's really about." His prescription is the same one he applies to every project: define the problem first, name the metrics you expect to move, and only then decide whether AI is the right tool.
Where the Three Lines Cross
Ask Brehme to name Biting Bit's foundations and he lists three: technology, creativity and strategy. His Creative Director, Matthias, who joined two and a half years ago, sharpens the idea. "Biting Bit isn't really built on three separate pillars," Matthias says. "It's an intersection. When creativity, technology and strategy come together, a whole new field opens up — opportunities that classical agencies or classical technology firms can't tap, because they lack exactly this crossover."
Matthias is an unusual fit for a company born in code. A former copywriter who later took an MBA, he describes his role, in the words of the company's own website, as "professional Vortänzer" — the one who dances out front. "I'm not a designer," he says plainly. "My job is to solve problems creatively and bring people along." That work depends on translators. "You need bridge builders — people who understand a bit of both," he says, because design and engineering collide more often than not. "Good design is definitely not the cleanest code. Sometimes it's the extra loops that make the big difference."
Good creativity is a dictatorship. Decision by committee kills everything.
Matthias, Creative Director, Biting Bit GmbH
His definition of good design is human, and deliberately so. "Functioning design is something anyone can do, especially in the age of AI," he says. "But design that's fun and intuitive — that makes the real difference." It is a conviction that runs to the heart of the firm's slogan, painted on the wall behind him: Human Made Digital. "There are human factors that AI won't be able to replace for a long time, and they're exactly what makes the difference in design," Matthias says. "Design is feeling."
Everything From One Source
Running a workshop like this generates a great deal of unglamorous work behind the scenes — and a steady stream of financial admin. Biting Bit discovered its financial platform, fittingly for a digital firm, in the most analogue way possible: by post. "We came across Vivid in the classic way, through the mail," Brehme says. The owners were intrigued enough to try it. The first draw was practical. "What made us want to try it was the cashback," Brehme says — money back on everything the company spends. But the relationship deepened from there, and not always where they expected.
What sealed the choice was breadth. Biting Bit had previously used Pliant for certain needs, but wanted to consolidate. "It's a complete platform that doesn't just think in terms of a business account plus virtual cards," Brehme says. "Those are the hygiene factors. But things like Cashback and the Business Brokerage are what matter when you want your finances handled holistically."
We came for the cashback and the good reputation. But it was the Business Brokerage, with its options to diversify, that turned out to be far more relevant for us.
Martin Brehme, Managing Director, Biting Bit GmbH
For its books, the firm's tax adviser works in DATEV, so it relies on the DATEV export — and Brehme is honest about the limits as well as the value. "We'd love to see it integrated even more deeply," he says, "but we're genuinely satisfied with how much it already supports our processes." The team hasn't used every feature — the AI assistant, for one, simply passed them by — but on the core job, keeping an overview of cash flow and timing, Vivid earns its place.
Vivid's platform has helped us enormously to keep an overview of which transactions need to run at which times — to really understand these processes holistically and to scale better.
Martin Brehme, Managing Director, Biting Bit GmbH
It is the same instinct that drives the rest of the business: pick the tool that does the whole job well, prove it works, and build from there. Innovation, Brehme has learned, is rarely about the biggest idea in the room. It is about the smallest one you can actually get onto the road — and the momentum that follows.
