Highlights
Camille Canon
Camille Canon is a serial entrepreneur, advisor, and ardent believer in the importance of social change. She has successfully led small teams to create e-commerce and affiliate platforms, launch native apps, and to develop real estate initiatives focused on community building and affordable housing. She recently joined the Purpose Foundation to support their US efforts, building out their communications and operations strategies. In her free time, Camille enjoys hiking in Northern California, tending to her plants, and cooking.
Armin Konjalić
Armin is managing startup and investor relations at Humaniq, the blockchain solution for financial inclusion of the unbanked population. Humaniq team believes that with proper access to banking and financial services, the poorest 2 billion, will experience an unprecedented economic renaissance that will sustainably improve their lives. Armin‘s goal is working with startups and impact investors that are passionate about solving real-life problems of Africa and emerging world.
Alexander Kühl
Alexander is an economist and investor. Alexander studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at University of Oxford and University College London. Working for a leading economic consulting firm (NERA), he has advised international corporations, governmental organizations and financial institutions on matters relating to mergers and acquisitions, competition, finance, regulatory issues and Due Diligence.
Alexander co-founded Purpose Ventures e.G., a coop that invests in start-ups that are steward-owned and the Purpose Network gGmbH. In addition to his work at Purpose, he is an investment advisor for a family office with a 100% impact portfolio.
Adrian Hensen
As an identical twin Adrian experienced the magic and opportunities of trust and real collaboration from his early years on. Adrian is a business psychologist and worked for a strategic brand consultancy (DEBA GmbH) advising national and international SMEs. He was part of the management board of a successful start-up (Absolventa GmbH) where he was responsible for a sales and customer support team with up to 40 colleagues generating strong and sustainable growth. He is proud to have co-created a very successful organisationa and especially a sales team that was completely build on long term thinking, trust and self-responsibility instead of short term pressure. As co-founder of Purpose Ventures and Purpose Network gGmbH he is proud to co-create purposeful organisation, and help to rethink ownership to transform the economy.
Achim Hensen
Born as an identical twin Achim is passionate about the power of relationships and trustful collaboration. Today he is a business psychologist and studied management and entrepreneurship. He worked for Startsocial – a program to transfer knowledge from the private sector to social projects. As a consultant and research analyst he worked in China, Singapore and the US for the management and culture development consultancy nextpractice. At Germany based company Traum-Ferienwohnungen (an online marketplace for holiday rentals) he was responsible for product management, company building and organizational development. Here he facilitated a transformational process to a bossless organization with 140 people. Achims passion is to improve the way companies work -building and scaling organizations that bring companies to the full potential and give employees control over their work. Achim co-founded purpose to enable companies to sustainably change their DNA and support value-driven organisations to co-create an economy that serves people and society.
Loic Le Pichoux
Loic Le Pichoux is the CEO and a Co-Founder of Klear, a unique platform combining Peer-to-Peer Lending and Financial Education.
Loic brings in 20 years of experience in Cetelem and BNP Paribas Personal Finance, having occupied various C-Executive positions in many countries. He had been the CEO of Cetelem in Algeria and was the CEO of BNP Paribas Personal Finance in Bulgaria just before leaving this big banking group.
Gathering a team of experienced professionals from the industry having previously worked with him, Klear was created in Bulgaria with the idea to build a sustainable activity, fair and transparent.
Wili Miettinen
Elizabeth Osterloh
With over 10 years experience in communications and five years dedicated to tech evangelism in Berlin’s startup scene, Liz’s passion lies in unearthing great work at the intersection of marketing and tech – and making sure the world hears about it.
Liz first joined DCMN as Head of International Communications in 2015 before shifting to work directly with the tech teams, where she is responsible for promoting the company’s state-of-the-art marketing analytics and automation tools. She is the voice of the company’s tech and product teams, ensuring that stakeholders both internally and externally get the most out of DCMN’s products.
Prior to DCMN, Liz worked in marketing and communications at SaaS company CloudControl, worked as a freelance journalist and political consultant, and gained her MBA from the Berlin School of Economics and Law.
Matthias Riedl
Matthias Riedl co-founded DCMN with the mission of combining technology and media expertise to help digital businesses scale rapidly with trackable, ROI-driven offline and online campaigns.
At DCMN, he is responsible for strategic growth and manages key clients and partner relationships across the globe. Drawing from his experience as a serial entrepreneur in the e-commerce space, he knows exactly how to address the needs of digital businesses.
Before DCMN, Riedl founded and managed several e-commerce ventures, and previously worked as a product manager in the music industry. In 2010, he founded DCMN with long-time business partner Andreas Dengler. An early mover in performance-driven TV ad campaigns, DCMN has helped more than 170 digital brands scale their businesses.
Gabriel Dombri
Product strategist with a digital marketing background (9+ years). Currently leading Tapptitude to become Europe’s top mobile product agency
Ben Lee
Ben Lee is a tech influencer, Inc. 30 Under 30 Entrepreneur, and cofounder of the digital creative studio Rootstrap.
Fabian Heilemann
Wabwire Joseph Ian
Wabwire is a new breed of a creative Entrepreneur in Africa. Founder of KQ Hub Africa a virtual African CreativeArts Hub.
Annemieke Frank
Co-Founder, Community Builder & Communications Manager in Education on a mission helping learners discover their superpowers.
Alexander Bojer
Before starting Anivo, Alex was a Manager with Accenture and Principal with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in the insurance practice
Vinay Solanki
Vinay Solanki is Head of Commercial Growth Fund at Channel 4, the “media for equity” division of the UK broadcaster.
The “media for equity” is an alternative way for earlier stage companies to access prime media advertising inventory for small equity stakes, instead of cash. This alleviates a pain point in the advertising ecosystem; TV advertising is prohibitively expensive and difficult to understand too. Since launch in 2015, Channel 4 has completed over 10 investments in consumer digital companies, including Eve Sleep plc, Readly and Job Today, investing directly alongside VCs such as Octopus Ventures & Accel Partners amongst many others.
Vinay has 15+ years’ experience working in M&A, strategy or investments, mostly in media related businesses including Getty Images, the largest photo business in the world, and Liberty Global, the largest cable operator in Europe. Vinay holds degrees in UCL and Imperial College London.
Jan Miczaika
Jan Miczaika joined HV Holtzbrinck Ventures as a partner in 2017. Previously Jan was COO at Wooga, a Berlin-based developer of mobile games (and a HV investment). Straight out of university Jan co-founded Hitmeister, an e-commerce marketplace later sold to Real – METRO Group. Since 2007 Jan has also been an angel investor in almost 20 companies including Blacklane, Audibene (sold to EQT/Sivantos), MAR (sold to Grünenthal Pharma), Homelike, Wooga and Jodel. Jan studied Business Administration at HHL in Leipzig and in the Ph.D. program at WHU.
Alain Rodermann
Alain is founder and managing partner at Expon Capital, a VC firm based in Luxembourg, focusing on early stage exponential ventures.
Peter Haas
Peter Haas is the Associate Director of the Brown University Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative. He was the Co-Founder and COO of XactSense, a UAV manufacturer working on LIDAR mapping and autonomous navigation. Prior to XactSense, Peter founded AIDG – a small hardware enterprise accelerator in emerging markets. Peter has received both TED and Echoing Green fellowships. He has been a speaker at TED Global, The World Bank, Harvard University and other venues. He holds a Philosophy B.A. from Yale.
Till Haunschild
Till has been doing magic for over 30 years – with shows all around the world. He has perfected the skill of artfully weaving together imagination, story telling, psychology, misdirection and sleight of hand wizardry. This turned out to be very helpful on his journey as an entrepreneur. It helped him create 7 companies and captivate millions of users. Now he is teaching what he has learned to others, explaining how to imagine a future that is impossible today, and then to go out and create it, either through technology, science, or just plain old magic.
Teddy Funger
Teddy Funger is an American living in Holland. Since the age of 10 he has been fascinated with technology and entrepreneurship. Dilly dilly!
Stylianos Chiotellis
– Studies in mechanical and industrial engineering
– R&D at TU Berlin for 7 years
– IoT & Industry 4.0 expertise
Stephan Schubert
Serial entrepreneur since the late 90‘s, exited four companies in the dotcom era. Active as business angel for 10 years.
Ryan Nelson
After nearly 10 years as a US Army officer all over the world, I am searching for ways to care for the people that most of the world forgot.
Peter Poehle
Peter is the CEO and co-founder of SponsorMyEvent, the marketplace for sponsorships.
Serial entrepreneur since 2001.
Michael Hall
I design and market in the day, video, VC, proponent of tech inclusion for startups and brew craft beer with craft popcorn while painting
Louis Papaemmanuel
Director & Member of the board of The European Young Innovators Forum and Director of EU Startup Services
Jeffrey Dungen
Jeff is a first-generation Canadian of German/Austrian parents. His mission is contributing to the sustainable advancement of humanity.
Christian Sauer
Christian Sauer is the CEO of Webtrekk, a leading German customer analytics company, with 130 employees and offices in five countries.
Zhanna Jah
Musician since age 4, wrote a hip-hop song chronicling #startuplife after co-founding 2 tech companies & raising funds from 3 investors.
Maria Wagner
Maria is an Investment Director at Beringea VC and has been investing in businesses for 10 years. She was also previously MD of Birchbox UK.
Claudia Lang
Started off as a securities lawyer in Toronto, then had C-suite jobs with international life insurers.
Set up Community Life in 2015.
Isabel Bescos
Originally Spanish/Austrian, joined BlaBlaCar to do International expansion & Head of strategy in 2013, now at London-based VC Balderton
Dominik Faber
Founder & CEO of softgarden from 1999 until 2017. Now member of the board at softgarden and Founder & CEO of Granola Studios GmbH.
Thomas Schranz
Nerd, serial entrepreneur and StarCraft amateur
❤ Lisp, bootstrapping, user experience, machine learning, blockchain tech and tea.
Meeri Rebane
Meeri Rebane is the co-founder of insurtech start-up INZMO, which was also awarded as the Best Fintech Startup in Europe in 2017.
Andrew J Scott
Serial Entrepreneur and Founder 7percent Ventures
Co-Conspirator The ICE List not-for-profit entrepreneur group. Lover of flying and film.
Mathias Ockenfels
I ❤ network effects
Partner @ Speedinvest x |
Alumni: Uniplaces, PointNineCap, Naspers, ricardo |
Passion for startups, 🥊🥋 🏃 🏍 🍫 ☕
Felipe Millan
Community Builder and Growth Marketing Strategist by nature. I love networking and meeting, creative people. From Chile living in Estonia.
Jonathan Morrice
Jonathan Morrice is a tech entrepreneur, software developer, and product strategist. As the CTO and co-founder of Berlin-based enterprise goal management platform Perdoo, he owns the tech side of a fast-growing startup that has recently been selected for German Accelerator’s US expansion program in the Silicon Valley. Before founding Perdoo in 2014, Jonathan studied Electronic Engineering at the University of Southampton and worked as a software developer for companies like BP and Multi.Com.
Moojan Asghari
Passionate about the impact of AI on our lives, Moojan is a strong believer that the technology can change the world when time and space collide, where humans meet in person and create meaningful experiences.
As a community-driven advocate, Moojan built her first startup, Brandstories, as an experiential marketing platform for events focusing on the emotional connection between brands and their audience. She then co-founded Startup Sesame, which is the largest alliance of Tech events in Europe, leveraging on the value created by human interactions at Tech events.
Very recently, she has initiated Women in AI with an incredible group of women, aiming to close the gender gap in the field of Artificial Intelligence, which is lacking a drastic number of female influencers.
She holds an Industrial engineering degree and a double degree in Master in Management and Corporate Finance.
Thimo V. Schmitt-Lord
Hey there, I am responsible for all non-profit giving of Bayer and Bayer foundations in the world. Our foundation programs operate like a seed fund for impact pioneers – with a special interest in frontier life science, medicine and social innovation. Personally, I am passionate about the creation of #SocialFiction by applying purpose-driven tech innovations to the world’s biggest challenges. I love to help the transformation of business excellence into the non-profit sector and I see my key role in scouting and connecting good ideas to power, knowledge, and funding. My favorite quote: “if you want to be a startup billionaire, you just have to solve a billion peoples’ problem”. Let’s create #SocialFiction together!
Paris Petgrave
Paris Petgrave is the CEO of We Love Work, an award winning human capital management platform that helps companies grow faster by auditing their organisational culture to improve people management and hiring. Paris is also the founder and investor in Rare Seed Capital a UK based investment firm that invests in early stage UK tech startups solving the world’s biggest problems. Previous to this Paris spent 8 years as a headhunter running her own firm working with large corporate clients such as Walmart, Barclays and Harrods, during her spare time she made a number of investments in property and small business. In 2013 Paris launched her first startup Accelerator Kaleidoscope enterprise, in partnership with the UK’s largest provider of startup finance Start Up Loans company. During this period Paris mentored over 250 startups and invested up to £250K of startup finance to the best founding teams. Paris is a passionate entrepreneur and advocate for women in tech and entrepreneurship. In 2017 she was listed as the top 100 EMpower leaders in the Financial Times.
Itxaso Del Palacio
Itxaso is an Investment Partner for Microsoft Ventures. She is based in London and is responsible for the investments in Europe. Previously, Itxaso was a Principal at Lepe Partners where she led investments in venture growth companies in digital media and consumer technologies. Prior to that, she was at EC1 Capital investing in early stage startups and helping them build and commercialize their technologies. Itxaso is a Kauffman Fellow and holds a BSc and MSc in Engineering as well as a PhD focused on Economics and Venture Capital. Itxaso has also taught entrepreneurship in many institutions including Imperial College and University College London.
Alex Spain
Alex is a Senior Associate at Atomico where he has worked on the investment team for over 3 years, covering the DACH region and sector focus on fintech, consumer, and proptech. He works with portfolio companies such as GoEuro, Lendinvest, Lilium, Scandit, and Knewton. Prior to joining Atomico, Alex worked at Bain and Company for 2 years, working across private equity, telecoms, and financial services. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with a first class BA in English.
Holger Seim
Holger Seim is co-founder and CEO of Blinkist, a bite-sized-learning service that condenses knowledge from great nonfiction into powerful little packs. He co-founded Blinkist in 2012 with a vision to inspire people to never stop learning and grew it into a global brand with customers in more than 140 countries. Holger drives the company’s strategy & growth initiatives. Before co-founding Blinkist, Holger worked with in-house consulting and commercial management of digital growth markets for Germany’s biggest telco company.
Daniel Schneider
Daniel Schneider conducts since April this year, the Oetker Digital Factory. Digital Factory is working to strengthen it digital product development, services, and data usage for the companies of the Oetker Group as part of Oetker Digital. With Oetker Digital, the Oetker Group wants with its well-known FMCG brands (eg Dr. Oetker, Radeberger, Coppenrath & Wiese, Bionade, Henkell sparkling wine) respond to the changes brought about by digitization and open up new business. Daniel is infected with the Internet virus since he administered and founded a shop for board games and role playing the mid 90’s first Linux server. He studied communications at the University of Erfurt and received his doctorate at Stanford University in Communications and Psychology. After five years as a consultant to the Boston Consulting Group, primarily in the financial services, he took over in 2013 a management position in product management at Zalando. Most recently, he was responsible for the development of the fashion Discovery App “Fleek” before joining Oetker Digital.
Sia Houchangnia
Sia Houchangnia is part of Seedcamp’s investment team, identifying and investing early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. With an MSc in International Management from ESADE Business School, Sia started out crunching numbers and analysing data at EY and UBS before joining Seedcamp back in 2014. Although Seedcamp is sector agnostic, Sia has a particular interest in fintech, blockchain technologies and more generally businesses that smartly leverage data to shake up large, old-fashioned industries.
Jennifer Kanyamibwa
Jennifer Kanyamibwa is a Program Manager at Slack for the Communication Design team, where she leads the strategy and execution of Slack’s internal and external global creative projects. Prior to Slack, Jennifer was a Consulting Project Manager at Wolf & Wilhelmine where she managed global brand strategy projects for Nike, Inc.
Jennifer also worked in Berlin as Special Advisor to the CEO/Founder of Tech Open Air (TOA), Europe’s largest interdisciplinary technology festival with 20,000 attendees and 120 speakers from around the world spanning across technology, science and the arts. Prior to TOA, Jennifer was a Project Manager at Bloomberg LP where she managed global finance projects including an award winning, year-long project where she led Engineering, Research and Development (R&D) and Global Payroll teams in São Paulo, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London and New York City in the design and implementation of a new global payroll system.
Jennifer started her career in government, public policy and social justice working at the New York City Mayor’s Office, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Sankofa.org. Within her various roles, she has led and supported rigorous policy evaluation, extensive grant implementation and large scale mobilization initiatives on teams at the forefront of pressing public policy issues including social impact bonds (SIBs), government innovation and police brutality.
She holds a Master in International Affairs with a focus on Technology, Media & Communications from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), a Master in Public Policy with focus on Public Management from Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany and a BA in Political Science & Women and Gender Studies from Douglass College at Rutgers University.
Jennifer has lived, worked and studied in New York City, Brussels and Berlin and came to America as a refugee from Rwanda in the early 1990s.
Christopher Steinau
Christopher joined Northzone in 2016 as an Investment Manager, where he works with companies like LEMONCAT and Personio. Before joining Northzone, Christopher co-founded Uncover, the award-winning app enabling London diners to discover and book the city’s most desirable restaurants. Building the company was a lesson in doing things fast, and with focus. After having acquired hundreds of thousand users and generated millions in revenues for their restaurants, the team exited to Velocity. Christopher started his career in banking at Deutsche Bank and Sal. Oppenheim in Germany. He holds an MBA from the London Business School and a Diplom-Kaufmann from the EBS, Wiesbaden.
David Mozes
David studied economics in Groningen and started his career as an investment banker at Kempen & Co. He loves revolutionizing industries, co-founding a company called LED Lease to offer innovative lighting services before joining venture capital landscape. At Seedrs, the biggest equity funding platform of Europe, he is responsible for the expansion into the Benelux region.
Eric Pfarl
Erik is the CIO & co-founder of SearchInk, a machine intelligence company that unlocks knowledge and unleashes human resources. Based in Berlin, it serves enterprise customers to extract structured data from arbitrary documents. Eric is a serial entrepreneur and is passionate about developing problem-oriented products by thoughtfully applying new technologies around the principles of user-centered design.
Tim Bibow
Tim Bibow is a founder and CEO of Stilnest, an influencer commerce platform. The company’s philosophy is ‘people are the next brands’ and thus, their international team empowers creatives, bloggers, and influencers from around the world to create and grow their own brand empire with lifestyle products. This mission has led to the creation of over 70 influencer-driven micro brands since early 2015 with top-tier accounts generating more than $1M in sales. While Stilnest initially focused on jewelry, it has expanded into new verticals like stationery and apparel so far this year, with more to come in late 2017.
Daniel Keiper-Knorr
Former ski instructor and StockBroker, then startup founder, now Investor: Creating things and partnering with beginners to guide them to excellence runs like a golden thread through his life. His broad experience and network in the German, Austrian and Swiss media industries, in private banking and stock broking helps him to be a successful business angel. Daniel founded his first company at the start of the new millennium. He later pivoted the company towards mobile and in 2004 formed 3united, a 3-way merger that created a top European player in mobile content. Early 2006, 3united was acquired by VeriSign for € 55M. Since 2007 Daniel has been active as a Business Angel and consultant and has invested in five startups in Austria and Switzerland. As Co-CEO of Speedinvest, Daniel is responsible for investor relations and business development for our portfolio companies.
Marie-Helene Ametsreiter
Marie-Helene is a telecommunications industry expert having obtained extensive experience in the Telecom field during her 13-year career in several marketing and general management positions in Western and South-Eastern Europe. She filled a variety of roles in Mobilkom Austria, including Head of International and Head of Strategic Market Planning and Research. She then became responsible for Sales and Marketing for VIPnet, Croatia’s first private mobile phone network. She proceeded to become the VIPnet CEO, and President of the Board, positions she held for over 3 years. From March 2011 Ms. Ametsreiter was heading the corporate sustainability department at OMV AG, one of Austria’s largest listed industrial companies. Since 2014 Ms. Ametsreiter is partner of Speedinvest – Austria’s largest Venture Capital Fund. Speedinvest has offices in Vienna and Silicon Valley and is investing in digital startups in the CEE region.
Fabian Westerheide
Fabian Westerheide is an entrepreneur, author, speaker and investor with a passion for Artificial Intelligence. For years Fabian gives inspiring talks about Artificial Intelligence. In the past, he has spoken for several TEDx conferences, international events, NGOs, universities, and corporations. As an expert in Artificial Intelligence, Fabian has given several interviews, guest articles and podcasts in various magazines, TV channels, blogs, and podcast. With his own investment firm Asgard – human VC for AI, Fabian invests in young AI companies in the field of drones, robotics, language and process optimization. Additional Fabian is the author of the entrepreneurship blog bootstrapping.me and organizes one of the world largest AI conferences every year called Rise of AI. Fabian holds a Master degree in Strategic and International Management from the University of St. Gallen and a Bachelor degree in Business Administration from the University of Münster.
Fabian Dittrich
Fabian is a born traveler with an appetite for adventure that has taken him around the world. While driving and old Mercedes from Berlin to Cape Town, a string of events led to a job with a fast-growing startup in London. Here, he spent 18 months working a crazy schedule of 90 hour weeks and several weekly flights. By creating his own startup and running it as a nomad company from his Land Rover Defender, Fabian found a way to combine work and travel. Today, helpando is a profitable company with several hundred clients, many of them Fortune 500, across 4 continents. Fabian is currently working on turning his travel diaries and journals into a book.
Nikolas Samios
Nikolas Samios is Managing Partner of the COOPERATIVA Venture Group, a platform that provides agile yet meticulous support in all things venture for themselves and like-minded entrepreneurs based on 15 years of first-hand experience as founders, angels, venture capital managers, and LPs. Together with his team, Nikolas covers 360° of the venture capital life cycle: Direct, indirect and LP investments in startups, support in their fundraising and exit efforts, venture-centric family office services and the inception and operation of VC funds in cooperation with leading sector experts. The COOPERATIVA partners have made more than 200 venture deals, write-offs, and exits, including Delivery Hero (IPO @ Frankfurt Stock Exchange), Scalable Capital (exit to BlackRock), SONOS (exit to KKR) and AppFolio (IPO @ NASDAQ). Beyond that, Nikolas provides founders and investors with detailed insights into the structuring of venture financing rounds in his series of lectures titled “Venture Capital Master Class” and is currently writing an elementary book on this topic titled DEALTERMS.VC.
Olaf Koch
Olaf Koch has been with METRO AG since 2009, When He which appointed a member of the Management Board and served as CFO until December 2011. As of January 2012, he appointed what Chairman of the Management Board. Prior to joining METRO, Olaf what Managing Director Operations at the private equity company Permira investment consulting GmbH, Which he joined after a tenure at DaimlerChrysler AG, where he occupied a number of managerial positions: from 2002 to 2007 he what Member of the Board of management of the Mercedes Car Group, where he what responsible for Finance, Controlling and Strategy. Prior positions at DaimlerChrysler included an appointment as Vice President for Corporate e-Business, and Director of Corporate e-Business Strategy and Corporate War Room.
Olaf Koch came in 2009 for METRO AG, where he perceived to December 2011 as a member of the Executive Board, the position of CFO. With effect from January 2012, he was appointed CEO. Before joining METRO, Koch worked as Managing Director Operations at Permira investment consulting GmbH, which he joined after working at DaimlerChrysler AG, where he held a number of leadership positions: From 2002 to 2007 he was a member of the Executive Board Mercedes Car Group, responsible for finance, controlling and strategy. Previous positions at DaimlerChrysler included, among others, the appointment as vice president of corporate e-business as well as Director of Corporate e-Business Strategy and Management Center.
Jörg Rheinboldt
Joerg joined the Axel Springer Plug & Play team as its new CEO in September 2013. He started his first company denkwerk while studying Business Administration in Cologne in 1994. In 1999 he co-founded alando.de AG which he and his co-founders sold to eBay Inc. after 6 months. Until 2004 Joerg worked as managing director at eBay and helped to grow the company from 6 person startup to one of Germanies most successful e-commerce companies with more than €500 Mio of revenue.
After his time at eBay, Joerg took a parental leave to be with his wife and his twin sons for several months. In 2005 he started M10 Partners together with his Business Partner. They have invested in numerous Startups and have worked with several companies over the last 9 years. In 2008 Joerg co-founded betterplace.org the transparent online donation platform and non profit organization. More than 6000 projects already use their free technology and advice and more than 470.000 donors have contributed.
Joerg has worked with more than a hundred startups as shareholder and mentor at Axel Springer Plug and Play, M10 GmbH, hub:raum, Startupbootcamp, Startup Institute and as a member of the faculty at the Humboldt Viadrina School of Governance. Together with two friends, he published SimplySeven.net in 2012 – a book about internet business models. In 2014 Joerg is a co-founder of Unternehmerschule at ESCP. During his off the grid moments, Joerg spends time with his family, likes traveling, loves being outdoors, plays the drums and collects knowledge and gadgets.
Thomas Bachem
Thomas “Tom” Bachem is a passionate entrepreneur, investor and founder of several startups and initiatives, including sevenload, Lebenslauf.com and the German Startups Association. Being an avid coder and designer since his early youth, he is currently building CODE, a private university educating the software developers, digital designers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
Stephan Wirries
Stephan is a Principal at Ventech Capital and a VC for more than half a decade. Besides working on core investments for our funds with companies such as Picanova, Speexx or European Games Group, he is also managing seed investments like CrossEngage, Crobox, and Realbest.
Ventech Europe invests in the Digital Economy and Startups that drive sectors, such as Software to Design Semi-Conductors, Marketplaces, SaaS, Networks & Infrastructure, E-Commerce, to B2C Applications. With more than 650M€ raised since 1998, Ventech has invested in over 120 companies in Europe, China, Russia and in the US.
Péter Szántó
Loving user of Apple, iPhone, Spark, Yesware, Spotify, Pomodoro, GTD, and Smart Habits. Peter love great experiences. Szanto is a USC Trojan and the founder of SpringTab.com and Szanto.co. He loves great experiences! ‘Specializing’ in pursuing the things that interests him, he helps companies like Time-Warner, L’Oreal, OTP, Fashion Street and TripTrotting in digital business development to grow their revenue. Peter won the Pro Universitate award from Corvinus University of Budapest, where he graduated cum laude and was President of the Student Government.
Peter gave a TEDxYouth Talk – a life long bucket list dream. The leading Hungarian TV channel, RTL Klub featured him as host of the first StartUp and Social Media show, he is a regular speaker at Kürt Academy, Internet Hungary, and mentor at Mentorship. He was recognized as a 30 under the age of 30 by Forbes Magazine Hungarian edition, nominated to Entrepreneurs’ Role Model Award 2015. One of Peter’s projects has also been awarded Mastercard’s Mobile Banking App of the Year Award with the OTP SmartBank, where he was responsible for Customer Development and UX. Currently, he is working using smart productivity hacks to personalize the Internet. New experiment is vlogging, check it out.
Moritz Grotthuss
Moritz v. Grotthuss is a tech-nerd, innovation enthusiast, and entrepreneur. After some successful (but somehow boring) years in legal, sales and consultancy, he followed his heart and joined the early stage startup gestigon (www.gestigon.com) as a late founder and CEO in 2012. His core responsibilities covered the strategy of the company, his collection of frequent traveler cards, and most of the commercial stuff (including investor relations). Moritz walked the planks of the Pirate Summit 2012 enjoying some loud AAAARRRRRS from the fellow piratpreneurs! From 2012 to 2017 gestigon developed to be global market leader in gesture control and full body tracking solutions based on 3D data for automotive and AR/VR, had 36 employees and offices in Lübeck (HQ), Sunnyvale/Silicon Valley and Turino/Italy.
Early 2017, gestigon was fully acquired by the global automotive tier one Valeo and is, since then, taking the lead to develop Valeo’s 3D vision solutions, augmenting mobility experiences and enabling autonomous driving as well as interior cocooning. Whenever the work for gestigon does not sufficiently fill the weekend, Moritz likes supporting other startups with ‘stories from the war room’ as well as business angel investments. Moritz is married, has kids and loves – if he is not working or at home – outdoor activities such as looting, burning down villages as well as occasional torture parties.
Jevgenijs Kazanins
Jevgenijs Kazanins is one of Europe’s largest peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace TWINO lead which launched in 2015. Prior to joining TWINO in October 2015, Jevgenijs worked on the board at Estonian P2P marketplace Bondora. His earlier experience includes co-founding Campalyst, a New York based social media analytics company, and running Latvia-based digital marketing agency, Media Contacts.
Holger G. Weiss
Holger G. Weiss is founder and CEO of German Autolabs. He has over 15 years of experience managing and building technology-driven companies with innovative business models in the Future Mobility sector. He has extensive experience and expertise in the field of connected mobility. He played a vital role in the navigation software startup gate5 in Berlin, from its genesis up to its acquisition by Nokia in 2006. Gate5 was the forerunner for HERE – a map and content provider recently bought by three German car makers at a price of close to three billion Euros.
Before founding German Autolabs, Holger G. Weiss was managing director and CEO of Aupeo. Under his leadership, this music streaming startup developed into one of the leading providers of internet-based audio content for the Automotive Industry. In 2013 Aupeo was acquired by Panasonic Automotive Systems of North America. Holger G. Weiss is a board member for various technology companies and also Venture Partner at Target Partners – one of the leading VC companies in Europe. Besides his business activities he is also an enthusiastic mentor and business angel for young aspiring founders. He consults medium-sized companies as well as tech and industry related associations.
Epi Ludvik Nekaj
Epi Ludvik Nekaj is the Founder & CEO of Crowdsourcing Week, a global platform that is uniting thought leadership on the crowd economy through global conferences and summits. Epi Ludvik is one of the pioneers in the crowdsourcing ad space, an industry expert and thought leader. Epi Ludvik earned a BS in Advertising and Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC and has been a serial entrepreneur since graduation. His varied and global experiences, throughout his career, have taken him across the US and Asia, where he honed his skills in advertising and media with high-profile clients and power brands.
Ekaterina Matveeva
Ekaterina Matveeva – linguist, polyglot, memory athlete, and founder of Amolingua. She led international projects such as the blog “EuropeOnline” with her team of 6 that gathered 20,000 visitors per month and eventually turned into a basic version of a language school; Oxford-based project “E-supervisor” that consults students on their academic career. Up-to-date has had to manage over 100 people in Amolingua project on a weekly basis. She has a rich background in organising world-class events such as G20 and World Debating Championships. Kate is Scotland ScaleDo alumna. The academic background has given her an opportunity to develop Amolingua as a spin-off out of her research dedicated to relative linguistics and international education. She has published two books dedicated to language learning and effective communication, participated in TV shows promoting memory sport among young people, and started a video channel for Amolingua dedicated to languages and cultures around the globe. Her mission is to create a more connected multi-cultural multi-lingual world.
Sarah Gill
Sarah is head of brand & community building at Founders – a startup studio based in Copenhagen. Founders partners with awesome entrepreneurs to build products and tools that improve the way we work. Before Copenhagen that she spent five years in London writing about VC investment trends, European tech startups and fintech. She’s super excited to be here for her third Pirate Summit. ARRRRRRR!!!!!!!
Jurgen Appelo
Jurgen Appelo is pioneering management to help creative organizations survive and thrive in the 21st century. He offers concrete games, tools, and practices, so you can introduce better management, with fewer managers. Jurgen calls himself a creative networker. But sometimes he’s a writer, speaker, trainer, entrepreneur, illustrator, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, leader, freethinker, or…Dutch guy. Inc.com has called him a Top 50 Leadership Expert, a Top 50 Leadership Innovator, and a Top 100 Great Leadership Speaker. Since 2008, Jurgen writes a popular blog at NOOP.NL, offering ideas on the creative economy, agile management, organizational change, and personal development.
He is the author of the book Management 3.0, which describes the role of the manager in agile organizations. And he wrote the little book How to Change the World, which describes a supermodel for change management. His most recent book is called #Workout / Managing for Happiness, which offers you practical ideas to engage workers, improve work, and delight clients.
Martin Wild
Martin Wild has been Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group since May 2014. One of the pioneers of digital retail, at the age of 18 he founded the online electronics store Home of Hardware (hoh.de) in 1997, selling it a decade later to Premiere (now Sky Germany). He has been on the management of MediaMarktSaturn since 2011. As Vice President Multichannel, he handled the launch of saturn.de, his subsequent positions including CEO of redcoon. In his role as CDO, Martin Wild now heads the digital strategy and transformation of the entire MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group. Whenever robots make deliveries, customers explore products through virtual reality, or the group is enriched by innovative start-ups nurtured at the SPACELAB tech accelerator, Martin Wild and his team are usually responsible.
Gillian Davis
As a leading transformational leadership expert, Gillian knows what it takes to make teams work. She thrives when in those meaty organisational development and transformation challenges. Gillian works with fast growing digital companies like Wetransfer, ustwo, Pinterest, with their growing leadership and organizational development challenges. Gillian works with her clients to ensure a strong and healthy culture through aligning and building strong and sustainable leadership teams. When not working with clients you can find her supporting the start-up ecosystem through her work with General Assembly, Campus London, and Seedcamp. She is the host of the OverTime; Leadership 101 podcast and author of ‘First Time Leader’ which provides frameworks and tools to help leaders and their teams deliver better results faster. She brings a wealth of knowledge on how organizations are evolving, how human capital can be best utilised and what the future of leadership will look like.
Jonathan T. Mall
Jonathan is a computational Neuropsychologist turned entrepreneur. He got into machine learning while leading the Science team in an IBM Big Data Venture. Then, he founded Neuro-Flash, which uses language data from millions of consumers to determine the ideal positioning of brands and products in complex associative contexts, anywhere in the world.
Artem Kuchukov
Artem is a CEO of KEWAZO. Together with his team, they automate the scaffolding industry by improving transportation of parts during assembly. Artem did his Master’s degree in the program Advanced Construction and Building Technology at the TU Munich. During this program, he has received a holistic overview of robotics in construction. Before his arrival to Germany, Artem has studied civil engineering in Russia and worked as an operational manager in the logistics industry in the USA.
Paulina Sygulska
Paulina is a serial entrepreneur, a TEDx speaker and a founder of GrantTree.co.uk and Treehouse.london. She is also a seed investor and startup mentor, often featured as women in fintech speaker and panelist. After hours, she performs as a showgirl. At all times, she is a natural rebel who believes you will need to piss plenty of people off to truly achieve something.
Gen Ashley
Gen is the Director of Women Who Code London and is a very active leader in the Tech community in London. Aside from her involvement with Women Who Code she is a Lead for Google Women Techmakers, NASA Space Apps Challenge and Twitter Developer Community London. She is also part of the leadership committee for Ada’s List (a network for women in technology). She is co-organiser of COED:CODE, OpenTechSchool London and London Game Developers. She was the Head of Developer Outreach at Skills Matter and a former VP / Business Development Manager / Project Manager at Citigroup. In 2016 Gen helped lead Anita Borg Institute London and was actively instrumental in delivering the very first 1-Day Grace Hopper Conference in Europe which was held in London.
Ruud Hendriks
Ruud is a co-founder of Startupbootcamp, Innoleaps and The Talent Institute. Startupbootcamp accelerated over 500 companies thus far and is the largest accelerator outside the U.S with offices in 19 cities in 16 countries. Innoleaps accelerates and innovates large corporations throughout the world and The Talent Institute accelerates people teaching them amongst other growth hacking.
Ruud started his career as a DJ on board the legendary pirate station Radio Caroline. At the age of 20, he became a TV-reporter. During nine years Ruud anchored many Dutch TV programs mainly on news, current-affairs, and sports. He co-founded Sky Radio, Radio 10 and TV stations RTL4 and RTL5 and became their first program director. Under his tenure RTL became the market leading TV broadcaster in the Netherlands.
In 1992 Ruud became President of NBC Europe and transformed Superchannel into CNBC Europe. He became an executive member of TV-production company Endemol Entertainment. When Ruud joined in 1994 the company operated in 3 countries, when he left in 2001 market value had grown from 135 million Euros’ to 5.3 billion. After Endemol Ruud accepted several supervisory board positions. Ruud is a regular speaker about innovation and advisor to numerous executive boards.
Tina Klüwer
Dr. Tina Klüwer is CTO and co-founder of parlamind, a Berlin-based A.I. and NLP startup. Before founding parlamind in 2015 she worked more than 10 years as a researcher at the Language Technology department of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Communication Science department of University of Bonn, and the Computer Science department of Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics from University of Saarland. Her research and work revolves around the question how we can build machines that engage in human-like conversation using natural language.
Robin Wauters
Robin Wauters is a seasoned European technology journalist and founding editor of Tech.eu, the premier source of European technology news, data analysis and market intelligence. He was formerly the European Editor of The Next Web, and before that a senior editor at TechCrunch.
Craig Corbett
Craig Corbett is Principal at Publicize, a PR startup aiming to change the way companies approach PR. The company, which is based in New York and Medellin, Colombia, was founded by former Venturebeat writer Conrad Egusa, and is predominantly staffed by ex-journalists. The company encourages companies of all shapes and sizes to develop positive media relations and to approach PR from the perspective of the people they are pitching to: journalists.
While originally focused solely on early stage startups, the company has now expanded its offerings to larger enterprises as well, and is now working with Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft and Symantec.
As part of his role as Principal, Craig works closely with clients to help them highlight and amplify their own stories, and also to raise their profiles through thought leadership. Craig is a regular contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine on the theme of media relations and communications and has also contributed to other leading publications such as The Next Web and Adweek.
Craig is also principal at ESPACIO, a Medellin-based incubator which includes a range of publications in its portfolio including The Sociable, StartupBeat.com, TechPanda and recent acquisition Techli, along with a number of Spanish-language publications including Android Latino, Social Geek, and Soy Emprendedor. Craig is also a Judge at Parallel 18, an accelerator backed by the government of Puerto Rico that provides equity-free grants, and he is a frequent speaker on topics related to communications.
Colin Hanna
Prior to joining Balderton Capital, Colin worked at SoundCloud in Berlin where he led Emerging Market Growth. Prior to SoundCloud he was at ProSiebenSat.1 building out their media for equity business in Asia and investing for their Berlin-based E-commerce incubator. Colin began his career with three years at Goldman Sachs in New York where he worked on several Chinese internet IPOs, including Qunar (NASDAQ: QUNR), Vipshop (NASDAQ: VIPS) and Tarena (NASDAQ: TEDU). Colin has a B.A. from Princeton University in Political Science where he was also a Captain of the Men’s Swimming Team. He has competed in the United States Swimming Olympic Trials and spent his childhood in Indonesia and Hong Kong.
Till Faida
Till Faida founded eyeo GmbH 2011 in Cologne with Wladimir Palant to help run Adblock Plus, the world’s most popular browser extension, and to develop additional software that provides users more control over their surfing experience. As CEO, he manages the business side of the company and is currently working on the Acceptable Ads initiative, which seeks to establish user-friendly ad formats in the online advertising industry and broker a compromise between users who block ads and advertisers who make them.
Julian Hosp
Originally being from Austria, 31-year-old Dr. Julian Hosp was a professional kitesurfer in his early years, ranking among the top 10 in the world. He then studied Medicine and worked as a trauma surgeon. After realizing that working in a hospital would not bring him towards his true goals in life he decided to quit his medical career and moved to Asia to start his own business. Having heard about Bitcoin the first time in 2011 from a patient, he co-founded the Singapore-based Fintech company TenX in 2015, which is now valued at over 100 million Usd. He is considered as one of the most valued speakers and influencers in the blockchain ecosystem and was named as one of the top Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Experts to Follow by Influencive in 2017.
Marc Lamik
Marc Lamik is Zalando’s Head of Innovation and Partnerships. Next to having a strong product management background and currently leading Zalando’s Partnerships product, Marc has played a lead role in Zalando’s evolving agility framework, on top of leading our Innovation Lab and internal entrepreneurial incubation program. Marc was responsible for the establishment of Zalando’s International Tech Hubs, located in Dublin and Helsinki. He’s a proud father and shameless early adopter of overpriced electronic wearables.
Dean Johnson
As an accomplished design leader, writer, presenter, BBC tech pundit and Head of Innovation at Brandwidth, Dean Johnson is shaping the connected future for Film, TV, Automotive, Publishing, Music, Education and Leisure sectors with the emphasis on user experience and engagement. Dean is a Fellow and former VP of the Chartered Society of Designers and a Mentor for the British Fashion Council and Startup Sesame.
In 2016, Dean spent 24 hours in VR. Continuing to push boundaries in design and technology, in April 2017 Dean spent 48 hours in virtual reality with Sarah Jones of Coventry University, tackling 30 different immersive experiences including go-karting, a wing walk and receiving a real-world tattoo – all whilst in VR!
Dean is a top VR, IoT, CES, Industry 4.0 and Automotive Design Influencer and writes for numerous publications, his own blog ( www.activrightbrain.com ) and is the author of international #1 interactive iBook ‘Digital Publishing: The Next Steps’.
Adah Parris
An intellectual polygamist and enthusiastic curator of people, patterns, and stories. A personal branding and storytelling consultant with 20 years’ experience creating coaching, transformational change, and immersive environments. I have worked with businesses and individuals across brands, advertising, media, technology, start-ups, entrepreneurship, and education and take a Human Centred Design approach to problem-solving. I now work as a consultant, public speaker, learning designer, and coach, specializing in personal identity, personal branding, and storytelling. My clients have included ArabNet, Innovate Finance, M&C Saatchi PR, The British Council, The Startup Institute, The Hospital Club, Mindshare Huddle 2015 The EU Council, The British Film Institute (BFI) and The School of Communication Arts.
A Futurist to The Friday Club London. Launched in December 2012 this monthly invite-only mentoring event brings together the cream of London’s advertising and marketing innovators and decision-makers with some of the UK’s hottest technology start-ups. This event introduces new technologies to people who help start-ups with communication and strategy ideas whilst making personal introductions to potential partners.
Gemma Milne
Gemma is Co-Founder of Science: Disrupt – an organisation connecting the innovators, iconoclasts & entrepreneurs intent on creating change in science. Science: Disrupt produces podcasts events and editorial, and has brought together a large community (both on and off-line) of brilliant thinkers and do-ers. Gemma focuses on biotech, energy, space, health, advanced computing & changing the way we do academic research and is also a Freelance Journalist, writing for The Guardian, Adweek, Imperica & Ogilvydo, covering science, tech, culture and politics. Gemma is an International speaker having delivered keynotes at SXSW, TEDx, WPP Stream, Cannes Lions and Dubai Lynx. Previously, Gemma was the Tech Innovation Strategist at Ogilvy Labs.
Elise Quevedo
Elise Quevedo is the Author of ‘Creating a Kick-Ass Attitude’, an International Keynote Speaker and is one of the most sought after Social Media Consultants. She has been voted ‘Top 100 Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter’ by Evan Carmichael who is known for helping over 14 million Entrepreneurs worldwide and has been seen in Fox, Forbes, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal amongst others. Currently in the Top 50, Elise has beaten the likes of UK’s former Dragon James Caan, CEO of Success Magazine Darren Hardy and International Speaker Alex Mandossian. Within the top 50 you can find authorities like Richard Branson, Mike Bloomberg, Bill Rancic, Robert Kiyosaki, Peter Jones and Martha Stuart. The common thread we see on all the feedback received on her social media, is her passion for what she does. Elise gives you 100% each time no matter if there are 2 people in the room or 2000. She also developed The SMEQ (Social Media Emotional Quotient), which is the art and influence of creating, attracting and building better business relationships via Social Media.
Ange Royall-Kahin
Ange Royall-Kahin is Chief of Staff at WATTx, a Berlin-based deep tech venture builder. She leads activities related to the company’s long-term strategy, internal process optimization, communications, and portfolio support. Previously in New York City, she lead patent reform and diversity efforts for Engine, a research and advocacy group working with startups and governments to inform better policy. From 2011 to 2015, Ange worked for Google, where she started on the Patent Team in Mountain View, California, and then later focused on policy initiatives in the Washington DC office. Her tech startup upbringing began at iSchool.zm, an e-learning project in Zambia, where she managed early R&D. A native to the Washington DC metro-area, Ange now frequents the bike lanes and budget airlines servicing Berlin.
Alexander Guy
Alexander is the Head of Growth at Alkemics, a Paris-based startup building collaboration tools for the retail ecosystem. Prior to working at Alkemics, Alexander has worked in several startups and run Global marketing for the accelerator Startupbootcamp. He is also proud Pirate has spoken at Pirate Summit in the past. Talk to him about Segment, Customer.io or Intercom.
Tatjana Zabasu
Tatjana Zabasu is a Managing partner at South Central Ventures, fund manager active in the Western Balkans, and Partner at RSG Capital, Slovenia based fund manager.
She has 10 years experience in venture capital and enjoys working with entrepreneurs, is interested in technology and growing successful businesses. She currently serves on boards of four companies, ShoutEm (mobile), Efos (agritech), Edition Digital (digital publishing) and TAB Systems (home automation).
Prior to joining RSG Capital in early 2007, she was Corporate Finance advisor in Deloitte, where she primarily worked with international clients in merger and acquisition processes and business development strategies. Before that, she worked for Slovenian Ministry of Economy as a Head of the Minister’s Office and was involved in entrepreneurship and competitiveness policies implementation.
Tatjana can often be seen at start-up events as a jury member or panelist, is contributor to some tech and business portals and mentor to start-ups. In her private life, she is a mother of a teenager, loves outdoor sports and in general tries to have fun in everything she does.
Pieter Levels
I make Nomad List, Remote OK, Places to Work, Colive and am now learning 3D to launch my first VR apps. I travel to work from anywhere, bootstrap companies and only own what fits in my backpack. I also made 12 startups in 12 months. Before, I made a YouTube w/ 100+ mln views. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram or read my posts. You can pre-order my book MAKE now.
Christoph Janz
If we were an old-school VC firm we’d write something like “Christoph leads our SaaS practice”, but that would sound, well, terribly old-school. So let’s put it this way: Christoph has invested in more than 20 SaaS startups and lives and breathes SaaS.
Christoph co-founded Point Nine Capital in 2011. Before that, he co-founded two Internet startups (DealPilot.com in 1997 and Pageflakes in 2005). In 2008 he became an angel investor and discovered Zendesk, Clio, FreeAgent – and his love for SaaS.
Aurore Belfrage
Aurore Belfrage is a tech-geek-entrepreneur, angle investor, startup coach, news junkie, social media marketer, speechwriter, ex-scrap dealer, aubergine lover & a West Wing fan.
Aurore started her operational career as a scrap dealer in Stena Metal Group where she was managing director for the Czech and Italian subsidiaries/scrap yards. For the past 8 years Aurore has been working from London, Middle East, Stockholm and Silicon Valley with digital marketing, international tech startups and social media. She co-founded the global giftcard startup Wrapp with Skype founder Zennström and Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman as early investors. Global brands as well as startup entrepreneurs belong to Aurore’s on-going advisory and coaching clients. The last 2 years she has partnered with the acclaimed Middle East current affairs site Your Middle East. Your Middle East is a young, innovative company that challenges existing structures and looks for new paths with the aim to change MENA societies and the world for the better. Aurore managed, moderated and monetized their successful 10-city, no-nonsense MENA road show about startups and entrepreneurship “Saluting the Crazy and Naïve”.
Anne H. Worsøe
Portfolio Manager at Bakken & Baeck
Anne works as a Portfolio Manager at Bakken & Bæck, a world-class team of startup builders, designers, developers and artificial intelligence explorers who turn big ideas into great products and ventures. Previously, Anne founded the co-working space Nordic Innovation House in Silicon Valley, and she was the first CEO of the Norwegian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association. She has experience as a co-founder, angel investor, member of Board of Directors for startups and VCs, focusing on early stage ventures, growth and internationalization. She is passionate about helping startups scale their impact, and especially empowering female co-founders and angel investors.