Judges

Vinay Solanki is currently Head of Channel 4’s Commercial Growth Fund responsible for their “media for equity” investment activity on disruptive digital consumer businesses. The model is focused on providing high quality TV airtime in return for passive equity stakes in typically growth phase companies. Since joining in the Summer of 2015, Vinay has led 10 deals in total, including 6 equity investments in consumer businesses alongside Series A VCs (such as DN Capital, Mangrove Partners, Felix Capital, Octopus Ventures & Accel Partners, amongst others). Vinay is actively seeking interesting and high growth consumer facing companies that might benefit from access to UK TV airtime, and has an active pipeline for 2017.

Stephan is a serial-entrepreneur and founded the leading companies OnVista, Ligatus and IS.Teledata. He further has been investing into disruptive internet companies for over 15 years.

Managing Director at Startupbootcamp (iOT – London)

Startupbootcamp Smart Transportation & Energy Berlin Mentor

CEO of Lab.Coop and co-founder of Green Fox Academy. Former founder of Brickflow, a Startup Wise Guys and Startup Chile alumni company, raised seed investment. Forbes 30U30 businessman.

Clément wears two hats at Point Nine where he supports our portfolio companies with everything marketing and is also exploring trends and finding cool startups as a research analyst.

Clément was previously Marketer-in-Residence at Paris-based startup studio eFounders and co-founder of two SaaS startups: Edoboard.com & welovesaas.

Corné joined INKEF May 1, 2015 and focuses on early stage investing in the areas of enterprise SaaS & financial technology. He has 7 years of investment experience in technology.

Prior to INKEF, Corné was a VP at HPE Growth Capital, a late stage growth fund where he looked at both B2B as well as B2C business models in the areas of fintech, applied materials and enterprise software. Before joining HPE, Corné worked in the London based Technology Coverage teams of Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston, both in London where he executed several M&A transactions and IPOs. He holds a BSc in Finance from Reims Management School and a MSc. degree in Financial Management from the Nyenrode, Netherlands.

When not working with start-up companies you might find Corné on the beach playing beach volleyball (though he admits there are better countries for this particular pastime), in the kitchen cooking, spending time with his family or reading up on technology trends. Prior to his career in technology he actually worked as a roady for several years, but that’s a different story.

Andrew J Scott, Founding Partner (based in London & San Francisco) Andrew has over 20 years of experience across internet and mobile technologies, he’s founded 6 tech startups and has advised hundreds more. He’s also the Co-Founder of The ICE List, a not-for-profit group of 250+ startup Founders. Specialisms include: D2C, social & market networks and B2B SaaS.

Alexander Lüttge is passionate about future technologies and creative business solutions. In the past years he experienced the startup industry from various perspectives. At coparion he offers his experience as a founder and as an investor to startups to help them grow. He enjoys to be an analytical sparring partner to the companies with a hands-on mentality and without fear of details.

In his spare time he likes to go diving and to grow rare tree species on his windowsill.

Career: opunity, Springlane, Quadriga Capital, M.C.B. Beteiligungs GmbH (Michael Brehm)

Education: LL.B. (Bucerius Law School), MBA (WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management)

Franziska has been an investment manager with Tengelmann Ventures since 2012. She also co-manages the Impact Investing program of Tengelmann Social Ventures. Prior to that she had worked in sales and marketing with Materna and Bertelsmann and initiated a business plan competition.

Franziska studied Business at the universities of Göttingen and San Sebastián and also holds an MBA from the Berlin School of Economics and Law.

Bastian finished his studies in Business Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2009. He also holds an MBA of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (USA).

He has been with Tengelmann Ventures’ Investment Management and Controlling team since 2012, seeing through many national and international investments.

Chris is taking care of Innovation Nest’s deal flow activities and making sure that people know about Innovation Nest. He runs an invite only event called SaaS Meetup which gathers together B2B SaaS Companies, Founders, Mentors and Investors. Previously he was taking care of marketing for a Board of European Students of Technology, addressing 32 countries and over 90 universities. Life is a challenge. How big is yours?

Tobias Schulz joined HTGF in 2017 and focuses on investments in software, internet and e-commerce companies that have a strong adoption to scale.
Before joining HTGF, Tobias started in Investment Banking working for Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. As an Entrepreneur in Residence he helped to build the German unicorn Zalando SE. Tobias Schulz is the founder of several companies in the fashion and fintech industry and led the operations practice of Fashionette GmbH.
Tobias holds a B.Sc. degree from EBS University in Oestrich-Winkel in Germany, a M.Sc. degree from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, and completed Computer Science programs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Axel Nitsch focuses on B2C and enabling business models, mobile internet, ad-tech and SaaS topics. He is intrigued by outside-the-box models. Before joining HTGF in 2016, he was an Investment Manager at T-Venture, the corporate venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom AG. He began his career at United Internet AG and a Korean-German joint venture start-up.

Johannes simply enjoys what can be achieved with technology today and especially tomorrow. He holds a Master of Science in Information Systems from the University of Osnabrück and co-founded his first startup during his bachelor studies in Osnabrück.

Afterwards he joined a German media company and founded one of the Top-15 online performance marketing agencies in the DACH region. Before joining Capnamic, Johannes led corporate development and the digital investments of a media company.

In his leisure time, Johannes likes to jog and keeps a close eye on the German basketball team Artland Dragons.