Past Speakers
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
