Berlin Metropolitan Area
One thing keeps proving itself across 200+ companies and fifteen years: the founders who scale consistently treat market qualification as a permanent discipline, not a milestone they passed. Every new geography, every new buyer segment, every new industry requires the same rigorous investigation, whether you are pre-seed or Series B. Most do not have someone whose job it is to do that work honestly. I get the right people on the phone, ask the questions that get honest answers rather than polite ones, and map the barriers standing between a product and someone actually buying it. The ones that look negligible from inside the company are usually the ones that matter most. That means walking into client meetings with you, not just preparing you for them. Asking why, why now, what has to be true for this to close. Understanding the stakeholder network a client needs to convince before they can say yes, not just the person you are already talking to. I have done this with over 200 companies across markets and sectors. A startup approaching infrastructure developers rebuilt its entire business model around a single discovery: the spatial data nobody was willing to pay for as a developer tool became a premium product the moment it was repositioned for insurers pricing project risk and asset owners negotiating premiums. Different buyer, different price point, different company. A company chasing a massive food tech opportunity in India found out within three months that the infrastructure their technology required existed in perhaps 20% of their target supply chain. We advised against the entry. Those three months saved them from years of the wrong bet. The founders I work best with come with their own questions and a genuine appetite to be challenged. They understand that selling is not a department. It is the founder's job, the co-founder's job, and the job of every person in the first ten hires. What I build with them over time is not reliance on my judgment but a more rigorous version of their own: sharper at qualifying, better at investigating, more honest about what the evidence actually says. I work on retainer with founders building in technically complex, regulated sectors. Deep Tech · Healthtech · Climate Tech · Mobility and Logistics · AI and Emerging Technology
Founder sparring and strategic advisory across technically complex, regulated markets. Current focus on companies navigating EU market entry, commercial strategy, and regulatory complexity. Also work with VC funds and family offices as an advisor across portfolio companies navigating commercial strategy, market expansion, and go/no-go decisions in complex markets. Selected mandates: LW3 | Digital Product Passport platform | EU market entry and commercial strategy under ESPR regulation Freeing.AI | Renewable-powered AI infrastructure | EU market exposure, fundraising advice and commercial positioning
India market development and cross-border advisory. Helped companies from Europe and North America assess and enter India through structured market discovery, demand validation, and stakeholder mapping. Built a founder engagement platform with a monthly outreach database of 10,000+ prospects: 250+ accepted invites per session, 50 to 80 attended live, across Europe, UK, and North America. Selected mandates: LLA/Recordis | Canadian healthtech | India Market Discovery Sprint: market validation, barrier analysis, go/no-go recommendation Tiltsun | Solar farm robotics | Fundraising strategy and investor positioning in European climate tech EU Delegation to India | Science and Innovation Division | Bilateral innovation programme development and stakeholder engagement via Ginger SOFRECO
Strategic advisory to the Science and Innovation Division of the EU Delegation to India and Bhutan on bilateral innovation programme development and stakeholder engagement. Provided market intelligence on the Indian innovation ecosystem, supported the positioning of EU research and innovation instruments in the Indian market, and engaged cross-sector stakeholders across focus areas including EV battery recycling and green hydrogen.
The EU-India Innocenter was a EUR 3M Horizon 2020 initiative I built from scratch: consortium formation, competitive EC tender, programme architecture, and four years of operational delivery across six countries. It is where the market validation and barrier analysis methodology at the centre of my advisory work today was built and stress-tested at scale. Working directly with 125+ European scaleups across deep tech, climate tech, and healthtech, I ran structured go/no-go decisions and demand discovery for companies considering India entry. We reduced market entry timelines from 24 to 9 months and achieved a 33% lasting market entry rate, connecting each cohort to Indian corporate buyers including Mahindra, Reliance, and ITC. One company, HYDRAO in water management, reconceived its product entirely after we identified price sensitivity as the real adoption barrier rather than the technical fit the founder had assumed. The investigation changed both the product and the commercial model.
Designed and built the German Accelerator India programme from scratch: a BMWK-funded market entry programme for German technology scaleups entering India. This is where the market validation methodology was first developed and tested: demand discovery, barrier analysis, stakeholder mapping, and honest go/no-go discipline. Worked directly with 20+ companies across three cohorts, running in-country exploration, structured corporate matchmaking, and readiness assessment. Built the Indian corporate partner and mentor network that later scaled into the Innocenter.
T-Hub is India's largest public-private innovation hub. I was the first hire into the international function and conceptualised, built, and ran T-Hub's International Market Access unit from nothing: 10+ cross-border programmes, 50+ international delegations annually, 80+ events reaching founders, corporates, and investors across 50 countries. Built 15+ international partnerships including fundraising to sustain the programme infrastructure. The work ran in both directions: international companies entering India and Indian startups expanding abroad. That dual perspective, understanding what each side needs from the other, is the foundation of the cross-border market intelligence I bring to advisory work today. Daily engagement with DPIIT (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade), Invest India, DST (Department of Science and Technology), Niti Aayog (India's national policy institution), and Indian corporate partners including Mahindra, Reliance, and ITC built the institutional relationships and market fluency that made every subsequent programme and advisory mandate more effective. The network of 500+ stakeholders across governments, investors, corporates, and founders that emerged from this role is what allows me to get honest answers quickly when a founder needs to know what is actually true about a market.