Klemens Gaida

Strategic Advisor for Open Innovation, Product Innovation, Startup Scaling & Biz Dev

Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

About

Klemens Gaida is an ICT engineer specializing in semiconductor technology and holds a doctorate in telecom system & service design. After working as a consultant and finally partner at the ICT management consultancy Eutelis Consult from 1993 to 2001, Klemens was responsible for the development and international roll-out of new service platforms & products as Executive Innovation Manager at the mobile communications group Vodafone from 2001 to 2009. He then founded the start-up incubator and innovation consultancy 1stMOVER in Düsseldorf. From 2009 to 2019, several start-ups were developed from the incubator, most recently the B2B SaaS Trusted References. As an innovation consultancy for companies and business development agencies, 1stMOVER specializes in technology business development, open innovation hubs and the development of start-ups & spin-offs in the digital, new energies and high-tech sectors. From 2016-2023, Klemens Gaida was also Managing Director of the Digital Innovation Hub Düsseldorf/Rhineland - a regional open innovation center & accelerator for startups, SMEs, large companies, universities and investors. From 2021-2023, Klemens Gaida headed the top funding program Scale-up.NRW for particularly high-growth tech startups from NRW. At the beginning of 2024, Klemens joined one of the most promising NRW scale-ups that combines DeepTech and B2B SaaS: IANUS Simulation. He worked there for six months as Chief Strategy & Business Development Officer, driving the following projects: Business Process Design, Operations Excellence Initiative, Product Platform & App Store Strategy, Product Portfolio Management, Product Management Process, Product-Market Fit Optimisation and B2B SaaS Pricing. Today Klemens is again a strategic advisor and management consultant for open innovation hubs, start-up scaling, tech product innovation management, in particular B2B SaaS, and for new business development at 1stMOVER.

Experience