Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
I'm passionate about supporting founders and developing outstanding tech companies. Therefore, my investment partner Tim Schumacher and I team up with outstanding entrepreneurs and support them as angel investors wholeheartedly. I also help developing the next generation founders as Director Founders Education of the Founders Foundation of the Bertelsmann Foundation.
The Founders Foundation is established by the Bertelsmann Foundation to support top talents with their journey to become outstanding entrepreneurs. I manage the Education Team and am responsible for the Startup School with the Program Director, Dr. Jan Brinckmann, Professor at ESADE Business School, the coworking space Founders Lab, the Accelerator Program and the Executive Education formats.
Together with my investment partner Tim Schumacher (Co-Founder of Sedo and Eyeo/AdBlock Plus), I run TS Ventures where we invest in early stage tech startups in Europe and the US. We manage a portfolio of 25+ startups with a focus on SaaS, AdTech, Marketplaces and Deep Tech: https://www.tsventures.io/
I´m responsible for executing the Microsoft for Startups program in EMEA. in this role, I lead the Microsoft EMEA startup team, that partners with business angels, investors and accelerators to support their portfolio companies with regards to their growth efforts. We ensure easy access to the Microsoft technology stack and support with engineering headcount where necessary. Through the Customer Access Program (CAP) we match corporates and startups. The CAP drives sales for our startups and supports our enterprise customers with regards to their digital transformation processes.
As the Startup Strategy Lead Central Europe (DACH + Netherlands), I lead Microsoft´s startup efforts out of an engineering team, that partners with business angels, investors and accelerators to support their portfolio companies with regards to their growth efforts. We ensure easy access to the Microsoft technology stack and support with engineering headcount where necessary. Through the Customer Access Program (CAP) we match corporates and startups. The CAP drives sales for our startups and supports our enterprise customers with regards to their digital transformation processes.
As Startup Strategy Lead Germany, I´m responsible for executing all startup programs of Microsoft in Germany. Through the BizSpark and BizSpark Plus program we drive business development for Microsoft´s cloud platform Microsoft Azure among top startups backed by investors and accelerator programs. I also built the Microsoft Accelerator Berlin, that supports early stage startups with regards to business development, technology adoption and fundraising. The team and our success is meassured against technology adoption and share of mind in the German startup scene.
Together with the former vice-president of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) co-founder of the investment and consulting firm A9C Capital in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Responsible for a portfolio of 12 international clients with regards to their GCC market entry- and investment strategy. Together with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants development of the event format "A9C TechTalk", designed to strengthen ties between investors and high-tech companies.
Through an investment fund the DLR was able to support promising startups that commercialized tech innovations from their research labs. Being responsible for supporting innovation at DLR´s largest research site in Oberpfaffenhofen, I funded and supported startups especially in the field of satellite navigation and robotics. We also developed a business development motion for those startups in collaboration with the Business Incubation Center of the European Space Agency.