September 20th, 2009
Last week I took a break from business and enjoyed relaxing and clubbing at my favourite island Ibiza. It was a great and refreshing time with a supercool and entrepreneurial crew of 7 to (during peaktime) 14 good friends and business partners. We shared a nice and huge beachfront appartement at legendary “Bora Bora” Beach. Besides our arrival day the sun was shining all time and we spent a lot of time discussing and sunbathing at our terrace or the beach. But that what makes Ibiza special is not the sun neither the beach but the nightlife. Within 7 days I enjoyed a good share of the worlds most popular (electronic) DJs: Tiesto, Erik Morillo, Fedde le Grand, David Guetta, Carl Cox…
THX to the whole crew for the fun with you and I look forward to IBIZA 2010 
Posted in Ibiza, Life, Spain | No Comments »
September 2nd, 2009
Last months (and ongoing for a while) I`m having a very intense and focused time as (Interim)-Managing Director of SponsorPay.com. SponsorPay is monetizing non-paying users of publishers like online games. I co-founded the company together with Team Europe Ventures and Janis Zech about 5 months ago. Since then we are on a fast growth path. Some weeks after launching our product we could already announce Gameforge.com as one of our clients. They are the worldwide leading independent MMO-Publisher and have more than 85 million registered users (about 20 m active). To serve customers of that size I`m very happy to have a skilled and very motivated team in place. Having been only 5 emplyoees working on SponsorPay in May we are at the moment already 29 people from about 15 countries – a lot of them are (native) Country Manager for our international markets. So far or within the next weeks they serve: Germany (surprise, surprise 
), Austria, Swiss (Thanks Thomas! ), France (Thanks Mael!), Italy (Thanks Francesca!), Spain (Thanks Laura!), UK (Thanks Gaurav!) USA & Canada (Thanks Seamon)!, Netherlands (Thanks Asbjorn!), Poland (Thanks Sebastian!) , Russia (Thanks Elena!), Turkey (Thanks Afsin!), Sweden (Thanks Per!) as well as some othercountries tba soon… Not long ago Andreas Bodczek joined us as our other Managing Director. While I am on interim base responsible for leading Publisher Relations and Marketing he is responsible to scale the business and organisation during the next 4 years to come. Previusly he has been CEO of Telefonica Germany where he successfully managed another sales and key account driven organisation – with up to 480 people. I guess and hope it will take some time once our headcount has reached that level
Posted in Berlin, Germany, Online Games | 1 Comment »
June 16th, 2009
Nächste Woche bin ich (endlich) mal wieder in San Francisco und freue mich darauf zahlreiche alte und neue Kontakte zu treffen. Anlass sind diverse Meetings für ein spannendes, international aufgestelltes Start-up, das ich im April mitgegründet habe und bei dem ich derzeit Interim-CEO bin. Noch sind wir im stealth mode, aber in nicht allzu langer Zeit werde ich hier mehr verraten…
Tags: Entrepreneurship, San Francisco, Silicon Valley
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
June 16th, 2009
Madvertise.de ist das Mobile Advertising Netzwerk, das ich im Oktober 2008 in meiner Funktion als Venture Partner bei Team Europe Ventures als (non-executive) mitgegründet habe. Mein expliziter Dank für den auf den Tag plangenauen Launch gilt dem IT/Produkt-Team insbesondere Pan (Katsukis), Martin (Karlsch) & Thomas (Hille) die einen super Job gemacht haben. Mobile Advertising ist in Asien, Amerika und Afrika! bereits ein Riesen-Thema. Kein Wunder, weltweit surfen bereits mehr Menschen vom Handy im Internet als vom Desktop oder Laptop… In Deutschland steckt das Thema dagegen noch in den Kinderschuhen, setzt aber gerade mit dem steilen Wachstum des mobilen Internets zum Sprung an. Das schöne daran ist, dass es derzeit bei überschaubarer Szene noch relativ leicht ist die Key Player des Mobile Marktes in Deutschland kennenzulernen und sich zu vernetzen. Madvertise.de ist hier vor allem auch dank starker Supporter & Investoren in etablierten Mobile Companies und Agenturen gut aufgestellt vom Wachstum und den zahlreichen vorhandenen Kontakten zu profitieren. Was im Mobile Advertising Markt möglich ist, zeigt das Mobile Advertising Network Admob.com. Kaum 3 Jahre alt, und von Sequioa und Accel gebacked, liefern die Kalifornier jeden Monat mehrere Milliarden Impressions aus und freuen sich über Umsätze im guten 8 stelligen Dollar-Bereich.
Posted in Berlin, Entrepreneurship, Germany, Mobile Advertising | No Comments »
June 11th, 2009
und eigene nicht-kryptische URL sichern!
http://www.facebook.com/username/
Am Samstag, 6h deutscher Zeit vergibt Facebook frei wählbare User-URLs…
Bin gespannt auf den Zulauf. Könnte in Richtung Landrush auf virtuelle Immobilien gehen. Ist sicher nicht ganz unbegründet. Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass URLs auf Plattformen wie Facebook mal einen ähnlich hohen Stellenwert wie Domain-Names bekommen… Mit dem kleinen Unterschied, dass der Wert stark anfällig von Verhalten und Erfolg des Plattform-Betreibers ist. Gibt es eigentlich schon einen Marktplatz für den Handel mit derartigen “Immobilien” auf Facebook, Twitter, XING & Co? Möglicherweise etwas über das man nachdenken könnte…
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
January 3rd, 2009
Ich wünsche allen Freunden, Geschäftspartnern und Bekannten die mir nicht schon persönlich über den Weg gelaufen sind ein schönes und erfolgreiches 2009! Ich hoffe Ihr kommt alle Euren Zielen ein Stück weit näher, bleibt gesund und gesellig und habt Spaß dabei!
Derzeit befinde ich mich noch in Münster, wo ich im Kreise von Studienfreunden auf einer äußerst amüsanten Privatparty – Danke Basti, Christian & Hagen – reingefeiert habe. Morgen gehts dann wieder nach Berlin um den eigenen unternehmerischen Zielen für 2009 ein Stück näher zu kommen…
P.S. Nach mittlerweile wieder mehr als einem halben Jahr in Deutschland stelle ich mal wieder auf Muttersprache um.
Posted in Berlin, Life, Münster, Party | 1 Comment »
December 15th, 2008
Gruenderszene.de the entrepreneurship blog where I used to be a frequent contributor has just relaunched. I like the new design as well as the idea to integrate a lot of experts that write about issues in their fields of competence. After being busy with daily business I`ve already planned to take some more time the next months to write at least some detailed articles again…
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Germany | No Comments »
November 25th, 2008
Great news from Brands4Friends: The leading Online-Shopping-Club in Germany just raised another 10 Mio. Euro in Venture Capital. Partech International joined the investors round, Holtzbrinck Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners participated again in the Series B. The company was founded in 2007 by Lukasz, Oliver Jung, Kolja, Ehssan, the management around Constantin Bisanz and Christian Heitmeyer as well as a lot of other supporters - mainly from Lukasz` network. Thanks to his invite I was also able to participate in the seed funding round. I did not regret it
Only 15 month after launch the revenue already exceeds 30 Mio Euro a year and still growths fast. I am curious whether brands4friends and other shopping clubs will be able to profit from the economic downturn. Consumers should spend less money for expensive brands. This could lead to increasing overstock for manufacturers and full-price resellers (good for sourcing) and consumers looking for bargains…
Tags: Brands4Friends, Christian Heitmayer, Constatin Bisanz, Ehssan Dariani, Holtzbrinck, Kolja Hebenstreit, Lukasz Gadowski, Mangrove, Oliver Jung, Partech
Posted in Berlin, Europe, Germany, investors | 1 Comment »
October 10th, 2008
Last weekend we were on an amazing short trip to Ibiza. Thekla, Oli, Kolja, Steffen and I went on friday, Katja and Lukasz followed on Saturday. Our Hotel was immediately at the “Bora Bora”-Beach. We spent the days at the sunny beach – warming up for the closing-parties… Friday night we went to “Pacha Ibiza” – one of the most famous clubs in the world since it opened more than 30 years ago. Saturday we had a long night at “Amnesia”, another famous ibiza house club. Finally on Sunday it was time for the “Space Closing”: Ibiza is known as the worlds best party spot, and the “Space Closing”-Party is seen as the highlight of Ibiza… The party was incredible: A beautiful location with lots of open air space, thousands of happy people, and a sensational DJ-Lineup including Jonathan Ulysses, Tom Novy, Fedde Le Grand and 30+ other world class DJs…
Some “censored” impressions:
Wheater was sunny and still between 20 and 25 degrees…
Warm up before Pacha… We invited the whole bar crowd for several drinks. (OK there were only our 5 people and the barkeeper.)
Steffen and I same bar – some drink later…
Dancing at Pacha…
Pre-Party for Amnesia at our hotel balcony…
Thekla and Kolja on the move into Space…
Some bottles later inside…
Late inside “Space”…
Do I really look a little bit tired the last morning?
View on Ibiza from our plane back to Berlin…
To be continued… IBIZA 09 we are coming!
Posted in Europe, Ibiza, Life, Party, Spain | 1 Comment »
