This week my investment in profitable and rapid-growing E-Commerce & SaaS-Start-up Gruenspar.de was press-released. I`ve been knowing the company for a while since I studied together with Founder & CEO Sebastian Kotzwander. After a really tough bootstrapped start he managed to get the company now on a very promising growth path in the two synergetic business fields E-Commerce and SaaS for Energy providers. Grünspar.de increased revenues in 2011 10fold and is my first investment in a company from my “home” city “Münster” 
Investment in E-Commerce & SaaS-Start-up Grünspar.de
December 6th, 2011Exciting new Start-up: HitFox soon launching with a mid 7-digit invest from 4 strong VCs
August 12th, 2011Since April this year I have been founding together with Tim Koschella and Team Europe a very ambitious Start-up:
HitFox is very soon offering Deals on Games and Game Equipment.
I`m really proud of the very strong team: 25 people based in Berlin that we handpicked after a heavy screening of more than 250 applicants.
Besides I`m happy to cooperate again closely with Team Europe – the incubator where I have been Venture Partner before and with that I co-founded SponsorPay and Madvertise together.
We recently got pre-launch a medium 7-figure investment from Holtzbrinck Ventures, Hasso Plattner Ventures, Tengelmann Group and Kite Ventures – I`ve been personally co-investing a medium 6-figure amount.
We launch with the first Deal in Germany during Gamescom and will quickly internationalize to other European and american countries afterwards.
Exciting times ahead
Pre-IPO investments in companies like Facebook
July 28th, 2011For the first time since a long time I wrote a guest article (in german language) on Gruenderszene.de:
Pre-IPO investing in hot “start-ups” like Facebook
I`ve been investing several times in 2010 in Facebook and Linkedin.
Currently I am looking for sellers of Wooga.com and Dropbox.com shares.
Please ping me if you know an investor/employee/founder willing to sell.
Business Update – A new venture ahead and some good investments behind me
March 8th, 2011After not having published anything since almost 9 months it`s time for a short business update:
1. I left SponsorPay Management after 15 months of rapid growth. (Not really “news” for my close contacts 
)
- In July 2010 I left SponsorPay to take a sabbatical after I had built up the company for 15 months. My original contract as Interim Managing Director had been designed for 6-12 months. We later extended it to have me building up our USA Operations before I leave the company.
2. SponsorPay continued to grow and got new investors on board.
- SponsorPay continued the growth path under my successor Janis Zech and CEO Andreas Bodczek. (Now about 75 employees and growing further.) Most recently Nokia Growth Partners invested about $5 Mio alongside existing investors. I`ve been selling a part of my SponsorPay shares in that transaction.
3. I made several new pre IPO investments:
- Facebook.com (Bought employee shares in several transactions since june 2010.)
- Linkedin.com (Bought employee shares in one transaction in October 2010.)
- Slightly increased my position in a new financing round for SaaS-for-Lawyers company GoClio.com.
- Invested alongside my Team Europe Ventures partners in online food delivery platform Lieferheld.de. (big news ahead )
I`ve invested medium 5 to medium 6 digits amounts / in all companies. This is also the size I am looking for new investment opportunities.
4. My other major portfolio companies have been growing nicely as well:
- Madvertise.de profited from the strong growing mobile market and serves now 700 Mio Page Impressions per Month after 60 Mio one year before.
- Absolventa.de also developed very well and has now more than 1200 companies using their recruiting service.
5. I`m soon starting an exciting new company together with my partners from Team Europe Ventures…
6. I have an exciting opportunity for one or two very analytical future entrepreneurs !
This a big chance to develop everything that it needs to become an internet entrepreneur (know-how, network, reputation, access to capital and talents) within 1-3 years of very close collaboration with me and Team Europe Ventures. I also look for an entrepreneurial intern.
Please contact me already if you are interested. More TBA soon…
SponsorPay get`s € 3.8m from Hasso Plattner and Team Europe Ventures
June 10th, 2010I`m happy that SponsorPay is developing very well and recently got 3.8 m Euro from Hasso Plattner Ventures and TEV to finance the further growth.
14 months after we founded the company SponsorPay is already the undoubted market leader in Europe and employees 40 entrepreneurial employees.
I`ve moved the last 3 months to San Francisco to build up our US business and will continue to do so for 1 more month.
Afterwards I`ll have much more time to write updates here more frequently…
Madvertise: Series A Round with Early Bird and Team Europe Ventures
March 30th, 2010I am happy that Madvertise today announced a Series A Round with Early Bird and Team Europe Ventures invested a medium 7-figures amount in Madvertise Series A round.
Madvertise is a quickly-growing Mobile Advertising Start-up that I co-founded as Venture Partner with Team Europe in September 2008.
Since then the strong operational founder team around Carsten Frien has reached good initial traction in the young but very fast growing mobile advertising market in Europe.
Recent US-based Mobile Advertising acquisitions of Admob (750million $ from Google) and Quattro Wireless (300million $ from Apple) give a good direction for the exit
More info:
Techcrunch: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/03/30/mobile-ad-network-madvertise-secures-series-a-round/
Handelsblatt: http://blog.handelsblatt.com/webwatcher/2010/03/30/madvertise-sichert-fianzierungsrunde/
Gründerszene: http://www.gruenderszene.de/news/earlybird-und-team-europe-ventures-investieren-siebenstelligen-betrag-in-madvertise/
Personal Brands4Friends Exit – Tengelmann buys 10% from existing investors
February 25th, 2010Large (offline)-merchant Tengelmann bought 10% of Brands4Friends from existing investors around Team Europe Ventures and including me.
Thanks to the invitation from non-executive co-founder Lukasz Gadowski I had invested a small amount during the seed round in summer 2007.
Even though no transaction details are public it is no secret that all seed-investors made a fantastic multiple
The private shopping club made already 80m € revenue in 2009 – just 2 years after the company had been founded.
Congratulation and thank you to the founders and management and I wish you all the best for the future and further growth of Brands4Friends!
IBIZA 2009: One week relaxing and clubbing with friends and business partners
September 20th, 2009Last 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
Exciting times and rapid growth at SponsorPay
September 2nd, 2009Last 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
San Francisco vom 22.06. bis 29.06.
June 16th, 2009Nächste 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…
