Thomas Madsen-Mygdal is an IT entrepreneur of the highest calibre. He is a serial entrepreneur who not only has brilliant ideas, but pursues them and gets them to succeed. Despite his 33 years, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal is already a seasoned IT entrepreneur with over 15 years experience. He has been co-founder and investor in numerous companies. Most recently he has enjoyed success as one of the main forces behind the new fast growing IT company Podio. Thomas is also well-known for being the founder and host of the annual European gathering for practical digital visionaries “reboot”.
Jörg Rheinboldt founded his first firm “denkwerk” in 1994. Five years later in 1999 he founded the alando.de AG with 5 friends of his. Alando.de was taken over by eBay the same year and Jörg helped establishing eBay as one of the most successful E-Commerce- Firms in the world as a CEO. After six months of parental leave, he founded the M10 GmbH at the end of 2005 and 2007 he was co-founder of betterplace.org.
Jens-Uwe Sauer is the founder and CEO of Seedmatch, the first and leading online crowdfunding-platform for startups in Germany. He first started working with startups as a consultant, helping founders shape and execute their business ideas. Due to the lack of equity money even for excellent business ideas in Germany, he started building Seedmatch as an innovative way to fund startups. With Seedmatch he realizes his vision for entrepreneurship and innovation: everybody gets access to exciting investment opportunities and can support good ideas while startups get a new way of raising equity funding from private investors.
Joakim Barneus is a Swedish entrepreneur and business leader within several HR-related companies. Joakim is a co-founder of Monster in Europe and was the Monster’s European COO from 2001-2002. Joakim is also the founder of a Student Staffing company, Komet. Komet today employs more than 5.000 students and Joakim is the chairman of the board. Further Joakim is the founder of two Executive Recruitment businesses and has developed a new psychological personality test together with a psychologist for a modern business environment called Validero. Joakim has a Master in Business Administration from Stockholm University and a MBA from ICADE school of Economics in Madrid. Joakim lives in Berlin.
Peter Bihr is a digital strategist who enjoys connecting people, insights and ideas. Before founding Third Wave he worked as a freelancer with clients like ARTE, Wolters Kluwer, Bertelsmann Stiftung, Google, SPD, Tumblr and several public broadcasters. He organized events like TEDxKreuzberg, atoms&bits and Likemind. Peter holds masters degrees in Communications and Media from Freie Universität Berlin (MA) and University of Sydney (MMP). Peter has lived in Berlin, Sydney and Washington, DC.
Dr. Erik Massmann studied macroeconomics and tax at FU Berlin. During his studies he worked with Treuhandgesellschaft, followed by 4 years of investment banking in Frankfurt. Since 11 years Erik now serves as CFO of listed companies, having led two IPO`s. From 2003 to 2009 he worked as CFO at CompuGROUP Medical AG, the largest healthcare IT vendor in Europe. After an exciting six month trip around the world with his 4 women, Erik now works as CFO of a midsized software company, that was just recently taken over by Carlyle, the world`s largest Private Equity Group. Parallel to his activities he started early as an seed investor to finance and support early stage companies.
Philipp Montgelas studied Economics at the University of Augsburg. Immediately afterwards, he became involved with online companies and eBusiness, and has stayed in the field ever since. He started out as Business Development Manager at Loewe New Media Inc. In 1999 he founded the German branch of the British travel operator lastminute.com for which he was responsible as CEO until 2001. Following that, he worked for Getsox, apotheke.de, münchen.de and hse24.de. From 2008 until 2011 he was the CEO of netdoktor.de, a German online health platform. Since then he has been responsible for online presence and new media at Wort & Bild publishers.
Wolfgang Wopperer is a trained philosopher and an untrained entrepreneur, a coworking activist and an idea catalyst. Following his studies of philosophy and political science in Konstanz and Hamburg, he co-founded the software development company mindmatters. There he tries to apply the principles of Analytic Philosophy to startup development, mainly by frequently asking ”What do you mean?” and “How do you know?”. Recent clients of mindmatters include news aktuell, PepperSquid and 9flats. He currently lives in Hamburg, where he also co-founded the betahaus Hamburg.
Dr. Torsten Oelke is the initiator of the Innovationplatform YOU IS NOW at Immobilienscout24. Torsten is an entrepreneur by heart, and founded his first Internet startup during the times of the New Economy. He is also the author of “Stars of the Internet”, which was published in 2009, and is the first book about successful German founders. Torsten continues to participate in the building of young companies in the areas of Internet and Mobile technology. Through his work at YOU IS NOW he continues to share his knowledge with young entrepreneurs in workshops, presentations and personal discussions.
Dr. Karl Martin Runge studied engineering at TU Munich, TU Carlsthal and RWTH Aachen. Following his studies was a career in international engineering companies. During his time in that industry he held several positions in Sales, Engineering and Project Management. In 2005 he joined Bombardier Transportation, where he was appointed to his current position as Vice President Group Project Management at the headquarters of Bombardier in Berlin. He also engages in a different kind of seed investment: Dr. Karl Martin Runge is the proud owner of a piece of forest.
