Prior to joining Balderton, Roberto Bonanzinga spent 15 years working with entrepreneurs in the US and in Europe. Most recently, Roberto acted as an interim CEO for Jambaz and non-executive director/adviser to numerous companies including Jaiku (acquired by Google NASDAQ:GOOG), Mobango, Piczo, Woome and our own portfolio company Pageflakes. Roberto’s past operational experience included helping to pioneer VoIP in Europe while serving as SVP of Marketing and Business Development at Viatel. He was also VP of Services and Marketing at Netscalibur, where he built the pan-European organization. Additionally, he has held senior management positions in Silicon Valley with Topica, Fabrik Communications (acquired by Critical Path) and Information Access Company (acquired by Thomson Corporation NYSE:TOC).
Andrea Mazey is a Business Analyst for the Bonnier Group, the biggest media conglomerate in the Nordics with operations in 16 countries worldwide. She is a member of Bonnier Research & Development, Bonnier’s digital unit, where she is responsible for identifying investment opportunities, new media trends, and prospective development projects at the intersection of media and cutting-edge technology. Prior to getting an MSc in General Management from the Stockholm School of Economics, Andrea worked in entertainment law in New York City with high profile brands and celebrities such as Sarah Jessica Parker and Director Ang Lee. Andrea also has a B.A. from New York University. She has lived and worked in Los Angeles, New York City, Buenos Aires and now Stockholm.
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. His passion lies in doing activism, designing, founding and investing to bootstrap change. Thomas has been co-founder and investor in numerous companies such as Chairman of 23, Podio, Kinetik and Socialsquare. He is also well-known for being the founder and host of the annual European gathering for practical digital visionaries, the reboot festival.
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.
Christian Stein joined Creathor Venture in 2007 and currently serves on the board of Zimory, cloudControl, aka-aki, Tellja and ShopShare. He is passionate about new technologies and new business concepts, especially regarding IT infrastructure (esp. Cloud Computing), eCommerce, social media and (B2B) enabling technologies. Christian brings over 10 years of industry experience in information technology, telecommunications, internet and new media, gathered by working at the Boston Consulting Group, Arthur Andersen and IBM with a focus on combining strategy development with new technologies. In addition, he gathered entrepreneurial experience co-founding an IT consulting start-up in 2000. Christian studied business information technology in Mannheim/Germany and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago/USA.
Alex Farcet is the co-founder of Startupbootcamp, a European startup accelerator with programs in several european cities. He is also a partner at Rainmaking, a startup factory with 9 on-going startups and operations. Alex is a self-described “born again entrepreneur” whose first job was with a startup in San Francisco some time in the last century; a 12 year corporate career was then interrupted by a bout with cancer which had the great advantage of focusing his mind on what really counts: doing what you love before time runs out. Alex recently relocated to Berlin to launch Startupbootcamp in Europe’s hottest startup ecosystem. He is a French citizen, was born in Spain, attended boarding school in England and an American high school in Congo.
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.
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 took six months of travelling from Guatemala to Argentina. At the end of 2002 he co-founded Getsox.com which he successfully sold in 2010. From 2008 until 2011 he was a Managing Partner of NetDoktor.de, Germany’s biggest online health portal. Since then he has been responsible for any online and new media activities 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, PaperC 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.
