The Team Behind the Change

As an economist and sociologist by training, I joined the startup ecosystem a decade ago by taking over operator roles in the fintech space, focusing on banking APIs and digital assets.

Since moving to the investor and board side, I have dedicated my career to exploring how capital can drive meaningful transformation, enable future-proof products & technologies to scale and thus help fighting our most pressing challenges.

While being convinced that venture capital is a crucial element for innovation and the economy to thrive within our planetary boundaries, I love to support founders along their journey, push for more diversity at the cap tables and strengthen the Hamburg startup ecosystem.

In hindsight, my first company was my rock band: Combining creative teamwork with building culture and branding, marketing, booking, organizing, performing, hustling, selling, growing your fanbase … all with a constant lack of resources. Being in a band has been my personal entrepreneurship bootcamp.

When I later co-founded my first startup simpleshow with my bandmates in 2008, we were lucky enough to scale it to a global market leader. This really sparked my passion for entrepreneurship and I went to launch several other companies, with an increasing focus on impact and purpose (e.g. Fryd).

Having experienced the startup ecosystem in different roles as founder, mentor and investor, I am trying to pass on my knowledge to support purpose-driven founders being successful while taking care of their mental health. Over the years, I have worked with well over 100 startup and corporate teams.

Besides my commitment for Partners in Clime, I enjoy working as a freelance consultant for corporate innovation, being a guest lecturer at University of St. Gallen and still performing on stage as a musician.

I've been building companies for over 15 years. It started with co-founding simpleshow in 2008, where I helped grow a small video studio into a global B2B SaaS business.

Two questions have driven me ever since: What's worth building? Where can I make a difference?

Those questions led me through founding a vertical farming startup, leading a venture building unit at STIHL, and co-founding Building Better Teams – a masterclass for founders on building high-performance, people-first cultures. Because I believe the quality of a team is ultimately the quality of a company. Along the way, I've mentored early-stage founders and invested as an angel.

At Partners in Clime, the journey found its natural conclusion. Every role, every experience, successes, failures – it all compounds here. The most ambitious founders are working on climate. They need to succeed. And helping them do that is where I want to put everything I have.

I've been building software basically since I was a kid — fascinated by the internet since its early days.

Right after university, I co-founded redhotmagma with two friends, where we built web and business software. In 2017, a kind of quarter-life crisis made me ask: what do I actually want to spend my time on? The answer became Fryd — a mission to help people grow their own food. Today, Fryd has over 350,000 registered users and a team of 10. As Co-Founder and CTO, I lead development both technically and strategically. Fryd is a company in steward ownership — because how we structure ownership and capital matters just as much as what we build.

At Partners in Clime, I bring a deep technical lens and a genuine curiosity for science. I don't believe technology alone can solve our biggest challenges — but when people come together and use it wisely, I'm convinced we can.

I've spent the last decade in the founder seat and alongside it. My first company was a D2C sports brand, and in my toughest entrepreneurial moments, an executive coach made a bigger difference than any mentor, advisor, peer or investor around me. I wanted to learn that skill, so I went through the training of professional executive coaching, never planning to build a coaching business. It just happened. Founders started asking, and now I've worked with +200 of them from pre-seed to Series A and beyond. Today I co-run Uplift Founders, working 1:1 with founders on the psychology behind better decisions under pressure and building lasting relationships with key stakeholders. My approach is grounded in neuroscience and decision theory, and shaped by my own scars from building. At Partners in Clime, I bring that lens to due diligence and to supporting our portfolio founders.

I started my career in German manufacturing and became fascinated by a simple question: How can technology help industries become more efficient, competitive and sustainable?

That question ultimately led me to found MARKT-PILOT where we built one of Europe's fastest-growing industrial software companies, scaling from a 0 to an international business with locations in Chicago, Milano, Stockholm and Stuttgart. I raised more than €50 million of funding and scaled from 2 to >170 employees in just 4 years. Along the way, we experienced nearly every chapter of the founder journey: product development, fundraising, international expansion, leadership challenges and rapid top line growth.

Today, I invest in founders who are building the next generation of industrial and climate technology companies. I am particularly passionate about helping teams find product-market fit, build scalable go-to-market organizations and transform ambitious ideas into enduring businesses.

I believe climate innovation will create some of the most important companies of the next decade. Through Partners in Clime, I support the founders who are making that future possible.

I was fortunate to discover entrepreneurship early by supporting my uncle in his software company and running my own small experiments. Those early experiences taught me how much I loved turning ideas into reality.

Back in 2006, without even knowing that something called "Startups" existed, I initially followed the classic Swabian career path: an apprenticeship at Mercedes-Benz and the plan to study industrial engineering afterwards.

In between, I took a trip to Los Angeles with the idea of importing US cars to Germany. I came back with zero cars but with something far more valuable. For the first time, I met young founders raising money from investors to build companies. I didn't even know that world existed.

Back in Germany, I successfully ended university on day one to fully commit to "Startup" and joined dozeo.com, an online meeting SaaS platform, followed by co-founding hatchery.io in 2015.

Early on, I also had the chance to support companies like Earlybird Coffee and The Female Company as a founding angel and mentor to the founders.

Fast forward to 2026: after more than 20 investments and supporting well over 100 founders, I now share my entrepreneurial experience through Partners in Clime and Uplift Founders.