Back to the Future — I will become Partner at Earlybird
For a startup guy, it is a dream come true: as of 1st April, 2017 I will be partner at Earlybird Venture Capital. The company has raised more than €800 million, invested in startups throughout Europe and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this summer as a German VC fund. What a record!
My main task at Earlybird will be to help scale startups, which I am not unfamiliar with from my days at Rocket Internet. On top of that, we will also be working towards positioning and developing Earlybird as a partner for the Deutschland AG.
I will stay on as Senior Advisor for Hering Schuppener and from next month onwards, work from two desks. What is met with horrified reactions in Germany has long been convention in Silicon Valley — it is only a matter of time until we adopt the same shoulder-shrug-attitude in this country. The world is changing, and we are changing with it.
“The success of working together with Herring Schuppener proves that leather pants go with pinstripes.”
My journey in the startup world began on 1st July 2012 when I became Head of Communications at Rocket Internet. What began as a daring feat quickly turned into safe bet: I was able to help build a gigantic global corporation, have the company listed on the stock market and create a communications agency for Rocket in the form of RCKT.
At RCKT I discovered my joy for the consultancy business. Prior to founding one, I had never spent a single day in an agency. To help startups and corporates digitally transform became my focus. My passion, if you like.
It quickly became clear to me, however, that one could hardly be the voice and face of Rocket Internet, the main disruptor in Germany, while also helping corporate Germany to digitally transform itself. As if on cue, an offer came from Germany’s absolute number 1 when it comes to strategic communications consultancies for the Deutschland AG. Of course I am talking about Hering Schuppener — a name like “Donnerhall”, as an industry magazine once wrote.
At Hering Schuppener, I got access to the ‘Who is Who’ of the Deutschland AG overnight. And as it turned out, as a digital native, I was able to immediately contribute to mastering the big and small questions on the path of digital transformation. Together with my partners at HS, we built a digital team, which today forms the core of what we call the corporate digital hub. A combination of excellent, digital talents, as I have rarely seen before.
“Digital is as common as online is today. For who wants to be the opposite, namely offline?”
Almost a year has passed since we began building the digital unit. A guiding principle in thinking and working at HS is the integrated work, beyond the limits of practices and departments, for the benefit of our customers. My credo from day one was: digital is as common as online is today. For who wants to be the opposite, namely offline. In other words, a digital unit also needs to be fully integrated into the consultation offer of Hering Schuppener. We achieved this in a very short space of time and, like no other strategic communications consultancy, we now offer classic and digital communications from a single, integrated source.
The build-up phase of the corporate digital hub is now complete and I will consequently hand over the operational management to Raphael Neuner, who is a very valued colleague of mine. I remain fully committed to our common cause, but at the same time will also seek new challenges elsewhere.
The success of working together with Herring Schuppener proves that leather pants go with pinstripes. I am a wanderer between the worlds of digital change. I am all the more delighted to be able to combine two extremely exciting tasks that emanate from the startup scene and the corporate world. Indeed, it is exactly that sort of crossover in thought and action that is the prerequisite for successfully mastering the digital change.
With this in mind: Germans can also Internet! ;-)
