What I could start with is that I want to be a gardener. I like to see things grow — not only companies but also people, and also ideas. I love working on ideas, shaping them, bringing them into something. I love sparring, and with that, building a garden: multiple things at once or concentrating on one. At the end, I would love to look at a growing flower bed where I can pick weeds, see flowers, concentrate on some, and stop caring about others. Building a big garden where things grow — I can see that at the end of my life.
This is also the way I love starting things, without ever having the feeling of having to finish them. One philosophy I always run by: I want to work with the smartest people on the best idea. If I can't find the smartest people or the best idea, I go to knowledge hubs, and these knowledge hubs lead me to either smart people or big ideas. That's how I go forward — inside a company, inside a university, my whole life.
I started working at a tree nursery. The first years of my working life, I worked with my body a lot. That taught me to understand how work works.
My first internship got me into a niche player doing cable management for industry — cars, space, automotive, ships. That was my first global business. I did the internship there and asked my parents to move to Hamburg to finish school with classes in informatics. I wanted that in my Abitur.
I always preferred learning by doing, and eventually realised formal education could accelerate that. When I found out I was good at it, I took a bachelor's degree as well. This never stopped me from working — through school and especially university, I always worked alongside, which in the end brought me where I am today.
I've seen many of the best in their league. For tech companies, I've been inside Google working full time. For consulting, I've been inside Deloitte. I was part of the team behind the largest Series A in Eastern Europe with Keboola. I've managed global accounts for major German industrial and automotive companies — the kind of engine rooms where you learn how scale actually works.
The thing that drives everything: freedom. I'm close with Europe. I was born in Hamburg — the port to the world — and from an early age I was taught to use it. Europe is my home turf. I've lived and worked in London, Prague, Hamburg, Berlin, Lisbon, and Dublin.
The last stop was Google. One year in Dublin, 87 client accounts, all e-commerce, all German-speaking. What struck me most was the sheer amount of untapped potential in the infrastructure layer. In one single funnel I counted 394 things worth fixing. Not strategy problems — plumbing. Tracking that half-fires, data nobody ever queries, pages that don't match the ads that paid to bring people to them.
So I left.