List of panelists:
Patrick Spain is the co-founder, Chairman & CEO of Newser. He was formerly the CEO of HighBeam Research, a rapidly growing online research company based in Chicago, which he founded in 2002 and sold to Cengage Learning in December 2008. Spain was also the co-founder and long-time chairman and CEO of Hoover’s, Inc., leading it from a small book publisher when he became CEO in 1992 to a profitable, publicly traded online business information company with $31 million in revenue in 2001. He remained on the Board until Hoover’s was sold to D&B in 2003. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Spain worked as a consultant, lawyer, and executive in the telecommunications industry, and as a real estate developer. He has a B.A. in Ancient History from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Boston University.
Kolja Hebenstreit is the co-founder and a partner of Team Europe Ventures and is responsible for the systematization and scaling of the company. He also supports current and new companies in the portfolio, especially with regard to strategy, completing the team, and building reach. Kolja Hebenstreit previously developed global online marketing and the consumer division of Spreadshirt and at the same time was active as an angel investor in approx. 15 start-ups (incl. Amiando, brands4friends, mymuesli and studiVZ).edit.
José Manuel Villanueva is cofounder of Privalia. Before he was senior associate of Bain & Co where he participated in various projects in the telecom, private equity, and consumer goods industry in London and Madrid. Before starting is most recent venture, he was CEO of New Balance Spain. Villanueva holds degrees in business administration from ESADE and studied at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbour and at the HEC in Paris.
Heiko Rauch is co-founder and CFO/COO of zanox. At zanox, he is responsible of finance, business development, organisation and operations. Before, Heiko served as a project manager for Bankgesellschaft Berlin. Heiko’s strengths lies in developing and maintaining lean, efficient organisational structures coupled and developing the international expansion. He holds a degree in Information Technology from the University of Applied Sciences, FHTW, Berlin.
Dominik Grolimund, co-founder and CEO of Wuala, Swiss, is 29 years old and studied computer science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). In 1998, he founded his first software company, Caleido and developed a CRM software of which over 35'000 licenses have been sold. In 2004, he started research and development on Wuala, a novel grid-based online storage, at ETH Zurich. After 4 years of development, they successfully launched Wuala in August 2008. In early 2009, he sold the company to LaCie, the French-American manufacturer of external storage solutions, and joined the management team of LaCie to work on the future of storage solutions.
Jan Reichelt is co-founder and director of Mendeley. Jan studied Business Administration at the WHU Koblenz, the LUISS Rome, and the University of Bath. He graduated in 2004 as MBA with a focus on Electronic Business, Accounting, and Entrepreneurship. Currently, Jan is pursuing a Ph.D. in Information Management at the University of Cologne and he was a visiting researcher at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. Previously, he was an advisor to a member of SAP's supervisory board.
Martin Mueller is CTO and founder of spendino. After he started his career at Siemens Automation & Drives he joined the Jamba GmbH in 2005. At Jamba Martin worked as Head of the Technical Country Management department, being responsible for country rollout, feature development and operations of the technical platform in more than 40 countries on 5 continents. He has a diploma in Information Technology from the University of Applied Science in Giessen and a Master of Business and Engineering in General Management from the Steinbeis University in Berlin.
Sebastian Bärhold is a co-founder of amiando and responsible for the Finance, Legal and HR operations of the company. Before starting amiando, he gained practical experience at Oliver Wyman and KPMG as well as in the automotive industry. He discovered his passion for entrepreneurship while co-founding START (Organization for Young Entrepreneurs) and SiROP (Online Platform for Research internships). Sebastian Bärhold studied business administration in Munich (TU), Chicago and Sao Paulo.
