Investing in others.
Foremost I invest in founders. I invest in their power and focus. Secondly I invest in problems that I understand. I do not invest in plans nor roadmaps. There is no need for perfection nor knowing exactly how you’ll get there. Humble honesty goes a long way. Pair that with a desire to really solve a problem and top it of with good decision making and empathy. That’ll get you my support. Do you have a good problem and the drive to solve it? Ping me here
Re:Care - started as a B2C home care marketplace, is a hospital discharge management SaaS, will soon be: the one and only international B2B2C hospitals to care platform - I invested in Max Greschke who is so upright, he once (different company) gave back money to his investors because he no longer believed in product market fit. Now he is onto something really really big and I hope he enjoys and savors every second. Max's grit is 100% responsible for re:care's success. Good man.
Anvajo - handheld fluidlab / medtech device & a research plattform for decoding all fluids -In short: the Anvajo crew is amazing! Stephan Faedrich built in university a handheld microspectrometre that can id viruses in your blood but also tell you if your redwine is the real deal. Ever heard of Theranos? They can actually do what Theranos promised. And they are selling thousonds of these devices. Pair this with an operator like Andreas Hartlep and the support of Die Brückenköpfe and you just might witness the birth of the "iphone & appstore for fluids" which makes Stephan & Andreas - Steve & Wozniak!?!
CAYA - automagic for documents - profitable B2B SaaS - Alexander Schneekloth started this company to kill the pain of paperwork. Alex is an amazing selfmade marketer. That's why invested in him and a problem I really understand: I hate paperwork! So I joined to add a bit more product magic to the business. By now we are not only a profitable B2B SaaS company, but we automate millions of documents, be it their inflow our distribution into your company. We are your document API/Zapier. We free humans from robotic document tasks and I love that. I really enjoy building this together with our great team!
Die Brückenköpfe their slogan is "MehrWerte für Gesundheit schaffen" - they are a consultancy and an investmentfund - an atypical investment for me, but once again: it is about the people and when I met Harm van Maanen & Jürgen Graalman I quickly realised they are doing some cool shit for the german health sector and are substantially helping the companies that work with them. And they have good people like Lisa Schirmer on their team.
Mauerblümchen is an "investment in concrete" that I made together with the best team I have and know: My wife Toni Rechberg and my Salonmeister partners in crime Louis and Nils and our first Salonmeister investor and by now friend Oliver Pabst. Thanks guys you are the best!
Invested and won:
Treatwell (ex Salonmeister) - booking beauty online / SaaS enabled marketplace) - what an amazing journey it was with too many great people to mention them all. But shoutout to: Louis & Nils, Bobby & Maus, Yannick, Mariya, Lopo & Ben & Simon, Thomas, Wais, Gio, Ines, Ana, Bernardo, Mallorie & Marie, Klaus, Erik & Laurens, Kei & Kazu, Nora, Max, Timur, Tobi & Silvio, Dominik & Matt & Oz & Eloy , Nikola (1. Salonmeister Design), Simon B. (taught me what a "wireframe" is), Philipp H. (showed me what product management means), Vitaly (our only developer for quite a while) und unsere Salonmeister Investoren Oli, Christophe, Tim, Michael S. & Michael A. & Michael O.
TargetVideo - very successfull videosyndication for contentproviders & content studio - run by Max Gall and Marie Gall-Rechberg. They are doing a great job! They bought their shares back from their (very happy about that) initial shareholders. Very proud of them for being their own 100% boss now and really really excited to see them hitting the gas with their recent acquisition of brid.tv!
They als run Hallo-Eltern.de - a german content page for parents / classical add financed content business
NLP (Natural language processing) and OCR (Optical Character recognition) - you would think this kind of stuff that has been around for decades should be solved by now. But it is not. Johannes Korves, Manuel Zapp, Berenger Laurent are attacking it with Natif for all of us. I got to know them because we use their services for CAYA. And it is a really cool service. Once they figured out their GtM was within a partner-modell with bigger DMS softwares, they then exited to one. While I would have enjoyed the standalone ride a bit longer, they really did executed a great deal & strategy...
Zenjob - temporary work plattform - 100% online / future of work. Superstar founder I still trust in 100%: Friedrich Trott . He will 10x this baby again in the next years to come. I admire his skills and style already for a very long time and am proud to call him a friend.
Invested and "experience won":
Fraend- in the end it was a SaaS for online video classes - they used to be an "alternative user journey ecommerce plugin" then a "shop aggregator" then a "influencer can monetize their followers shop" like OnlyFans but for e-commerce - this was the amazing journey of Julius Jacobi and Claudemiro Faitosa they have built what i would consider 3 legit businesses, but somehow always went on-sidewards. Amazing grit & style. I still believe in them. They will make it eventually, hope they give me a call on their next try.
Weissmaler (offline) from B2C marketplace "order a painter online" to B2B marketplace "order many painters online" to SaaS for painters to "run a better painting company online" and "be the model citizen for PE acquisition spree" - Alexander Keil now knows everything there is to ever know about the painting industry in Germany, he fought valiantly but in the end a truely successful model never emerged. A pity.
SecondHunt (offline) - was a secondhand hunting marketplace - it turns out that selling guns online is hard, because you are not allowed to advertise and you need to onboard quite a bit of supply that does not stay if not enough is sold - Aki Trott put up an epic fight but had to call it quits in the end
[Insolvency] LemonOne - order photos that sell your product better online / B2B2gigworker plattform - it works! Max Schwahn is an impressive youg gun and was the first intern i had to hire twice before he finally started working for Salonmeister (years ago). I love the guy allthough he talks to fast / much ;-) Building with him are Nils Griess-Nega (my man!) Lorenz Marquardt & Vadym Voitiuk. Co-Founder who already left was Timur Kayaci also an ex-employee and a good man.
[Acquihire/Firesale] BreakthroughX's first product: Emilyn is a companion app for MS patients / SaaS to improve the daily lives of people living with chronic disease - Bazil Azmil is the founder and he used to be entrepreneur in residence with Christophe Maire, who speaks extremely highly of him. He assembled an awesome team and i am quite certain they will do good for their users and business wise.
[Status unclear/no more updates] Sidehide - Effortless check-in & one click same night hotel bookings / travel marketplace with mini SaaS - I invested in Joakim Hultin who designs and envisions beautiful products, who still has something to prove to himself and therefore is a fighter. I believe he will get there eventually. I would love him to do so with Sidehide.
[SPV is in legal proceedings to get parts of a loan to the founder back] Arago - knowledge automation AI engine as a Service - this is my only current investment where i never met the founder in person. Chris Boos seems to be an extremely smart, idealistic and unique character. I am not yet sure if he is also a good business man. The investment was one where i tagged along in a B-to-V SPV deal and it is managed by Gerrit Jurilj there. Let's see where this is going...
["Pay-to-play" round I did not commit to] Foursource - Global sourcing plattform for fashion / SaaS enabled marketplace is still around and well. Jonas Wand took over the reigns and is currently restructuring to take a new run at making this platform and its business modell profitabel and super powerfull for anything fabrics - I did not reinvest a third time, so I am unfortunately out - but i am still hoping that I will regret that choice ;-) - ideation of this came from Oliver Pabst (who once invested in us).
[Hypothesis broken pre PMF] Stroke is a leading cause of death and disabilities. 1 in 4 people have a stroke in their life and if you do not do proper aftercare your chances to get another stroke one multiply.
Enter: Rekoo - 'a virtual clinic for stroke recovery'
So it is very clear: Lucas & Jonas were on a really important mission. The status quo in health care sucks and they faced the challenge to build a product that really helps and most importantly, then get it to the people that need it. I was rooting for them! But unfortunately they did not get their customers convinced enough to use Rekoo continuously...
Moojo was being built by Utena, Amir and Christian who are true to their Berlin style and I loved that. Their vision to build 'the fintech backbone for new work' was certainly grand, but 'the sky is der Himmel'. Unfortunately PMF B2Freelancer and then B2B did not materialize.