The Founder Institute's four-month curriculum covers everthing you would expect from an early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
We have a great lineup of Mentors who have requested to Mentor the Autumn 2012 Berlin Founder Institute, including many from the U.S. and Silicon Valley. See the full list below.
Adeo Ressi
CEO, TheFunded.com
Adeo Ressi is Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 17,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Adeo also runs the Founder Institute, a mentoring program that helps entrepreneurs launch hundreds of world-class companies each year. The Institute is the eighth start-up that Adeo has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating.
Benjamin Thym
CEO, barcoo
Benjamin Thym is the CEO of barcoo - the mobile product guide that already convinced more than 7 Million Germans to scan barcodes with their mobile phones. barcoo became the biggest pure mobile brand in Germany with 0€ marketing spendings. Prior to barcoo, Benjamin worked as a strategy consultant for BCG and Deloitte. Benjamin holds a degree from Universitaet Karlsruhe.
Burckhardt Bonello
CEO, Found Fair Ventures
Burckhardt Bonello (39) is CEO of Found Fair Ventures - helping great founders build great companies like Returbo, Dealvertise etc. Previously he was founder & CEO of myBet (500M€ turnover, profitable) founder & CEO of sMeet - 3d virtual game 15m users , founder & CEO of Novedia AG (profitable, 70 IT-team) . Burckhardt studied Computer Engineering, lectured at Stanford University & TU-Berlin.
Christian Reber
CEO, 6Wunderkinder
Christian is the CEO and founder of Berlin-based startup 6Wunderkinder. Their product Wunderlist is a global success story that has been named Apple’s “App Of The Week” in 104 countries and is currently one of the most downloaded productivity apps world-wide. He studied International Management at FOM Hochschule für Oekonomie & Management in Berlin. Christian always thinks big and dreams about conquering the online business world.
Christoph Sollich
Startup Consultant, Christoph Sollich Inc.
Christoph Sollich is a freelance startup consultant specializing in business model generation, strategy, marketing and pitching. After writing his diploma thesis about “Virtual Communities” (old-school speak for “Social Networks”) and a detour through advertising (as a copywriter) he started working in startups in 2007, since 2009 as a freelancer. After winning a couple of “Best Pitch” awards (and no awards for his ideas!) at hackathons and startup weekends, startups started asking his advice about pitching - although only he refers to himself as “The Pitch Doctor”. He describes himself as supremely intelligent, very funny, extremely good-looking and excessively humble.
Christophe Maire
Partner, Atlantic Ventures
Christophe is a partners of Atlantic Ventures and has more than 15 years entrepreneurial and investing track record in media- and mobile communications-related technology areas. He has consistently delivered product innovation and led the way in the development of new services. Christophe co-founded and co-headed gate5 AG, the Berlin-based pioneer in mobile mapping & community service before selling the company to Nokia in late 2006. As head of Maps and Explore, Christophe contributed to build a successful worldwide service business for Nokia. The unit today employs more than 300 qualified developers in Berlin alone. A Swiss citizen, Christophe studied business & administration at the University of St. Gallen and Barcelona and attended executive education in NYU and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
Claas Van Delden
Managing Director, SevenVentures GmbH
Class van Delden is the managing director of SevenVentures GmbH, a subsidiary of ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, which focuses primarily online investments. His previous experience includes positions at Holtzbrinck Digital GmbH and Boston Consulting Group. His educational background includes University of St. Gallen, Stockholm School of Economics.
Diederik Stols
Partner, Boekx Advocaten
Diederik Stols is a partner at Boekx Advocaten, a law firm dedicated to media and intellectual property, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He previously practised at the law firms Allen & Overy and DLA Piper. Diederik’s practice has a focus on new media, traditional media, fast moving consumer goods and cultural institutions. Diederik has written dozens of publications about IP and media in nationwide newspapers and in legal journals. He is a country correspondent for Entertainment Law Review, and a frequent speaker at seminars and conventions. Diederik lectures on IP at the postgraduate institute of Leiden University, as well as the MBA Cross Media program founded by Lemniscaat Education.
Felix Petersen
CEO, Amen
Felix Petersen is CEO and co-founder of Amen and co-founder of Plazes.com, one of the pioneering start-ups in the context and location based services area. Founded in 2005, it was acquired by Nokia in 2008. Petersen is now Director Product Strategy for Nokia Services, as well as an active investor and adviser to companies like Soundcloud and Unlike. He holds degrees from Technische Universitat Berlin and The Art Institute of Chicago.
Gabe Zichermann
Author, Speaker, Advisor, Gamification Co
GABE ZICHERMANN is an author, highly rated public speaker and entrepreneur. He is the chair of the Gamification Summit and editor of the industry’s leading publication, The Gamification Blog. His most recent book, “Game-Based Marketing” (Wiley, 2010) has achieved critical and industry acclaim for its detailed look at innovators who blend the power of games with brand strategy. His next book, “Gamification by Design” (O’Reilly, 2011) looks at the technical and architectural considerations for designers in this burgeoning field. A resident of NYC, Gabe is a board member of StartOut.org, advisor to a number of startups and Facilitator for the Founder Institute in Manhattan. For more information about Gabe and Gamification, visit http://Gamification.Co
Jiri Koivuniemi
Founder, Visionist
Jiri Koivuniemi is the Founder of Visionist, a PR, marketing and consulting company serving the IT, consumer electronics and digital entertainment vendors and Distributors. Jiri is a versatile market developer in IT, consumer electronics and digital entertainment areas. He has been working in these market areas since 1988 and has long-term relationships with dozens of big and small companies.
Joe Betts Lacroix
Co-Founder, OQO
Joe Betts-LaCroix founded OQO, creator of the world’s smallest PC, in 2000, and established the resulting market category of smaller-than-laptop PCs previously called UMPCs, and now called netbooks. He is now immersed in his newest (old) obsession: life sciences (finding cures for age-related diseases) as well as generating and monetizing intellectual property and advising several startups. Prior to OQO, he has operated numerous other companies, as well as having done groundbreaking academic research at Caltech, Harvard, JPL, MIT and the IBM Almaden Research Center in various fields, including quantum biophysics, marine chemistry, human-computer interface and alternative energy. Joe has patents pending and granted for over 80 inventions in a diversity of fields, including energy conversion, antenna design, user interfaces, consumer devices, and cloud computing.
Joerg Lamprecht
CEO, Cyberdyne Ventures
Joerg is a seasoned serial technology entrepreneur who was previously backed by leading venture investors like Wellington Partners and SofinnovaVentures as well as prominent web companies like United Internet AG. He has managed several successful exits and profits from his first-class network within the European and US technology arena. He holds a degree from the University of Kassel and enjoys aviation, jogging, chess, skiing, and cooking.
Jonathan Abrams
Founder and CEO, Nuzzel, Founder of Friendster
Jonathan Abrams is the Founder & CEO of Nuzzel, and co-founder and a Managing Partner of Founders Den, a shared office space and private club for experienced entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. A seasoned entrepreneur, Jonathan previously held the title of founder & CEO at Socializr, Friendster, and HotLinks. Jonathan holds a bachelors of science in Computer Science from McMaster University.
Maks Giordano
Founder, Juuman´okudo
Maks Giordano is the Founder and managing partner of Juuman´okudo. He worked as a Director for several companies before, such as Kyte, ProSieben, iconmobile, MetaDesign and ID Media. Maks holds an MBA from St.Gallen, taught Innovation at the FHTW Berlin and University of Applied Science in Dornbirn, published several books and is a frequent judge to the Webbys, New York ONE Show etc.
Paul Nelligan
Founder, Audiofu
Paul is the Founder of audiofu.com, a better way for musicians to represent themselves online. He also works part-time as a RoR developer. and an Organizer for Berlin Skills Exchange. He enjoys finding creative solutions to difficult problems, from a UI and programming perspective and holds a Bachelor of Science in Computing from the Institute of Technology, Tralee.
Roger Yee
Investor/LP, Fortify.vc
Roger is a veteran of start-ups, having founded three companies that included investor-backed funding and successful exits through acquisitions and IPOs. His previous companies and executive roles include ShadowLogic, Inc. (CEO), a cybersecurity services company; LaunchFuel, Inc. (CTO), a technology venture accelerator; and AppNet, Inc. (VP) an Internet and electronic commerce solutions firm acquired by CommerceOne for $2.1B. Most recently, Roger was Vice President at BAE Systems responsible for global defense and security programs and was an executive with DigitalNet, Inc. which was acquired by BAE Systems for $600M in 2004. Roger's work has been featured in The Washington Post, Federal Computing Week, Washington Technology, Government Security News and is a frequent invited speaker at government and industry events. He is currently an angel investor and LP with fortify.vc and mentor with Founder Institute and The Fort.
Sebastien De Halleux
COO & Co-Founder, Playfish
Sebastien de Halleux co-founded and was COO of Playfish, one of the largest and fastest growing social game companies, which was acquired by EA for $400m in November 2009. Upon joining EA, he was appointed Vice President of Business Development for EA Interactive. Prior to Playfish, Sebastien was part of the founding team at Macrospace, a European mobile games startup which merged with US-based Sorrent to form Glu Mobile and grew to a $337m IPO in March 2007. Sebastien also helped incubate Nokia Ad Service, an entrepreneurial new business unit at Nokia aiming to monetize traffic across 850 million Nokia handsets. Sebastien holds a Master’s in Civil Engineering with honours from Imperial College, London.
Stefan Kellner
Founder, 7Moments
Stefan Kellner is Founder and CEO of 7Moments, a new way of sharing photos. As a serial entrepreneur he's working on internet consumer services since the early nineties. Before 7Moments he built Plazes.com, a location based service that was acquired by Nokia in 2008. Besides working on his own company Stefan participates in advising and investing in various startups in Berlin and elsewhere. Stefan Kellner attended Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and currently lives in Berlin.
Sven Lubek
CEO, Covus
Sven Lubek is the founder of Covus and possesses many years’ experience in online marketing, domain acquisition and sale, as well as the development of digital marketplaces and aggregation portals. After working at AdLink, the largest marketing company of online ad space in Europe, as well as Lotty AG as Head of Sales, Sven Lubek founded his own company, Covus, in 2003. The active development of one of the largest German domain portfolios, search engine optimization and continued in the following years. During that time, a number of high-quality portals came into existence as well, such as browsergames.de. The efficient development and effective leadership of the various companies that make up the Covus Group lead to a number of company sales, such as Covus Games GmbH being purchased by ProSiebenSat.1 Group. Even continuing into the future, Sven Lubek is devoted to actively developing and creating further internet companies.
Tyler Crowley
Founder & CEO, Skweal
Tyler is currently the Founder & CEO of Skweal, Producer of the Open Angel Forum/Launch Conference, and Director of Corporate Development and Strategy at Mahalo. Some of his past experience includes working as a producer for Open Angel Forum/Launch Conference, TechCrunch50, and ThisWeekIn. He is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego in Interdisciplinary Studies in Computers and the Arts, and graduated Summa Cum Laude.
Weston Hankins
Founder, Footstep Ventures
Weston Hankins (29) is CTO of 9flats.com and co-founder of Footstep Ventures, a new Berlin-based startup. He is a pioneer of online tools that encourage real-world face-to-face interactions between individuals and a passionate believer in the power of the web to revolutionize the way we relate to everything in the world around us. Hankins became known with the success of CouchSurfing.org where he started as the 3rd employee and served as chief technical officer for over 4 years helping turn it into the world's largest travel community – over 4 million members and present in 90,000+ cities. He also knows Germany quite well serving as CTO for Berlin-based innovative online accommodation marketplace 9flats.com (40k+ members, 50k+ hosts, 45 countries) as well as starting his career at DaimlerChrylser (Ulm) in 2003. The native Mexican holds an engineering degree and likes to build and play with robots. He has held a board seat at his university’s academic counsel, worked at Microsoft in Redmond, given motivational speeches across Latvia, mentored startups in Singapore and traveled over 54 countries. He is an industry expert and shares a passion for travel.
Xavier Aubry
CEO, Appear Networks
Xavier Aubry is a French entrepreneur based in Sweden, with a background in life sciences, software and telecommunications. He is the Founder and CEO of Appear, a mobile software vendor based in Stockholm, Sweden, which he started in 2001, as a spin-off from the final stage of the Harvard Business School business plan contest. Prior to Appear, Xavier Aubry was the COO of a French technology start-up, where he managed product development, worldwide sales & marketing, and led the company into new markets in Europe, Asia, and the US. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School with high distinction.
Sunday, October 7th is the Final Application Deadline for the Autumn 2012 Berlin Founder Institute. If you or someone you know could benefit from expert training and feedback to launch a technology startup in Berlin, then click here to apply today.
