Our Team
Oliver Beste, M.P.A.
Partner, Berlin Office
oliver.beste@founderslink.com
Oliver Beste is an expert in the internet and media industry with over 10 years of entrepreneurial, consulting and investment experience.
Oliver co-founded FoundersLink to encourage entrepreneurship. Himself an entrepreneur, Oliver in 1999 co-founded and since then successfully built myToys.de to become the leading internet retailer for children’s products in Germany. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Oliver for 5 years gathered broad industry experience as consultant with McKinsey & Company in Germany.
Oliver started investing in 1994. With his active support as investor Radio P.O.S. became the German market leader for instore radio programming and advertising. Until today, his investments have been top performers in their industry.
Oliver is fluent in German and English.
Oliver is past President of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Germany and board member of Media.net Berlin Brandenburg.
Oliver holds an M.P.A. from Harvard University.
Fabian Hansmann, M.B.A.
Partner, Berlin Office
fabian.hansmann@founderslink.com
Fabian Hansmann is an expert in the software area with more than 10 years of IT marketing experience.
Before co-founding FoundersLink he was founder and Managing Director of Steganos - a leading vendor of security software for consumers and businesses based in Frankfurt, Germany. Today he is member of Steganos' advisory board.
Fabian is a regular speaker at IT industry events such as CeBIT and SYSTEMS. He has been published in numerous journals on IT and Management issues and has consulted to leading magazines and Venture Capital firms on the software sector.
Fabian is fluent in German and English.
He is member of the Entrepreneurs' Organization, Wirtschaftsrat Deutschland and the INSEAD Alumni Association Germany.
Fabian holds an M.B.A. from INSEAD (Fontainebleau / Singapore / Wharton).
Pascal Finette
Venture Partner, London Office
pascal.finette@founderslink.com
Pascal studied economics and psychology at the University of Cologne. During this time he founded and ran the German division of PowerMedia Inc. - one of the first companies commercializing software for PDAs
such as the Apple Newton and Palm OS devices.
After finishing his studies he moved to Berlin to work as "Head of Product Marketing & eCommerce" for Germany's largest Apple retailer GRAVIS AG. During this time he also started a consulting company
focused on applications for mobile devices.
In 1999 Pascal founded the venture capital financed "oil on mars" GmbH, a company building web applications for content rich communication used by large portals such as Infoseek and Tiscali. After selling the company to a group of investors Pascal joined eBay Germany to work in various senior management positions from 2002 to
2005. Before he left eBay in mid-2005 Pascal led the Platform Solutions Group as Senior Manager / Head of Platform Solutions Group.
Pascal was also Vice President Germany for ChannelAdvisor GmbH being responsible for more than 40 employees and €500m in yearly Gross Merchandise Volume. Recently Pascal consulted leading Internet businesses on internationalization strategies with his consulting company elektronauten.
Pascal is fluent in German and English.
Dr. Christian Kapteyn
Venture Partner
christian.kapteyn@founderslink.com
Christian is an expert in nano-technology and semiconductor science and technology with a collective experience of more than 12 years in industrial and academic research and development. He has also worked as an independent
industry consultant. Among his clients have been successful technology startups as well as large high-tech companies.
As a project leader for Infineon (now Qimonda) in Dresden, Christian has driven DRAM technology innovation topics for future chip generations. His work during this time has lead to numerous invention disclosures, of which nine have been filed as patents and several are being applied in production.
Researching quantum mechanical effects and electronic properties of semiconductor nano-structures and their application potentials during many years in academic research, Christian has been affiliated with Technical University Berlin in Germany, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands, and the Matsushita Central Research Laboratories in Japan. He has published his results in more than 30 scientific papers and presented his work at numerous international scientific conferences.
Christian is fluent in German, English, Spanish, and Dutch.