Our Team
Oliver Beste, M.P.A.
Partner, Berlin Office
oliver.beste@founderslink.com
Oliver Beste has over 10 years of experience as entrepreneur, consultant and business angel in the internet, media and consumer goods industries.
Oliver co-founded FoundersLink GmbH to make a business out of his passion to encourage entrepreneurship. In 1999 he co-founded and made myToys.de the leading internet retailer for children's products in Germany with over 100 Mio. € in sales and continuous growth rates above 40%. Before myToys Oliver gathered broad industry experience over 4 years as consultant with McKinsey.
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. Olivers investments so far have been top performers in their industry, from IGA worldwide (ingame advertising) to Phorms (network of bilingual schools).
Among other activities to encourage, coach and fund entrepreneurship, Oliver is active as Regional Director of the Entrepreneurs' Organization for Europe and Africa, member of the Investment Committee of the Otto Group's venture capital firm eVenture Capital Partners, Management Board Member of Seedcamp.com and Board Member of Media.net Berlin Brandenburg. Oliver also organizes the OpenCoffeeClub.org events for young entrepreneurs in Berlin and coaches the Accelerator Program financed by Mercedes Benz Bank to grow startups quickly over 1 Mio. Euro in sales.
Oliver is fluent in German and English.
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 GmbH he was founder and Managing Director of Steganos - a leading vendor of security software for consumers and businesses based in Frankfurt, Germany.
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.
Currently Fabian is a non-executive director (Beirat / Aufsichtsrat) of several companies in the new economy.
Fabian holds an M.B.A. from INSEAD (Fontainebleau / Singapore / Wharton).
Nico Lumma
Venture Partner, Berlin Office
nico.lumma@founderslink.com
After tinkering around with a Commodore 64 in the Mid-Eighties, Nico Lumma went to Göttingen and Berkeley to study History and Political Science. While at Göttingen, he oversought an initiative to network all dorm rooms, which was both a fun and a learning experience.
Starting his professional carreer as Head of IT at orangemedia.de GmbH (now Ströer Interactive), Nico Lumma helped building up the company and launched one of the first German blog-platforms called blogg.de in 2003. He then moved on to the holding company Media Ventures GmbH and was responsible for the IT department and also started the ventures mabber.com and shoppero.com before shifting to business development and early-stage financing for startups.
Nico Lumma is regarded as somebody who always knows the latest trends and loves to talk about his visions of the future.
Pascal Finette
Venture Partner
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.
Matt Munson
Venture Partner
matt.munson@founderslink.com
Matt's career benchmarks include the successful launch of three different companies, including two exits to date, and record-breaking deals closed with industry giants such as General Motors, Computer Associates, Constellation Energy, Autobytel, Info.com, and Edmunds.com.
Following a BA from Wheaton College, Matt joined renowned serial entrepreneur and IBM sales guru Richard Beedon as the second employee of The MacBeedon Group, an Ann Arbor, Michigan based sales consulting and outsourcing firm. Six months later, under Beedon's tutelage, Matt took over general management of the company and built MacBeedon's business development strategy from the ground up. The result was a client base including General Motors, Computer Associates, Car.com, Quicken Loans, Autobytel, and ExpensAble.
After successfully negotiating the sale of The MacBeedon Group's lead-generation business unit to Dialogue Marketing, Matt joined the 500-person interactive marketing agency as the youngest executive in company history. While at Dialogue, Matt managed business-to-business marketing services and penetrated new industries including information technology, market research, automotive, and energy.
Following his term at Dialogue Marketing, Matt launched Michigan-based interactive agency Equation Ventures. Equation develops proprietary, high-traffic websites that generate high- margin customer leads for clients in financial services, automotive, and consumer goods industries and has incubated such projects as FreshTrend.com and SmarterPlastic.com.
In 2005, while concurrently managing the growth of Equation Ventures, Matt joined Internet sales and marketing pioneer Ben Padnos by investing in Better PPC, the fast-growing, private-equity backed Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firm based in El Segundo California. Better PPC created the world's only automated solution for utilizing complex algorithms to test search engine advertising. Matt took over sales and marketing management for Better PPC and helped build the small start up into an international industry brand name. The result was a 2008 acquisition by leading online media publisher Moxy Media. Matt was an advisor to the board of Michigan-based Information Systems Group prior to the company's sale in 2006.
Dr. Arndt Schwaiger
Venture Partner
arndt.schwaiger@founderslink.com
Arndt is an expert in artificial intelligence, computer science and the games industry with a collective experience of more than 12 years in business, research and development.
During his schooltime, Arndt founded two game companies and developed several games for the Amiga computer. He studied business administration and computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI). After finishing his degree, he became a researcher at the German Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH) in Saarbrücken. Arndt has published several scientific papers, won the WIC/IAT demo award 2004 in Beijing, and finished his PhD in computer science.
Arndt was previously a shareholder of Dacos Software GmbH in Saarbrücken.
From 2003 to 2007, he worked as project manager, researcher and developer in the area of AI and business intelligence.
In 2008, Arndt has worked as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for eWave Interactive GmbH in Potsdam, where he developed an entertainment community and multi-player online games for the PC and cellphones.
He has also been an independent consultant and manager.
Arndt is fluent in German and English. He has a good knowledge of French.