A video wholesaler sounds like boxes and delivery notes. In truth it was a race against time. Every film has a release day, and on that day it has to be on the shelf — otherwise the customer goes elsewhere. We supplied hundreds of video stores, and when the studios couldn’t reach every shop, our warehouse stepped in: take in the stock a day or two early, sort it overnight, distribute it to everyone on release day. Clockwork made of paper, phone and fax.
I was less interested in the clockwork than in the question behind it: how do you know in advance what people will want to watch? So I started building — a small piece of software that worked out from what ran yesterday what would be needed tomorrow. Nothing glamorous, but it thought ahead.
The best thing about that time wasn’t the processes, though, but the conversations. One of my first employees, Matthias Peuckert, sat with me in the office when we talked about how retail really ought to work — more open, data-driven, without detours. Years later he went to Amazon and helped build exactly the kind of business we had only imagined in our back room.
What stayed: Good ideas are rarely loud. Sometimes they are born in a video wholesaler in southern Germany — and you only recognise them when someone else makes them big.
Details
Up to 800 titles planned per month · from fax lists to a self-written Access application and automatically imported Excel reports from the stores to the first online system via modem · later an integrated ERP (SoftENGINE) · Movie Plus Medien GmbH, managing director 1996–2020 · up to 800 titles planned per month · from fax lists to a self-written Access application and automatically imported Excel reports from the stores to the first online system via modem · later an integrated ERP (SoftENGINE) · e-group entertainment GmbH, 2007–2009 (50% Movie Plus): three ERP and accounting systems merged into one, €55m and €15m annual purchasing volume, handling effort cut by around 50%, delivery time from two weeks to four days.
IP500
When competitors have to agree on a common language
At CoreNetiXSmart city trade mission, Mexico 2022
It began as an evaluation. At Consult Cube I assessed a start-up the way you assess dozens — technology, market, team. Only this time I didn’t move on; I stayed. The evaluator became a builder.
The technology was the easy part: a wireless standard for buildings — secure, low-power, reliable. The hard part was human. A standard only works if companies that otherwise fight each other agree on the same language. Everyone wants the others to adapt. Nobody wants to go first.
That is exactly where my work lay — not in the lab, but between people: bringing manufacturers, cities, universities and authorities to one table, in Europe and Latin America, and turning individual interests into an ecosystem.
It reminded me of something old. In biology a body works because millions of different cells rely on shared signals — no conductor, just a shared code. A standard is nothing else: a contract of trust between strangers.
That meant a lot of travel. In 2021 and 2022 alone, I joined German market-entry delegations for the IP500 Alliance — to Panama, Mexico and Brazil among others, and digitally to Colombia — sometimes on my own, sometimes together with partners such as MICROSENS and ISORYX.
What stayed: The hardest technology is rarely the technology. It is how to get people to trust each other enough to work together.
KiotSCO SAS · Bogotá
A bridge of radio waves between Europe and Colombia
In 2019 I founded KiotSCO in Bogotá — as founder, managing director and co-owner. The starting point was simple: European technology for secure, low-power wireless networks in buildings and cities already existed. What was missing was someone to bring it to Latin America and connect it there with the people, companies and institutions that need it.
KiotSCO became the IP500 partner for Latin America: advice on wireless protocols for industrial, commercial and public safety, energy savings through smart lighting control — and today also looking after cloud platforms on which IP500 networks run. On a large educational campus in Villavicencio the task was a step-by-step retrofit: lighting and energy automation, sensors, network integration — with technology partners from Europe and engineers on site.
Today KiotSCO is a partner of MICROSENS for Colombia, Latin America, Spain and the USA, and a sales development partner of ISORYX for Colombia, Latin America and Spain.
What stayed: Technology doesn’t cross an ocean on its own. It needs someone who understands both sides — the technology and the people.
I was handed a coating, as thin as a coat of paint, with the promise that it keeps the heat in the house. And with a problem: it failed the standard insulation tests. For most people that would have been the end — failed is failed.
That is exactly what made me curious. I looked at how these tests measure and paused: the decisive factor was the thickness of the material. For classic insulation that makes sense — thicker is warmer. But for a wafer-thin layer that works through an entirely different physical route, thickness is the wrong yardstick. It was like timing a runner with a swimming stopwatch.
So I turned the question around. Not: does the product pass the test? But: is this even the right test? The answer lay in more than ten years of real projects in which the effect was measurable — in the field, not in the standardised lab.
What stayed: Before you judge an answer, check whether the question is right. I don’t claim that every unconventional technology keeps its promise. I only say: you have to test it with the right yardstick before you judge.
Whizz
The thing we didn’t build
From the same era: early e-commerce experiments.
In 2006 I had an idea for something that didn’t exist yet: an internet community where people share photos and videos, trends emerge and a currency of its own rewards activity. At its core was a new way of searching that I called search pools — an idea I am still building on today. Facebook had only just opened to the public; Instagram was four years away. I called the whole thing Whizz.
The idea was mine — but to turn it into real algorithms I brought the right people together: Wolfgang Kantschik’s Dortmund Intelligence Project for computational intelligence, and Professor Gerhard Weikum of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics with his doctoral researcher Melanie Gnasa for intelligent search. An official, paid collaboration — not a buzzword team, but top people who put my concept on a scientific footing.
And then we didn’t build it.
Why? Not because the idea was wrong. Three things were missing at once — capital, timing and a team that could focus on it completely — while I was in the middle of a business reorganisation. That is the uncomfortable lesson: a strong idea doesn’t become the company it could be on its own. Execution needs capital, people, timing and focus at the same moment — if one is missing, even the best idea remains a specification.
What stayed: A thread that only shows in hindsight — from the forecasting software at Movie Plus via Whizz to my work with AI today: how does better information lead to better decisions? And respect for why things fail.
sensfix · Interim VP Business Development
On board for a while
From June to December 2023 I was interim VP Business Development at sensfix, a technology company for predictive maintenance and custom sensors. The task was typical of what I’m brought in for: joining a running company, quickly understanding what the technology can do and where it is needed — and turning that into markets.
I evaluated international opportunities, worked on expansion into Spanish-speaking markets and connected the offering with partners in Europe and Latin America. At its core was a familiar question again: which data from buildings and machines leads to better decisions — before something breaks?
What stayed: As an interim manager you are a guest with responsibility. You have to win trust quickly — and work so that things carry on without you.
Since 2023 I have supported Medicatoria on its international advisory board and as ambassador for start-ups and ecosystems. The focus is on solutions for better healthcare in remote and underserved regions.
Medicatoria is a non-profit foundation. It started with the aim of reducing inequalities in healthcare, above all in remote and underserved regions. That is exactly where telemedicine will play a huge role. But telemedicine only works if health data can be exchanged securely and in a trusted way. Just as open is a basic question: who owns health and research data, which almost always relates to individual patients?
That is why the focus today is on a trust-based system of three tokens that governs the exchange and ownership of this data — deliberately not meant for speculation, but as a European lighthouse project for the ethical use of health data. Trust as infrastructure — a theme that has occupied me for a long time.
My role is the one I do best: finding the right technologies and start-ups — sensors, connectivity, AI — and bringing them together with the people and partners who can turn them into care that works.
What stayed: The most meaningful technology is the one that arrives where it is missing most.
E-group — 2007–2009, Cologne — three ERP and accounting systems merged into one; €55m and €15m annual purchasing volume, handling effort cut by around 50%.
Consult Cube — 2012–2019, Zurich — partner for private equity and international project and investment evaluation.
Sarl Martres & Foglers — 2012–2019, Saint-Paulet, France — managing director of a manufacturer of leisure and swimwear.
KreARCE — 2019–2023, Bogotá — hospitality and community: the Peace & Love restaurant in Casa KreARCE, More Food and La Tiendita de Rosi. I have since sold the restaurants.
BIT Consulting — technology ecosystems, including the keynote for Ecopetrol in 2025.
