Chairman of the Supervisory Board

Dr. Paul-Josef Patt is CEO of eCAPITAL ENTREPRENEURIAL PARTNERS, a German venture capital company. He started his career as project manager at Roland Berger & Partner, the leading German strategy consultancy. Later he worked for a German retail corporate as Director of Business Development and Strategy. By management buy-in he became the executive partner of a highly expansive retail company with lastly more than 700 branches. After his successful exit, Patt started working as a business angel and venture capitalist. He took over the lead at eCAPITAL in 2004 and has overseen the company’s impressive growth. He has a strong track record in financing and developing Deep Tech and Impact Start ups and as lead investor. Past investments include Novaled (sold to Samsung in 2013), sonnen (sold to Shell in 2019), Jedox (sold to Insight Partners in 2021), Dryad, 1KOMMA5° or Papershift. Patt serves on several boards, including Jedox, Heliatek and beeOLED.

Curt Gunsenheimer, Senior Partner at Iris Capital, joined the company in 2002. He is responsible for investments in late-stage and growth capital across Europe and supports companies across Germany and France in stages of global expansion. Gunsenheimer has twenty years of experience in venture capital and public-market financing of growth technology companies, with particular expertise in the field of software. Prior to joining Iris Capital, he worked at Goldman Sachs and Robertson Stephens.

Patrick Schaudel, SVP Product at IONOS With many years of experience in the IT and software industry, Patrick is a proven expert for cloud-solutions, e-business and online marketing with focus on the SMB business. At IONOS, he and his teams are responsible for the entire product portfolio for the digital success of companies of all sizes as well as the public sector. In previous positions at companies like BBDO and Haufe Group, he held several positions in B2B marketing and sales as well as product management with the focus on digital transformation.

Director, CEO of Pax8

John Street is an award-winning entrepreneur who has launched a range of companies, including four that garnered Inc. 500 status. He has also served on several commercial Boards and been involved in a wide variety of startups, ranging from telecommunications and high tech to agricultural biotech. He is currently CEO of Pax8, which is creating a complete cloud commerce marketplace, aggregating leading solutions for outsourced IT service providers to efficiently manage their clients’ cloud operations. Street was formerly responsible for the growth of Telephone Express, before founding USA.Net, which launched the world’s first web-based email service. In addition to serving a Chairman of MS Biotec, he also went on to found MX Logic in 2002, which became one of the world’s largest providers of email and web security and is now part of McAfee/Intel. He is currently Chairman Emeritus of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic and serves on the Board for the Institute for Cultural Evolution.

Katja Speck is CMO at robo advisor and SaaS provider VisualVest where she is responsible for Innovation, Marketing, Product and Sustainability. Prior to that, she held responsible positions in the tech industry for over 15 years, including General Manager of the non-profit organization ID4me, part of the team of SPRIND - Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation and VP Marketing, Sales and Business Development at international eCommerce specialist asknet. She has been closely networked with the tech scene in Europe, the Americas, and Israel for years and shares her experience as a lecturer at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences. She regularly speaks on innovation and impact topics at renowned conferences such as DLD. In 2019, she was awarded the "InspiringFifty DACH" prize, a non-profit organization whose mission is to increase diversity in the technology industry.