After finishing university in 1989, I started my first consulting company called ABACUS together with 3 partners. We focussed on reporting and planning tools, mainly for family-owned middle market businesses in Germany. After hardworking few years, the company continously grew to about 50 consultants until we sold it to Ernst & Young in 1997. After that, I had a great and successful time as a managing partner for the EY Germany middle market practice. Of course the merger with Cap Gemini and the market crash in 2000 changed our business and some tough years followed. Still a great experience for me, now as a member of the Central Europe Management Board and responsible for medium sized business and developping the SAP practice for this target group. In 2003, I founded avantum consult AG together with 2 partners and 10 employees who joined us from Cap Gemini. avantum specializes on performance management, business intelligence and implementation of planning and reporting solutions. Again an exciting time, growing the company to 70 consultants in a few years before I decided to focus my efforts on a very special project and to go back to consulting rather than managing a consulting firm. From 2010 to June 2019, I ran a major finance and business transformation program for a global conglomerate. This included harmonizing reporting and budgeting solutions, transition of finance roles to lower cost talent centers as well as the design, build and roll-out of a one instance SAP solution to support all processes from Contact to Cash in more than 150 countries.2019 is a pivot point in my professional career. My focus now is on active investments in interesting start-up companies. I enjoy working with founders and supporting them in building and growing successful businesses.