POLITIK

Frank Thelen first made his name through “Die Höhle der Löwen,“ the German version of Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re from. Thelen is now the most-prominent tech investor in Germany. Thelen’s track record includes numerous notable exits, including 6Wunderkinder (sold to Microsoft), Mytaxi (sold to Daimler) and Kaufda (taken over by Axel Springer).

​​Kristina Lunz is co-founder and co-CEO at the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP). Between January 2019 and January 2020, Kristina was active as an advisor at the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, where she helped establish the feminist network Unidas German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. Previously, she was the Gender and Coordination Officer at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Yangon, Myanmar, and also active at Sisma Mujer, an NGO in Bogotá, Colombia. She studied at the University College London and University of Oxford. IN February 2022, she published her first book “Die Zukunft der Aussenpolitik ist feministisch.”

Florian Heinemann is a Founding Partner at Project A Ventures, where he is responsible for the areas of marketing, CRM, and business intelligence. With more than 800m USD assets under management, Project A invests in digital companies at an early stage all over Europe. In addition to capital, Project A provides portfolio companies with exclusive operational support by a team of 100 in-house experts including all areas across product, growth, data and people. Since 2012 Project A has invested in more than 100 companies, among them Trade Republic, Spryker, Kry, Sennder, WorldRemit/Zeps, LUQOM, Voi, and Casavo. Before co-founding Project A, Florian was Managing Director at Rocket Internet with the same areas of responsibility (2007-2012). During his time at Rocket, he was mainly involved at Zalando, Global Fashion Group, and Spark Networks (aka eDarling/Affinitas). Prior to Rocket, Florian was Co-Founder and Managing Director of JustBooks/AbeBooks being in charge of marketing and product (1999-2002, exit to Amazon in 2008). Then, he was co-heading the online marketing department of Jamba! and the online dating portal iLove (2003-2005, exit to Verisign). In 2006, he was Co-Founder of the online marketplace antibodies-online.com (exit to Broadoak). Moreover, Florian has been an investor/business angel in more than 80 startups including Trivago (seed investor), Zalando (founding investor), Audibene (seed investor), Home24 (founding investor), CityDeal/Groupon (founding investor), Betreut.de/Care (seed investor), ClassPass (early stage investor), Mimi Hearing (early stage investor), Bitbond (seed investor), Lillydoo (early stage investor), and the Code University (seed stage investor). Apart from his Project A-related board activities he sits on the supervisory boards of Koerber AG and Fressnapf and the digital advisory boards of Henkel and Oetker.