funkfeuer.net is a weblog about technology and entrepreneurship. It’s a blog about my thoughts on the latest development techniques, market trends, startup methodologies and the life as an aspiring young entrepreneur and software developer in Germany.
The following paragraphs will give you a small introduction into who I am. You can learn even more about me on XING and LinkedIn.
A Brief History of Mine
1996-2004: First Contacts with the Internet
I have been a fan of the Internet for a long time already. As soon as I could understand some English I started to dial into the CompuServe network with my parents’ modem and started to hang around in chats and forums. After discovering the World Wide Web and later AltaVista the real journey began and I am addicted ever since.
Somehow I managed to be so interested in programming, Linux, networks and computers in general that I was sitting many hours in my youth in front of some huge books with funny animals on the cover and a big one-colored title box. This helped me to get my first job as a webmaster for a startup in 2000 where I was able to greatly enhance my allowance. In 2001 with 17 years I was living in the U.S. with my parents for one year and this was the first time I could enjoy a broadband cable connection and proper Computer Science education in school. I truly benefited from the daily C++ courses. And I am still pissed off that today – more than 7 years later – my DSL connection in Germany is still slower than Comcast in 2001 [Update 2010: Finally I can browse with VDSL in Germany].
2004-2007: Studying Business Computer Science
After finishing my German “Abitur”, which can be compared to the U.S. high school degree, I decided to study Business Computer Science at the University of Cooperative Education in Stuttgart in cooperation with Hewlett Packard. This three year long study or trainee program is quite famous in Germany but not that common in other countries. You are applying at a sponsor company and selected by companies in assessment centers. Afterwards one is employed by this company, being paid a monthly salary for studying and always alternating in three-month intervals between university and internships within different departments of the company. After graduation one receives a German diploma and a Bachelor degree. This study program gave me great insights into HP and allowed me among other things to attend the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona twice and to go to the HP headquarters in Palo Alto for an internship (3GSM World Congress was renamed to Mobile World Congress).
2007: A Journey to Silicon Valley And a First Startup Idea
The atmosphere in the Valley impressed me enormously and I got motivated to develop a website myself after I came back to Germany. Ruby on Rails was the tool of choice and made me enjoy programming and web development even more than before. With a friend I worked on a mobile community for the German market for several months while still studying in cooperation with HP. But I came to the point where I realized that my friend was not able to support me sufficiently and I knew nobody else that was a geek like me. I canceled the project and began to go to Barcamps and other web-related events, so that I could get to know more people that are – just like me – really into the Web and new technologies.
2007-2008: Working at HP
Due to my broad technical skills I started as an IT Consultant at HP. This sounded like an exciting job, traveling around, working with the latest technologies, many interesting companies and earning a good salary as a consultant. However, the job was in no way like I imagined it. Obsolete technologies, only several large boring clients, politics all day long and some other things that bothered me, but I won’t complain about those in public. I soon told my manager that I want to quit.
I decided to stay within HP and took a job in the team that was operating the HP website within EMEA. I was responsible for all the web and development agencies that worked on the HP website. This was nothing technical but I wanted to extend my horizon. But again, after 9 months I had enough. The job was not challenging me enough and I was mainly juggling emails. Additionally, the HP Way, that I still experienced when joining HP, was rapidly becoming extinct. HP’s new CEO Mark Hurd only focused on shareholder value and forgot the unique culture that existed at HP, making it a less fun place to work. I was already working on a new side project with two guys I met at a conference before, so I decided to not only quit the job but HP altogether to pursue the new challenge full time.
2008-2010: The First Serious Startup
Tagcrumbs was the first real startup I worked on. I founded a real company with my cofounders and we worked on the project for about 1.5 years. Our vision was to create an open platform in the web and on mobile phones to share and remember all kinds of different places, from the best restaurant in town to the place of your first kiss. We were successful in creating the platform but soon realized that it would take too long to generate enough monthly income through ads to be a sustainable business. We decided to offer services to business and wrote a business plan to raise money but failed to get enough money to execute our plan. It was a hard decision, nevertheless we decided to shut the service down as it would be too hard for us to compete with larger funded US startups – especially as we would need to get other jobs to cover our own costs and the startup would only become a side project.
2010-Today: Freelance Software Engineering and Consulting
After quitting Tagcrumbs I thought about going back into the corporate world, but soon realized that I will be the happiest and most successful if I work independently. So I am now working as a freelance software engineer (iPhone and Ruby on Rails development) and consultant (web and mobile projects.) You can find out more about my recent work. Please contact me if you want to hire me for your next project.
