Ortwin K.
Business & Tech Consultant
Experience
Jan 2022 - Present
3 years 8 monthsFrankfurt, Germany
Business & Tech Consultant
OK Venture GmbH
- I guide and support selected clients as an advisor, interimmanager or freelancer, helping them in these key areas of their business:
- Developing go-to-market strategies to achieve product-market fit
- Challenging and improving the product roadmap with a focus on the real customer needs
- Scaling and coaching of software development teams (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe)
- Increasing the speed & quality of tech teams
- Enhancing product demos & sales pitches
- Implementing KPIs (key performance indicators) and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
- Development and Implementation of use cases on how AI makes the product better
Jan 2019 - Dec 2022
4 yearsButzbach, Germany
Founder & Co-CEO
Shopgate GmbH
- Shopgate was founded by Andrea Anderheggen (ex. COO of Sofortüberweisung) and myself in 2009. Our goal was to define the new area of mobile commerce after the launch of the iPhone. In total, we provided mobile shopping websites to more than 5000 merchants across Europe and the USA. We have published more than 1000 Shopping Apps for leading merchants to the Apple & Google Appstore. Our SaaS platform manages millions of products and processes thousands of orders per day. We raised more than €50 million in funding from three investors and scaled the company up to 250 employees in Europe and the United States. In 2018, we extended our product platform with Omnichannel services for brick-and-mortar stores. Gartner mentioned this new Omnichannel platform in its 2023 report.
- Responsible for the German market
- Extended our product offering with Omnichannel services
- More active part in fundraising and investor relations and secured a new funding round
Jan 2017 - Present
8 years 8 monthsFrankfurt, Germany
Founder & Managing Director
OK Venture GmbH
- I founded OK Venture in 2017 to provide angel investments in startups.
- Management of investments and assets
Jan 2009 - Dec 2019
11 yearsButzbach, Germany
Founder & CPO/CTO
Shopgate GmbH
- Shopgate was founded by Andrea Anderheggen (ex. COO of Sofortüberweisung) and myself in 2009. Our goal was to define the new area of mobile commerce after the launch of the iPhone. In total, we provided mobile shopping websites to more than 5000 merchants across Europe and the USA. We have published more than 1000 Shopping Apps for leading merchants to the Apple & Google Appstore. Our SaaS platform manages millions of products and processes thousands of orders per day. We raised more than €50 million in funding from three investors and scaled the company up to 250 employees in Europe and the United States. In 2018, we extended our product platform with Omnichannel services for brick-and-mortar stores. Gartner mentioned this new Omnichannel platform in its 2023 report.
- Main responsible for strategic roadmap planning & development of our platform
- Established a highly efficient agile development environment (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe)
- Hired more than 100 tech talents (Product Owner, Architects, Developers, DevOps, QA Tester, etc)
- Automate with the team every single process within the organization
- Established KPIs for the product and OKRs for the entire company
- Developed a highly available SaaS platform for mobile commerce websites and shopping apps
- Delivered the service to more than 5000 merchants with millions of products and customers
- Developed plugins for almost all shopping cart systems and integrations with more than 50 payment providers
- In the first years, we could triple our revenue every year (later, we double it)
- Our mobile website had a significant higher conversion rate (up to 40%) than responsive websites
- The retention rate in our shopping apps was 2x higher than on the website
Jan 2009 - Dec 2010
2 yearsSalzburg, Austria
Co-Founder & CPO/CTO
Tibidono Handelsinnovationen GmbH
- Tibidono was the first gift card provider in Austria and Eastern Europe. We had developed a platform where vendors could sell their gift cards at retailers with a large network of stores (e.g. gas stations, supermarkets, etc.). The company was acquired by InComm in 2015. I co-founded the company to build the product and hire a strong tech team.
- Defined the product strategy and developed the MVP
- Hired and coached a strong tech team
- Managed security audits to get listed in all SPAR supermarkets across Austria
- The SPAR listing took place within only 12 months after the project start, including the update of all POS systems
- Our service had a constant high availability of >99.99%
- At the same time, we have onboarded over 20 customers who have presented their gift cards in SPAR stores.
- After the successful SPAR listing, I hired a replacement for my operational position
- Sold my shares to InComm in 2015
Jan 2008 - Dec 2012
5 yearsButzbach, Germany
Co-founder & Managing Director
Simty GmbH
- Simty GmbH was founded by me in 2008 during my thesis on mobile payment. The goal was to implement the theoretical aspects of the thesis in a practical project and validate it on the market. The first service developed was a mobile app for buying parking tickets, which could be used in 15 cities in Germany and Austria. The company was sold in 2012 to the company MobilZahlen.
- Developed the first iPhone & Android App for buying parking tickets
- Reduced the time it takes to buy a parking ticket from 3-5 minutes to an average of 30 seconds (including launching the app)
- Smart mapping service for the allocation of parking zones to parking rates (based on GPS coordinates)
- Implementation of fully automated billing and payment system
- Scaled the company to >25.000 parking tickets per month and launched the service in 15 cities (Germany and Austria)
Jan 2004 - Dec 2009
6 yearsMunich, Germany
Co-Founder, Inventor Sofortüberweisung & CPO/CTO
Sofortüberweisung / Payment Network AG
- Sofortüberweisung is still one of Germany's and Europe's most popular payment methods. It was acquired by Klarna for €150 million in 2013.
- Invented the payment method Sofortüberweisung
- Created the first (very ugly) logo for this new payment method
- Developed 24/7 the MVP within only 3 months with a very small team
- Hired and managed a strong tech team for Product & Development
- Ownership of the roadmap and all development activities
- Reached the product market fit within 2-3 years after launch
- Cost reduction for online merchants for payment transactions by more than 60% compared to credit cards and 40% compared to prepayment (because of the manual processes)
- Fully automate the payment process for merchants
- Reduction in warehousing costs for each product that was paid for with Sofortüberweisung, as it was shipped faster.
- Online customers have usually received the products 1-2 days earlier.
- Improved the average time for onboarding of new customers from 2-3 weeks to 1-2 days.
Jan 2000 - Dec 2004
5 yearsButzbach, Germany
Co-founder & Managing Director
People.de Network GmbH
- People.de Network was the first company I founded together with friends. It was our playground for young entrepreneurs with lots of ideas.
- Created a internet community with more than 500.000 active users
- Developed the first version of online coaching through nachhilfe.net
- Created a music-sharing platform mp3lieder.de
- Created an online Shopping Network (shopping55.de) with >1m in revenue per month
Jan 1997 - Dec 2000
4 years Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
referate.de
- Started as a fun project, referate.de became the most popular website for students
- Learning by doing: Coding, analyzing, improving, repeating
- Over 5.000 papers & homework from 23 school subjects
- In 1998, we had more visits than Spiegel Online.
Summary
As a seasoned tech entrepreneur and consultant, my career has been defined by pioneering digital transformation and pushing the boundaries of innovation. I aim to contribute to projects with significant impact, leveraging my expertise to drive growth and success in challenging and high-stakes environments.
Languages
German
NativeEnglish
AdvancedEducation
THM
Diploma in Business Informatics · Business Informatics · Friedberg, Germany · 1.0
Weidigschule
Abitur, major subjects in math and physics · Butzbach, Germany
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