Ortwin Kartmann
Interim CPO/CTO with focus on go-to-market activities
Experience
Jan 2021 - Present
3 years 2 months Frankfurt, Germany
Business & Tech Consultant
OK Venture GmbH
I guide and support selected clients as an advisor, interim manager 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 years Butzbach, Germany
Founder & Co-CEO
Shopgate GmbH
- 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 2016 - Present
8 years 2 months Frankfurt, Germany
Founder & Managing Director
OK Venture GmbH
Management of investments and assets
Jan 2009 - Dec 2020
11 years Butzbach, Germany
Founder & CPO/CTO
Shopgate GmbH
- 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 years Salzburg, Austria
Co-Founder & CPO/CTO
Tibidono Handelsinnovationen GmbH
- 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 2013
5 years Butzbach, Germany
Co-founder & Managing Director
Simty GmbH
- 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 years Munich, Germany
Co-Founder, Inventor Sofortüberweisung & CPO/CTO
Sofortüberweisung / Payment Network AG
- 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 1999 - Dec 2004
5 years Butzbach, Germany
Co-founder & Managing Director
People.de Network GmbH
- 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 yearsLorem 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.
With a strong entrepreneurial spirit, I seek freelance opportunities that leverage my extensive experience in business development, technology, and startup growth. 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
Native
English
Advanced
Education
Oct 2008 - Jun 2009
THM, Friedberg
Diploma · Business Informatics · Friedberg, Germany · 1.0
Oct 1997 - Jun 2000