Considered to be one of the leading European Banking, Investment and Blockchain/Crypto Law specialists. Guenther is also passionate about innovation, entrepreneurship, rock music, custom bratstyle motorcycles, obstacle course racing and vinyl records.

A Partner at PwC Zurich and Leader of PwC Legal Switzerland he and his team are building the law firm of the future. Every day. He also is one of seven members of PwC’s Global Legal Leadership Team directing the firm’s 4000+ lawyers in 95 countries. Prior to this he was a successful Venture Capitalist, served as in-house counsel at an international hedge fund and practised in court and with a leading business law firm. Guenther holds a PhD in law from Johannes Kepler University (Austria), an MBA from the University of Strathclyde (Scotland) and has completed an Executive Education Program at Harvard Business School.

He is the author of 10 books mostly on investment law and regulation but also of "Making Money out of Technology" (2003), "Uptake Revisited: How Innovative Products succeed in International Markets" (2007) and "New Suits. Appetite for Disruption in the Legal World" (2019). He is privately invested and actively involved in numerous ventures and lectures at various universities. Guenther is also the founder of global tech enthusiasts movement Disruption Disciples (www.disruptiondisciples.org) and the host of the educational video series „Appetite for Disruption“ (www.appetitefordisruption.tv) which promises to take the audience to the edge of innovation. And past it!

Frank Steinicke is a professor for Human-Computer Interaction at the Department of Informatics at the University of Hamburg. From 2011 to 2014 he was a professor of Computer Science in Media at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Würzburg and chair of the Immersive Media Group. Between 2012 and 2014 he was the director of the newly founded interdisciplinary Institute for Human Computer Media. In 2009 he assumed an associate guest professor position at the University of Minnesota. He studied Mathematics with a Minor in Computer Science at the University of Münster, from which he received his Ph.D. and Venia Legendi in Computer Science.

His research is driven by understanding the human perceptual, cognitive and motor abilities and limitations in order to reform the interaction as well as the experience in computer-mediated realities. Frank Steinicke regularly serves as panelist and speaker at major events in the area of virtual reality and human-computer interaction. He serves as the program chair for IEEE VR 2017/2018, which is the most renowned scientific conference in the area of VR/AR. He is on the IPC of various national and international conferences, and currently editor of the IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications Department on Spatial Interfaces. Furthermore, he is a member of the Steering Committee of the ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction (SUI) and the GI SIG VR/AR. Finally, he is a member of ACM, IEEE and GI, in particular, ACM SIGCHI, IEEE Smart Cities Community, and the GI SIGs on VR/AR, Medieninformatik and (Be-)greifbare Interaktion.

Until May of 2018, Paul was the managing director of both Otto Group Digital Solutions GmbH and Liquid Labs GmbH in Hamburg, Germany. Previously, he was a managing partner at Neuhaus Partners from 2006 to 2012. He joined that private fund from SAP AG, where he managed SAP's Corporate Venture fund in Europe from 2000 onwards. Paul was named to head of SAP Ventures Europe in 2001. From 1998 to 2000, Paul led the European business development initiative of Davis Polk & Wardwell, a leading global law firm. Previously, he worked at Andersen Consulting where he focused on the software, telecommunications and public utilities sectors. Prior to Andersen, he helped to grow an early stage business in real estate financing and consulting with offices in Lübeck, Berlin, and Dresden. Paul is both a U.S. and Slovak national. He graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in Finance and German.

Specialties: FinTech, Financial Services, Mobile, Internet, Media

Thorsten Gau is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Executive Architect. He works at the enterprise level in large transformational programs on hot topics like digital healthcare & insurance, DevOps, Cognitive Business and Mobile Solutions on Cloud. Thorsten Gau has demonstrated outstanding technical leadership. He can effectively think horizontally and communicate complex concepts in easy words. That enables him to unite business and IT.

Passion for entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. Design Thinking Enthusiast. Promoting innovation and new ideas. Current goal: Lead the Youth Board of Cyprus and help realise its vision and mission namely Youth Policy Making, creating and providing opportunities for the Youth of Cyprus to participate in the social, entrepreneurial, cultural and political growth of Cyprus, overcome challenges and network across Europe and beyond.

Henning Vöpel has been director and CEO of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) since 2014. In 2010, he was appointed for Professor for Economics at HSBA Hamburg School of Business Administration. His research areas include business cycle analysis, fiscal and monetary policy as well as digital economy.

After studying economics at the University of Hamburg, Professor Vöpel completed his doctorate in 2004 on the topic of the stabilization effects of fiscal policy. At the same time he worked as a research associate in the Faculty for Business and Economics. For the next two years, he worked as an independent business consultant.In 2006, Professor Vöpel took part in the joint economic forecast of the leading economic research institutes on behalf of the German government twice.

In 2009, he was invited by the US Department of State to carry out research in locations such as Washington D.C., San Francisco and Boston (Harvard and MIT) as part of the International Young Leadership Program

Gunnar Froh is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder & CEO at Wunder Mobility. Wunder is a mobility tech platform providing carpooling, smart shuttles, and free-floating sharing to consumers, corporates & cities.

A behavioral economist by training, Gunnar has co-founded and bootstrapped Accoleo which was acquired by Airbnb in 2011. Gunnar opened Airbnb’s first office outside of the US and spearheaded their internationalization efforts. He represented Airbnb in M&A, PR, Government-, and Investor Relations. Gunnar is also the founder of a car sharing organization as well as co-founder and Managing Partner of VALley Venture Capital, a VC fund assembling high net worth individuals to invest in early-stage technology-driven German start-ups. Prior to joining the world of entrepreneurship Gunnar worked as an Associate for McKinsey & Company consulting clients in automotive, high-tech, and the public sector on operational efficiency. Gunnar lives and works in Hamburg (Germany) and San Francisco (CA).

Wybo joined WeWork in 2015, with over twenty years of experience as both an Entrepreneur and Manager. Throughout his career, he held management positions in large-scale leisure companies across the globe, including Madame Tussauds and Siam Ocean World.

He was born and raised in the Netherlands and holds a Management degree from the University of Leicester. Today, Wybo lives with his family in Berlin. At WeWork, he especially enjoys connecting businesses of all types and sizes and supporting their success in an environment that fosters collaboration and innovation.

Nils is co-founder of Spryker Systems, a leading commerce technology provider. Based on PHP architecture and with its modular approach, Spryker enables retailers to quickly adapt, scale and innovate their digital business. Individual requirements can easily be integrated in order to meet customer needs, including data driven approaches in the fields of Business Intelligence, CRM, and Online Marketing. The framework has been deployed for numerous successful e-commerce businesses such as Tirendo, nu3 or Contorion.

Previously, Nils co-founded eTribes Connect, a digital consulting firm. eTribes enables companies to find the right digital strategy and to adapt their business models to changes brought through the internet based economy. In addition, he supports eTribes’ various equity participations as well as entrepreneurs through a wide range of business management, controlling and M&A services. He has also started teaching e-commerce and operations as a guest lecturer at a private university in Hamburg. Nils also serves in several public boards that support the digital transformation of the German economy. Prior experience includes his work at NetImpact Framework GmbH, a Hamburg based programming and developer focused business that was successfully sold to the OTTO Group in 2013, FERNBACH Software, an international financial software specialist, in London & Luxembourg as well as HSBC, a global financial institution, where he worked in the Investment Banking Financial Sponsor team in London and New York.

Previously, Nils gained experience with Morgan Stanley, Wetzlich Optik and the U.S. Commercial Service. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Babson College and has also studied at Oxford University and the London School of Economics.

Peter is a dynamic, enthusiastic and accomplished international business leader with a broad experience of more than 20 years in digitalization across the different markets with in depth know-how in the Sports and Software Industry, Financial Services and Telecommunications. He has a strong entrepreneurial track record of delivering solid operational performance and market growth amidst challenging conditions. Peter has leveraged his profound technical knowledge in cloud, infrastructure and telecommunications to create tangible business value in numerous occasions as an entrepreneur and as a leader in the corporate world.

Peter has a valuable mix of technical competence, industry experience, sales experience and diversity of professional roles. He has strong international experience and proven capabilities in:
- Regional + Global executive leadership positions
- General management & P&L management of significant business units
- People development & talent management combined with deep strategy design and change management experience.

Peter appears as a frequent speaker on external events and conferences, talking about topics such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud, Digitalization, Innovation, Data Center Transformation and Sports.
Specialties: Strong expertise in Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, Transformation and Cloud Strategy.

Experienced Chief Information Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the retail industry. Skilled in Business Transformation, Management, Leadership, Supply Chain Management, and Business Strategy. Strong information technology professional with a Dr. focused in Computer Science & MIS, Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Business Administration from Technische Universität Berlin.

tl;dr - I make things happen and lead pirate ships (aka ‘tech companies’). --

As CPO of Clue, one of the leading mobile apps for female health, I was responsible for defining the global product strategy, scaled and led the product, growth and monetisation teams. Before joining Clue, I took a detour into consulting with ThoughtWorks, worked for Podio as Senior Product Manager, founded my first startup, helped structure two Venture Capital funds and sold contemporary art.

Apart from that, the 'Future of Work' has been a passion of mine for many years: I'm part of the XING New Work Think Tank and act as judge for the related New Work Award. Over the last couple of years, I've spoken on various conferences and participated in panel discussions together w/ top-tier industry executives. I've also published columns for two of the most known German business magazines: Impulse.de and spielraum.de (see 'Publications’)

And since being a ‘women in tech’ is an interesting experience, I also co-founded the Hamburg chapter of the Geekettes, a global network for women in the tech and startup scene.

Corporate lawyer with comprehensive business experience and substantial experiences in the field of structured asset finance, financing of various investments, VC/Angel investments and corporate transactions. Focus on corporate law and taxation. Interested in progressing my career and expanding my experiences advising on corporate and financing issues, et al. M&A transactions, in an international corporate setting

Specialized in: Legal structuring of closed-end funds and complex corporate, contract and financial investment structures; closed funds, corporate law.

Senior executive with international leadership experience and track record.
Driven by building world class teams, culture and performance.

Till defined regional Strategy for Linkedin DACH and grew Business and Team >100% each year. He also defined Strategy and developed E-Commerce Business Units and Operations for T-Mobile in EMEA markets (Channel Business, Sales Organisation, International Team) and built E-Commerce Business Unit for Monster CEE and achieved responsibility for EU E-Commerce operations (Revenue Responsibility, Sales Responsibility, Sales Excellence). At Monster Central Europe he also rebuilt the Marketing Organisation and Strategy.

Communications professional with 10y + experience in internal and external communication in the digital industry. Combining profound understanding of innovative business models and technologies with the proven ability to tailor suitable strategies for a diversity of businesses, products and stakeholders. Broad practical know-how including crisis and change management. Results-oriented work ethic demonstrated by the successful execution of multiple communication campaigns. Self-confident in building and maintaining relationships with internal and external stakeholders such as C-level, employees, journalists, analysts with a broad network in the industry, excellent written and verbal cross-channel communication skills as key basis.

Since 2014 she has built from scratch and is heading the communication department of Europe’s most successful fintech companies, Kreditech, for the past three years. Now in charge for marketing and communications @collectAI, an AI receivables management service founded by the Otto Group.

I am a passionate, inquisitive and solution oriented digital entrepreneur with a particular interest in data driven strategies and their successful execution, using best-in-class technologies.

I am at my best in a challenging growth environment with room to be innovative and collaborate with colleagues and partners to create something new and different.
Further, I strive for innovation and I am the Co-Founder of Iria. "With a bit of magic", Iria gives you all the insight of the Smart Home at a fraction of the cost. Coming soon to high-end Android handsets. We are in private beta, but will disclose more soon!

More than 25 years of experience being an entrepreneur, has left me with 3 kids, a few houses, a line of successful and unsuccessful businesses and a great life. I am motivated by working with the innovation, entrepreneurship and helping people “Bridging the Gap”, of transferring research to businesses.

My perspectives life is – I pretend to be a hedonist, but I simply enjoy working too much. My perspectives on work is and have been for many years – The happiest person in the world is, the one who wakes up in the morning and look forward to go to work.

My perspectives on the world are and have been for many years – Why are we neglecting and destroying the world blind sighted. I believe that we as one world can do better.Add paragraph text here.

Martin Jung is head of the department for innovation and business development at Hamburgische Investitions- und Förderbank (IFB Hamburg), the regional development bank of the City of Hamburg. He is responsible for the financial support programs for startups and other business-driven innovation projects in Hamburg. Before joining IFB Hamburg in 2013 he worked for 20 years as a researcher and consultant. As an entrepreneur he founded and ran his own company for more than ten years contributing to diverse entrepreneurship and SME initiatives on European, national and regional level. He studied economics in Hamburg, Newcastle (UK) und Monterrey (USA).

As a freelance author, Dr. Jörg Bernardy is living in Hamburg. At The School of Life Berlin, Jörg Bernardy plays an integral and leading part in executing and developing the public progammes and contents all over Germany.

He studied philosophy and literature in Cologne, Paris and Düsseldorf. Afterwards, he completed his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Hildesheim. At the State University of Design in Karlsruhe, he worked as a research assistant. There he worked with renowned authors and professors such as Peter Sloterdijk and Wolfgang Ullrich.

In the past he worked for the newspaper “DIE ZEIT” for several years. In addition to philosophy, his research focuses on the media, culture, society and aesthetics. At the “The School of Life” in Berlin he conducts seminars and workshops on the topics of relationship, serenity, culture, meaning of life and self-knowledge.

His main interest lies in the combination of theory and practice as well as the countless possibilities of experience which are the basis of philosophical ideas.

His illustrated non-fiction books ”Philosophische Gedankensprünge. Denk selbst!” (”Philosophical Thought Leaps”) and ”Mann Frau Mensch: Was macht mich aus?” (”Man Woman Human: What makes me who I am?”) have been published by Beltz & Gelberg Verlag. Translations into Korean, Chinese and Greek Language forthcoming.

Mondosano is an online patient platform for clinical research. Her expertise lies in digitizing the health care sector and building new ways for the industry to understand patients needs. Anna has a background in economics, venture capital and digital marketing and is a well-known speaker for topics around digitization, females founders and health care innovations. She is also a consultant for digital marketing and blogs about the industry here www.annaabraham.de

Founder of Hanse Ventures, the web incubator 2.0 in Hamburg, Germany, accelerating outstanding web entrepreneurs and entreprenerds with full service pre-launch mentorship, design, prototype development, high level contacts, admin support, if needed office space and early stage investing to build great companies.

Serial entrepreneur and international Sales and Marketing Executive with 20+ years hands on experience in company building.

Special experience in building a market leading company from scratch, carrying out an IPO and selling 3 companies, among them 1 successful exit to a Global Fortune 100 Corporate. Business angel, incubator and source of active inspiration for successful tech and web startups.
Keynote speaker on entrepreneurship, mobile and web business.

Specialties: Special interest in innovative founders and startups in B2B and B2C with proven international scaling opportunities

By transferring her experience from cognitive behavioural psychotherapy into the field of organisations, she helps founders and teams to find their ability to change from within and developing the crucial soft skills needed to excel in times of growth.

Kathrin supports C-levels in corporate organizations with their social positioning [EP-B1] and digital communication. Born in 1970, the journalist is not a „digital native“, yet has immersed herself in social networking and communication, having a clear focus on giving motivational impulses for smart digital networking.

She is a certified trainer with a media management degree. With her leadership experience from more than 15 years in the publishing industry (e. g. Gruner + Jahr, Hubert Burda Media), Kathrin is consulting and coaching leadership communication, internal communication, social media self marketing und digital positioning in Dax 30 as well as in medium-sized companies.

She leads interviews on the topic of digital identity on her podcast „Digital You“ (since Juni 2018, available in German only).

Leila’s vision is that every person has enough insight into themselves to do what they truly want to do in life. In her role as Head of Program at Grace Female Accelerator, she did that by supporting aspiring female entrepreneurs. She talks to inspiring women about their visions. These conversations are published in the She's Mercedes Newsletter, on Business Punk and on the Grace Blog. Leila's heart beats for entrepreneurship, new technologies and real relationships. With her new Project, the business psychologist takes her quest to a personal level. Her App Naios uses machine learning and psychologic expertise to help couples and individuals have better sex and better relationships - with themselves and othersAdd paragraph text here.

Manouchehr Shamsrizi „is among the most publicly prominent voices of Germany’s younger generation“ (Washington Post) and "everywhere where the improvement of political conditions still has considerable scope" (re:publica). Former Ariane de Rothschild Fellow of Innovative Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Cambridge, Global Justice Fellow at Yale University, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum, Leader of Tomorrow of St. Gallen.

He is Co-Founder of Hamburg-based social business / digital health startup RetroBrain R&D („a benchmark in the therapeutic gamification industry“ (LIFT Basel)), Co-Founder of Blockchain-NGO Kryptos, and Co-Founder of gamelab.berlin, which is part of Humboldt Universität’s Cluster of Excellence in Berlin. „Manou“ was one of 100 handpicked European Founders invited to President Obama’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford University and one of 2017’s „Top 40 under 40 entrepreneurs“ of business magazine CAPITAL. He is a lecturer on „future-oriented technology (Blockchain, AI, VR, ...) and its impact on society“ at Leuphana University Lüneburg and faculty of the "Digital Transformation Masterclass" at Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. Shamsrizi is a member of various think tanks on issues of digitisation and justice, including the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, the ZEIT Foundation, and the Grameen Creative Lab of Nobel Peace Prize winner Prof. Muhammad Yunus. He was a speaker at the Bellevue Forum of German President Joachim Gauck and was awarded The Germany Scholarship by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and Schering Foundation.

As the Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Inclusify AG, he has been one of Germany's youngest Supervisory Board members since 2018. As a Metalhead and Past-President of a Rotaract Club he co-founded and is a Board Member of the Rotarian Metalhead Fellowship, which he honestly never thought would ever come into being.