About Us

Claus has over 27 years in-depth business experience in Asia, both in large MNCs and in the startup environment. As an entrepreneur, he has been architecting new businesses across tech, finance, big data, and deep learning technologies over the last 20 years.

He serves on multiple corporate boards and sees himself as a global citizen, having lived in Finland, Germany, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Singapore. 

Over the last 10 years, Matthias has built German Entrepreneurship GmbH into a leading organisation in the German startup ecosystem. Since 2008, Matthias has also built the LMU Entrepreneurship Center at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, which is recognised as one of Europe's premier academic and research institutions, and supports further German universities in their entrepreneurship programmes.

Matthias is also a Managing Director of the MUC Summit GmbH, the driving force for the strategic development of Munich’s innovation ecosystem, connecting and enabling the key stakeholders and elevating Munich’s unique profile nationally and internationally.

With over 30 years in healthtech, Marc has expertise in market development, commercialization, and innovation acceleration, as well as broad experience leading marketing, sales, and business development for large companies and startups. 

Marc co-founded a molecular imaging startup, was Chief Commercial Officer at an NIH-funded hometech venture, and was an Accelerator Executive with the CIMIT Accelerator at the Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Christian was born and raised in Munich, Germany, and started his career at the German media company Bertelsmann in New York City.

Christian has since founded several startups, been part of the leadership team taking Imax Corp. public, and served as Head of Digital for Universal Music Group East Coast as well as Head of Media at GLG.

Teodora Georgieva is an innovation management and technology commercialisation professional, as well as an experienced startup advisor in innovation ecosystems across the world, particularly in Southeast Asia and Europe. Passionate about startups and how to improve their odds of success, Teodora co-authored the book “No Startup Hipsters: Build Scalable Technology Companies”, which provides entrepreneurs with systematic decision frameworks for early-stage company building.

She has designed and managed multiple accelerator programmes such as SPH Plug & Play and AIRmaker in Singapore, following which she founded a startup with a focus on building valuable connections between corporates and startups.

Kristin Eckert has a wealth of experience in designing and managing cross-country market discovery and access programmes. In her role as an Investment and Expansion Manager for the German State of Bavaria U.S. Office, she supported Bavarian healthcare startups in their market discovery in the U.S. as well as B2B tech companies from the U.S. East Coast in their expansion to Germany.

Kristin represented one of the leading German MedTech hubs to establish its first U.S. presence in Boston, creating a network of relevant strategic partners and implemented a market discovery programme for its MedTech startups to New York and Boston. She also co-created and managed a B2B tech acceleration programme for U.S. startups to the State of Bavaria.

Yitch has been through the crucible of corporates and startups. In the span of his career, he has been through multiple industries such as oil & gas (upstream and downstream), healthcare / hospital IT, audit, agritech, and robotics, as well as in functions like IT consulting, strategy consulting, sourcing in procurement, engineering, and operations.

Yitch was most recently the COO of Protenga, an insect-based protein startup. He has filed a patent as an inventor back in IBM and was a founding member of the Millennial Corps initiative.

Eileen has over nine years of experience in the area of integrated marketing communications and has broad corporate communication experience at an international professional services firm.

Eileen made her first foray into the world of startups in 2012 and is also a brand expert for several startups (i.e. F&B and lifestyle brands) and was shortlisted for the Young Entrepreneur Award and Shell LiveWIRE Awards in 2013.

Román has over 16 years of experience in strategic planning. He has held several senior positions during his 20-year career, which spans both international manufacturing and financial services, and was most recently the COO of a water business in the Philippines.

Román ventured into the startup world as a private investor with the Manila Angel Investor Network. He is a Fellow at the Institute of Corporate Directors and co-founded a healthcare social-enterprise startup aimed at bringing innovative health care solutions to the Philippines.

Wayne has had an unorthodox career path. With over 2 years of experience in the startup industry under his belt, he began as a social worker in the social service sector, later transitioning into business development and marketing in the private security industry. His entrepreneurial spirit eventually led him to found an IoT startup that specializes in video analytics. Eventually, he sold his shares in the company and moved on to join Entrepreneur First's EFSG11 cohort.

Prior to joining German Entrepreneurship Asia as a Programme Manager for Scaler8, he was with a venture-building startup, helping to build and scale high impact ventures.