Why I invest in Increase Your Skills as a business angel

For more than one and a half years now, I have been accompanying the development of Increase Your Skills as, as it is so euphoniously and pretentiously called, a business angel. I have invested my own money in the financing rounds, but I support Hannes and Carolin in all questions of management and company development.

Why do I do this?

Quite clearly: I believe in the successful development of Increase Your Skills and thus in a financially successful investment. The market is vast and growing, the company's technology can be used not only for online training courses but has enormous potential for development and, last but not least, the management team and the staff are excellent. By the way, this list is ordered in level of importance for me, even though many investors always like to speak only of "team team team".

But why am I a business angel?

In my business studies, I focused on the two areas of finance/controlling and technology (mining technology, to be precise). The business management and entrepreneurial implementation of rather high-tech ideas simply excited me. During my doctorate at Fraunhofer, I pursued various project ideas with some colleagues from the engineering field. After an interlude at a management consultancy (which was great for gaining experience in corporate groups and building networks), I finally started my "entrepreneurial career" 15 years ago. And of course, you gain all kinds of experience over the years, from drawing up business and financial plans, all kinds of contracts (and their negotiation and sometimes also disputes), finding investors, building up a growing business organisation to - not least, but even eminently important - sales and customer care. With these experiences and the financial means, I can now become active as a business angel.

The emphasis is definitely on "active". I can and would like to contribute my experience (especially from mistakes) and my network and thus create added value. Of course, every founder collects their own experiences. But I really like how consciously and specifically Hannes and Carolin "use" me. And sometimes, it's just little things like a template of a licence agreement so that I don't have to create it entirely from scratch and save time and money. Last but not least, I really enjoy being able to be active in Increase Your Skills, to support, to learn myself and to be successful together.