My Story
Before anything else, I'm a father of three and a husband. My wife Katharina and our kids are based in Munich, and I spend roughly half my time in San Francisco. It requires discipline, but it keeps me grounded in what matters most.
I was born in the Netherlands. My father, a heart surgeon, moved us to Cape Town to work with Professor Barnard, the pioneer of the first open heart transplant. I grew up there, then we moved to Germany when I was 13. Adapting to new countries, languages, and schools wasn't always easy, but it became one of the greatest gifts of my life. You learn to read a room before you speak. You develop empathy by necessity. You get comfortable being the outsider, and you discover that putting yourself out there, guided by genuine curiosity, opens more doors than any credential ever could.
Mornings are my time. I rise at 5:15am every day to lift weights or run. In San Francisco, I catch the sunrise on my runs over the Golden Gate Bridge, while in Munich I run through the wakening forest. With this routine, no matter how the rest of my day unfolds, I've already won the morning.
Evenings are for sharing. Food, for me, is never just about eating; I find it’s the fastest way to understand people and cultures. Breaking bread with someone strips away formality. It creates memories that outlast any meeting. My philosophy is to spend on experiences and people, not things. After all, you don't remember the watch, but you do remember who you shared the meal with.
And there's no better city for eating great food and meeting fascinating people than San Francisco. It captured me the moment I arrived, and I'm always drawn back. Beyond its staggering natural beauty, it’s a city that does something I've never experienced anywhere else: it pulls the most curious, driven, restless minds from every corner of the world and puts them in the same room. The intellectual diversity is unlike anything else on earth. The city consistently reinvents itself, and right now, as the undisputed AI capital of the world, it's doing it again. There is no other city where every room you walk into, there's someone smarter than you. I find that endlessly energizing.
Building MGV
In January 2017, I co-founded MGV in San Francisco without knowing a single person in the Bay Area.
I built everything from scratch — network, team, deal flow — through sheer force of will. When it came time to hire our first team, I took the top candidates on a hike down to the ocean, then out to dinner with their spouses, then to a baseball game, because I wanted to understand who they were as people, not just on paper. That instinct has shaped everything about how we operate: put yourself in the room, invest in the relationship, and the rest follows.
Our very first investment was Modern Health, which became the fastest-growing female-led company in US history at the time. First check, first unicorn. Today, MGV has invested in more than sixty early-stage companies across the US, Europe, and Israel. We help technical founders build scalable sales systems that turn ideas into revenue. Every founder goes through our proprietary sales program, and we stay close through Series A. Informing all of our work are two rules: be nicer than everyone else, and do what you say; as well as the maxim: hard work outperforms brilliance every single time.
The Sales School
The ultimate path to MGV started with a phone call I'll never forget.
Through a chain of connections, including Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, I'd gotten to know Veronica Ferres, and through her, Carsten Maschmeyer. Carsten had built the first insurance brokerage in Europe from scratch: multiple countries, thousands of salespeople, billions in revenue. When I walked out of my final bar exam, he called to say: "You're not meant to be a lawyer. Come build with me."
What started as a boss-employee relationship became something far more meaningful over time: mentor, then collaborator, then partner, then one of my most respected friendships. Carsten gave me the foundational tools I still use every day: the science of sales, how to coach people to their potential, and what it actually takes to scale a business. And beyond the craft, he gave me unconditional trust and the freedom to fail and learn from it, and he constantly pushed me to think bigger than I thought possible. We worked with some of the world's largest organizations, and I became obsessed with building repeatable systems that grow.
From there we dove into early-stage venture in Europe, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Scrappy Entrepreneur
Long before venture, I had to figure out how to pay my way through law school in Germany.
I built an offline HR platform, matching the right people to the right opportunities, training them on how to show up and deliver, and building relationships with clients who kept coming back. It was just me, a phone, spreadsheets, and relentless outreach. I had no outside capital, no software development, and no safety net. I didn't even know I was building a startup. Through hustle and network-building, the business grew to millions in topline revenue.
That experience informs every investment decision I make at MGV: you don't need a perfect plan or a perfect pedigree. You need grit and the willingness to figure it out.
Professional Highlights
Founding & Managing Partner: MGV.VC — early-stage enterprise tech, San Francisco & New York
Business Insider’s Seed 100: One of the top 100 US seed investors
Chairman: Kauffman Fellows Bay Area Chapter — the premier global VC leadership network
60+ portfolio companies: Across the US, Europe, and Israel — industry-leading survival rate through multiple market cycles
Operator first: Scaled an HR platform to meaningful topline revenue with zero outside capital
Regular contributor: Forbes, TechCrunch, and Crunchbase— on venture and sales-led growth
Insurtech symposium
In 2019, I co-founded the Insurtech Symposium — and it's since grown into one of the world's leading industry events, bringing together C-level insurance executives, investors, corporate VCs, and leading startups from around the globe.
(2026 not yet announced)