You’ve spent your career in consulting. Was that planned?
I explored many work opportunities to finance my studies. For example, I successfully sold vacuum cleaners at public fairs. I loved the variety of things I did. Hence it was clear to me that I wanted to go into a project-based environment like consulting. It offered a fast start across many areas and I was able to effectively apply what I learned at university. Later I joined Price Waterhouse Consulting and was in contact with clients from the very first day onwards. In 2003, IBM bought PWC Consulting and I rose through the ranks there. We were always very performance- and results-driven given the fees we asked our clients to pay. But I loved my job and working with my teams and clients across different regions, industries and cultures.

There must have also been things that you didn’t appreciate.
There were many very talented people, but there were also big strategic challenges and deficits in leadership. Consulting, like almost every business, is a people’s business and people are its single biggest asset. So when times got tough in the past, it was always very difficult to make decisions concerning the workforce. The balance between short-term cost reduction and long-term impact wasn’t easy.

Until 2017, you were General Manager at IBM, responsible for Global Business Services Europe. In that position, you had the responsibility of over 4Bn USD per year and managed more than 10’000 people. Now you lead the Portfolio Success team at Verve Ventures that consists of three people at the moment, including yourself. That is quite a change. What’s the story behind it?
I had to undertake a life-threatening operation in 2017. Luckily, all went well. But still, I started thinking about what I wanted to do in life. I left IBM on good terms and took a break. I wanted to follow my passions outside work: Friends, family, music, traveling, and sport. I am an active triathlete and compete internationally.

What was the reaction you got on this massive change?
My colleagues kept asking me what company I would join. I said none. I started my own real estate company and enjoyed life. They didn’t understand why I was retiring at the age of 47. I had the luck of being financially independent as I was always very careful with spending money in the past. I am a very rational person and always made my spreadsheets and checklists to stay in control. But given enough time and space, I can also let my emotional side flourish.

People who take such a break after an intense time usually start to feel an urge to get active again after a while, also because their life lacks the structure that work provides. How long did it take you?
If you would ask my wife she’d say two weeks, but I really felt it after a year or so. I am a man of action, I like to execute plans and work with other people. Working also means experiencing positive and negative moments together, and it gives you not only money but also recognition. This is an important point, and I think it would be good advice for every manager to say “thank you” at least once a day to somebody who did a good job. I did this in my former role and received much positive feedback.

What tempted you to join Verve Ventures (fka investiere)?
I knew Verve Ventures and had already invested through the platform before. I enjoy working with entrepreneurs, with personalities that have interesting business models. The over 20 years of professional experience I can bring to the table will have a positive impact on our portfolio firms. I was in charge of buying three companies at IBM and saw the buy-side of the process from a corporate perspective. Verve Ventures has a significant portfolio of over 80 companies with a massive potential for leveraging synergies. If we act smartly, we’ll be able to create a win-win-win situation for the companies in our portfolio, our investors and us. This was tempting for me to get into this role.

What are the main instruments in the Portfolio Success program?
We created the Verve Ventures Entrepreneur Club and Accelerator Services with several goals in mind. One is to relieve CEOs of having to deal with everything themselves but creating a platform for their management teams to act effectively. We create a sharing platform amongst our companies that allows them to resolve operational issues fast and based on the experience of others. We also actively help companies in finding key talents and support in critical topics like sales, financing and board effectiveness. We will guide our portfolio more actively through the exit process and support them with introductions. In summary, we help our portfolio accelerating their success for a very modest fee.

Why charge for these services and not make them available for free?
We want to run the Portfolio Success program professionally. We won’t be able to cover all of our costs and in fact, Verve Ventures is still making a substantial investment here. The idea is to go from a helping ad hoc here and there to a completely new level. We’ll develop benchmarks, checkpoints for the startups, and a large network of certified experts. There are many useful best practices that can help to improve startups across many topics, be it HR, sales or governance. A salary benchmark, for example, is very relevant to get an idea of the relative attractiveness of the salaries you offer. Many of these things we’re going to develop from the ground up. We want to reach a level of completeness that helps our startups achieve their goals, which will also make Verve Ventures even more attractive for startups and co-investors.

You’ve seen a lot of companies in many industries as a consultant, and you also saw what works and what doesn’t. What is most important to succeed?
In sports, a Triple Crown is when you win the three most important competitions within the same calendar year. Winning the triple crown isn’t possible by accident, it means that you have found a sustainable advantage over your competition. In business, the three most important success factors are leadership, strategy, and creativity. Leadership has to be authentic. A strategy has to be executable. And creativity doesn’t mean colorful and nice, it means to find answers to strategic questions that aren’t obvious. Many companies lack this combination. Hence I would like to write a book about how to make this combination work. This is one of my ambitions for the future.