Gregor Hochmuth

Gregor Hochmuth is an analyst and Entrepreneur in Residence at Hasso Plattner Ventures. Born in Berlin, he previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area where he also completed his studies at Stanford University in Computer Science (with an emphasis on human-computer interaction and technology design). He returned to Germany in the summer of 2006 and founded zoo-m.com Interactive Ltd, a web applications start-up with a focus on information discovery and communication products. He joined d-labs (a Hasso Plattner Ventures portfolio company) as a project consultant later in 2006 and moved to his current role at the end of the year. As an entrepreneur in residence, he continues his engagement with zoo-m.com as the development of new products eagerly continues.

Find his personal web site at www.dotgrex.com.

Olaf Jacobi

Olaf Jacobi is a serial entrepreneur and business angel. His most recent enterprise, Trupoli (www.trupoli.com) has been founded early 2007 and will be established the leading international opinion platform and community for politics – a cornerstone in direction to a web democracy. He is also working a Venture Partner at Target Partners a leading German Venture Capital firm located in Munich.

Olaf Jacobi has many years of international experience working for IT companies in the areas of sales, marketing and development. After studying business management, Olaf Jacobi began his career with Minolta GmbH, rising to a senior management position as Senior VP Marketing. As a member of the board of ACG AG (Nemax 50), he was responsible for the successful global development of the company's smartcard and RFID business. This was the foundation of Olaf Jacobi’s career as a serial entrepreneur, successfully positioning several young IT companies in the international marketplace. After leaving ACG, he joined Cobion AG as an investor and board member, helping the company attain international success thanks to a new marketing and sales concept. Following the successful sale of Cobion AG, Olaf Jacobi structured the spin-off of Pyramid Computer GmbH’s Linux server business. As the founding CEO he established Collax GmbH and Collax Inc. at the beginning of 2005.

Find his Weblog at olafjacobi.wordpress.com.

Frank Witte

Born in Germany in 1961 and educated in Germany and Egypt, Frank Witte completed his studies of computer science at Bonn University, including an internship at Stanford University/Intel Corp. in 1984.

Frank consulted the German Marshall Fund of the United States (1987 – 1993) in Washington D.C., Bonn and later Berlin. Frank received the Kresgea Fellowship by Harvard University’s Center for European Studies in 1990 merging Apple and IBM Network Technologies. As such he represented Harvard University at MIT Media Lab 5th anniversary conference.

From 1994 until August 1999 Frank was the Head of IT (CIO) of Inter Nationes e.V. a 100% federal government institution. This included the participation in bodies and committees of the German Federal Government discussing and driving alternative IT strategies including Open Source Software and the use of Open Standards. Under his leadership Inter Nationes e.V. (today part of the Goethe-Institute) was an earlier adopter of Open Source Software, especially in the infrastructure and web technology space.

Frank joined SAP in September 1999 as a sales representative for the German Public Sector. Since 2002 Frank is responsible for SAP’s addressing Open Source. In 2006 he has been appointed as the head of SAP’s Global Open Source Office.