About

The short version

I spent my twenties starting companies. Now I spend my days fixing the kind of mess that only decades of success can create. I like the second job more. That still surprises me.

The longer version

I started as an IT apprentice at Ivoclar, a dental company in Schaan, Liechtenstein. Plugging in cables, fixing printers, learning how networks actually work. I was good enough at it that in 2013 I ended up in Leipzig representing Liechtenstein at WorldSkills, which is basically the Olympics for trades. Six months of training to configure servers under a stopwatch while people watch. I came home with a Medallion for Excellence and a strange calm about deadlines that has never left.

Then I did what a sensible apprentice does not do. I quit and started a cleaning company.

Not a cleaning company exactly. ipaster was a website where you could book a professional cleaner in Eastern Switzerland in two minutes, at a time when the alternative was a phone call and a shrug. It grew to sixty people and about a million francs a year. In 2019 a big cleaning company bought it. I was 27.

While ipaster was running I co-founded digicube, a digital agency in Buchs, and ran its technology side. The part I am proudest of is the software team we built in Skopje, North Macedonia. It started as a couple of developers and became a proper nearshoring department, later spun out as its own company, Teamscout.

Then came dua, a social app. I was co-founder and Chief Product Officer for about three years. We went past a million installs, two billion interactions, 250 million swipes, and 50 million messages. I learned that a product team is a product too, and that the hardest bugs are the ones in the roadmap, not the code.

In 2023 I went back to where I started. Ivoclar, the same building, a very different job. First as a program manager, then leading the Digital Excellence team, and since 2026 as Director of Global Digital Excellence.

Why a founder would go corporate

At a startup you have a blank page and nothing else. No customers, no brand, no reach. You spend years earning those.

At an established international company it is the opposite. The customers, the brand and the reach are already there. What is missing is coherence. Systems that grew up country by country. Four tools doing the same job. Education, commerce and customer data living in separate worlds, each built by people who were right at the time.

Getting all of that to move as one thing is slower and more political than any blank page. It is also the most interesting work I have ever done. Nobody starts a company for that. I would choose it now.

Numbers, because people like numbers

Failed ideas

KiddiTales.com and BarakaTales.com were both mine. Both are closed. Both taught me things a success would not have. I keep them here on purpose. If your page only has wins on it, you are either lying or not trying hard enough.

Things I believe

All four are stolen from my own 265 posts, which is allowed.

The book

I wrote one. Built for Someone, out soon. Everything above, minus the parts that make me look good. On Amazon.

Also

Say hello

I live in Switzerland and work across the border in Liechtenstein. The best place to find me is LinkedIn.