The OMR Podcast International – Go inside the minds of the biggest names in digital and tech

Jeff Kolovson is COO at Faire, a B2B wholesale eCommerce platform that Techcrunch described as “Indie Amazon.” But with capital raised north of USD 800m, a valuation of 12.5b US as of May 2022 and a recent partnership with Shopify, all obfuscates Faire’s size. But at its essence, the label fits: retailers can access, via subscription, millions of products by 100,000 brands on the platform and use...

Today, we are talking about the future of our mobility and our cities with Dance mobility co-founder and CEO Eric Quinedus-Wahlforss. Dance is a Berlin-based mobility startup offering its users eBikes and eScooters on a subscription basis to have and to hold as their own. In today's pod, we discussed the challenges of overcoming the sodded reputation of eBikes and how Dance succeeded in selling th...

Quentin Bordage is the founder and CEO of Kolsquare, a leading European SaaS service that connects influencers and KOLs with companies and brands. Originally founded in 2010 as Brands & Celebrities, Kolsquare in its current form has been around since 2018, acting more as a self-service platform for companies to find, vet and connect with KOLs, or key opinion leaders. In this episode of the OMR Pod...

Today's episode features Johanna Dahlroos and Emma Tracey, co-CEOs and co-founders of Berlin-based creative brand agency Sceal. Its focus lies primarily in helping tech companies grow at scale, finetune brand values, overall brand presence, products and brand campaings. This episode is driven by the atypical founder stories that Johanna and Emma have. Johanna transitioned from a career as a painte...

Nikolas Bullwinkel is co-founder and CEO of food delivery startup Circus. Based in Hamburg, the venture launched in May 2022 and has set as its mission nothing short of creating what it calls the "Kitchen of the future." In this episode of the OMR Podcast, Nikolas spoke about his plans to redefine kitchens, incorporating AI into the back of the house and why he left Flink.

We all know it's important, but only a few of us know where to start: safeguarding and safe handling of data. Fortunately, Thomas and Kivanc are two of the aforementioned few, having built the number 1 PIC solution that now serves over 3,000 organizations worldwide. Dataguard is essentially one-stop shopping for privacy, information security and compliance matters. Thomas and Kivanc discussed curr...

Christopher Leidinger is a branding expert as founder LIT Create. He has been instrumental in the rebranding of major fintech players in Nuri and Solarisbank, as well as smaller scale enterprises ranging from a chemistry startup and a chocolate startup to an AI food delivery startup, a craft spirit brand and even an underground techno club in Berlin. Furthermore, LIT has worked with Airbnb, Volksw...

Last year, Figma was headline news around the globe. Adobe announced it had reached a deal to acquire Figma for over USD 20 billion—which would make it one of the largest startup exits ever. While that deal is being held up in regulatory limbo, it is nevertheless an impressive feat for a company that only launched seven years ago. Figma is a collaborative design platform that is used by millions a...

Konstantin Baum, Germany's youngest-ever Master of Wine, runs one of the world's largest wine channels on YouTube. In this episode of the OMR Podcast, we spoke about the business of wine on social media, his YouTube channel, monetization and community-building strategies, and other business verticals revolving around his passion for vino.

In this episode of the OMR Podcast, we're talking with CEO and founder of Hinge Justin McLeod, the dating app "designed to be deleted. We talked about Hinge's long road to success, the company business model, why he completely tore down Hinge back in 2015 and why the company has no need for standard performance metrics like retention and engagement.

By founding Snapchat in his mid-20s, Evan Spiegel reached billionaire status at a very early age. Today, some 350 million people use the app globally. In the OMR Podcast, he talks about the failure of his first startup, drops his take on when augmented reality glasses will become part of people's everyday lives and why he still believes in Twitter's potential.

In less than a decade, Sridhar Ramaswamy went from Google grunt to Senior VP of Ads and Commerce. After a decade and a half at Google, Sridhar decided he’d had enough with data-driven search and that the sector was in need for disruption. Enter Neeva, a privacy-focussed, user-centric and subscription-based search engine. Funded in part by Greylock Partners, Neeva has raised over USD 100m—despite t...

Maybe when Tim Brown retired from professional soccer in 2012, he should have seen it coming: swapping out cleats for shoes. It was in fact his shock at the amount of plastic in the footwear freebies gifted to him during his playing days that gave rise to an obsession, which, eventually, evolved into Allbirds, a D2C stalwart and love brand for sustainable footwear founded in 2016.

In the OMR Podcast International, co-founder and CEO Yoni Assia discusses the importance of user experience for eToro, the impact of the social component on growth, engagement and retention, platform features, crypto, investment tips for beginners and a rather unsucessful dinner with Warren Buffett. He also spoke at length about past, prominent ad and marketing campaigns, including sports sponsors...

It has been an eventful 12 months for Contentsquare. From rolling out a slew of key new features, AI capabilities and a cookieless solution, among others, acquired a couple of companies, expanded globally adding a number of new offices and nearly doubled its workforce to approximately 1500 at present. On top of all that, you locked up approximately USD 600m in funding recently, the latest in a 12-...

While the problems Prof. Yunus and Saskia Bruysten, CEOs and co-founders of Yunus Social Business, hope to solve may seem impossible, the way they laid out the path to success in this episode of the OMR Podcast, impossible seems plausible.

For the past 8 years, Margrethe Vestager has taken the fight to the world's biggest tech companies in her role as EU commissioner for competition. Despite the incredibly deep pockets of tech lobbyists, she has had some very high-profile "wins." In the OMR Podcast, she discusses what will happen next.

Almost exactly one year ago today, Morgan Selzer was appointed CCO at mindfulness platform Headspace. In that time, she has spearheaded content expansion on the platform, which now includes music, guided meditation, sleepcasts and, recently, content focussed exclusively on women's health. And her efforts have begun achieving widespread recognition, as well, as she was named Podcast Executive of th...

In this episode of the OMR Podcast, we are chatting with Mirko Caspar, CEO of omnichannel eyewear provider Mister Spex. Since Mirko has been at the helm, he has focussed on enhancing brand perception and convincing eyewear consumers to turn to online outlets as well as offline offerings. A decade later, a tenfold increase in annual revenue to EUR 194m is all you need to know about how it's going f...

The OMR Festival is a place for the unexpected. From the guests and speakers to everything else, it's a series of moments that surprise and inspire. While surprising certainly qualifies for talking robots and a 1960s school bus converted into a mobile recording studio (where today's episode was in fact recorded), inspiring perfectly describes my guests in this episode of the OMR Podcast: Ammar Kan...

Our guest today in the OMR Podcast was not only instrumental in revolutionizing the music industry by inventing the iPod, but also helped lay the groundwork for the iPhone and founded—and sold—Nest (to Google). Simply put, Tony Fadell's decades-long career has been characterized by superlatives. In the OMR Podcast, guest host Florian Heinemann spoke to Tony about his past and current projects, as...

In early 2021, Adam Ross was appointed CEO at Awin, the world's largest affiliate network. In the OMR Podcast, I spoke to Adam about his tenure at AWIN, how the industry has evolved from being perceived as supremely shady to an absolute must for advertisers and publishers, how the company has transformed from a niche service provider to a "feature-rich martech platform" and the impact of influence...

Christian Horner runs one of the top racing teams in all of Formula 1: Red Bull Racing. In the OMR Podcast, he speaks with Philipp Westermeyer this past season, one of the most exciting in recent memory. He explains what impact "Drive to Survive" has had

In 2013, SAP bought up CRM and cloud service provider Hybris for 1.5 billion US. At the time, the deal was the largest of its kind for a European entrepreneur, but for anyone in . It also came at a time when cloud technologies, their use case and applications, were in their absolute infancy. In this episode of the OMR Podcast, I had the chance to discuss the deal with Thoma, if he has any regrets...