TL;DR
Complementary founders (tech & business education and experience), that both started their first ventures while still in school. Marcel is the former Co-Founder of lemon.markets, which received funding from leading VCs. Felix spent the past years as consultant at McKinsey. We both share the passion for the future of Web3.
Hey there! ✌️
Here is my story: I started coding at the age of 13-14 when I was building plugins for Minecraft. Later, I was hosting those plugins on my own Minecraft server and had the biggest Minecraft server in Germany at the age of 16. I made some money from this, but could not invest it into stocks as I was underage and hence not allowed to open a securities account. So I ended up investing into two bitcoins - that is also how I got into crypto in the first hand. Next to learning how to code at that time, I gained my first entrepreneurial experiences as well. Then, I started studying information systems and worked as a software engineer in three startups. At some point, I quit my studies (and the job) to co-found lemon.markets. At lemon.markets, I was responsible for tech, product and regulation. When we started with lemon.markets, there was not any competitor in the market and the market size for developers doing trading in Europe was effectively 0. I am quite proud that we convinced investors (Creandum & System.One, 1.3m pre-seed) and rolled out the real-money product after only 9 months using a partner bank while it took other brokerage companies like Trade Republic 5 years. Now, I am moving back to crypto/web3.
At Februar, I am taking care of all topics related to tech, product and regulation.
Personally, I love traveling, eating and being out for e.g., hiking - or combining those activities while traveling/being on workation. Next to that, I love crafting new things on weekends and I figured out that I definitely need at least a day every two weeks to focus on building either intangible or tangible things.
That’s me hiking in Cyprus where I found this chair randomly on top of a hill.
Moin, I am Felix. 👋
I would like to give some personal background on where I come from and what characterizes me.
I always loved competitive sailing. From the age 11 to 18, I probably spend more time on the water than in school. Sailing is a pure team sport, you will only win if you execute best as a team. This period of my live has influenced me a lot: I am still convinced on the power of teams and hence as a founder, I see it as my #1 priority to ensure we have the most amazing team on board (this includes getting the best seafarers to join us, aka hiring, as well as ensuring we are having the right company culture).
If I find the time, I still love to spend time on the water (in conditions everything below 25kn most likely on a sailboat, above 25kn while kitesurfing).
I love building businesses since I was a kid in school. It always was (and still is) the most fun to build solutions that have an impact (I have a clear customer focus). It started with an own online shop while still in high school and some other businesses followed (among them a rental service for sailing gear and a specialized cleaning service, both still operate and I am a shareholder).