In order of appearance and stay.
In 12 years, many people have already accompanied and enriched Startnext. The organizational structure and cooperation is to be understood organically, where hierarchies hardly play a role. That's why you can see the team here in chronological order.

There are actually four teams, represented by the colors yellow, blue, pink and orange.

  • Yellow - Team Business Management
  • Blue - Team Platform Development
  • Pink - Team Public Relations
  • Orange - Team Community

Denis Bartelt
Chief Executive Officer (Founder)

Denis founded his first company in 2003, the software agency tyclispo.net. In 2009 he started to develop Startnext together with Tino and in 2010 the company was founded. Denis is a trained photographer and co-founder of the Entrepreneurs Pledge.

Tino Kreßner
Cooperation Manager (Founder)

During his studies in media technology and communication sciences Tino founded his first company together with friends - an agency for film productions. For Startnext he is on the road a lot and continues to expand our network.

Cathleen Knohf
Chief Technology Officer

Cathleen has been on board as backend developer for Startnext since the beginning and takes care that all functions run on Startnext. Before that she studied media production in Dresden.

Markus Streichardt
Community & Cooperation

Markus started as a project consultant at Startnext and now takes care of our cooperations when setting up a cofunding campaign. In addition, as Community Manager, he is the contact person for processes and technology in the community team and can contribute his accumulated knowledge here.

Lisa Rudolph
Community Manager (parental leave)

Lisa makes sure that all Startnext starters are verified and that the payment processes run smoothly. She also deals with numbers in her business studies, which she is currently completing.

Ricarda Delock
Management Assistant

Ricarda holds everything together, is responsible for organizing our events and for the team development. She studied Cultural Work and Arts Management and co-founded the non-profit organization Kultür Potsdam.

Amos Bühler
Frontend Developer

Amos develops and optimizes Startnext so that you can use our platform on all devices and in all browsers. He has studied media and information science.    

Charlott Kaliga
Events & Compliance Manager

Charlott works in project consulting and supports our starters in the realization of their projects. She is also the contact person for events, lectures and workshops as well as everything related to compliance. Charlott studied nonprofit management and worked for nebenan.de and Doctors Without Borders.

Kira Rudolph
Feelgood Manager

Kira lives with Lisa and is a charming dog lady with lots of energy. She loves to go for walks and also lying on cuddly things. When she comes by one of the Startnext offices in Dresden and Berlin, it instantly lifts the mood and she spreads joy in the room.

Christian Bläul
Backend Developer

Christian brings a lot of experience to further develop the technical applications for Startnext. He's actually a physicist. Hence his preference for small experiments in everyday life. Christian works at Startnext because he sees his life being put to good use here.

Cheyenne Lindemann
Business Intelligence Analyst

Chey came to the world of social entrepreneurship through the On Purpose program. With us, she transforms data into information and creates new knowledge from it.

Alexander Katzmann
Crowd Agent

Alex has been a Best Boy on film sets and a lighting technician at the theater, dropping out of six majors to go on to study social and business communications. After his Master's, Alex started two crowdfunding projects and now works for us as a crowd agent.

Joy Lange
Crowd Agent

Joy is a newly qualified crowd agent since 2021 and can therefore be found in project consulting and in the Startnext Academy. In her free time she likes to pursue creative projects like music, macramé or jewelry making. Because of her personal context, as a queer Afro-German woman, she is passionate about topics around Black Culture, Womanism, LGBTQIA+.

Karl Johann Schubert
Site Reliability Engineer

After several startup projects, Kajo found his way to Startnext. He gained experience as an administrator in his school days and subsequently studied business informatics. At the same time, he became involved in the development of responsible managers. Now he hunts well-hidden bugs and wants to stay one step ahead of the adversities of a networked world.

David Warmbold
Academy Showmaster 

The Startnext platform has a lot to offer, but can also be overwhelming. That's why David entertainingly imparts everything worth knowing as well as tips and tricks for crowdfunding in the Acamdey. As a multimedia mediator, he uses his skills to prepare the starters in the best possible way for their project launch.

Thekla Wilkening
Communication Strategy

Thekla has experienced it herself: crowdfunding can change lives! In 2014, she founded Kleiderei and was successful with it on Startnext. Since then, she has been committed to sustainable startups because she is convinced that they bring the necessary impetus to shape the world in a positive way. At Startnext, she is responsible for the communication strategy.

Friederike Lindner
Product Owner

Friederike is our Product Owner. This means that she coordinates, prioritizes and ultimately ensures that all valuable requirements, wishes and ideas on the Startnext platform become a technical reality. In her free time, she is very active in the electronic (sub)culture and is committed to awareness, education and addiction prevention.

Mils Gan
Communication Design

Mils is the communication designer at Startnext. She comes from Malaysia and has been living in Germany for two years. She used to work as an art director for different fashion magazines. At Startnext, she is responsible for everything related to design and creativity. In her free time she likes to watch horror movies or thrillers.

Alison Kleine-Peterson
Social Media Content Creator

Alison is primarily responsible for the Instagram channel in the Public Relations team. She is a Cologne native with all the trimmings: outgoing, likes to talk and laugh. Alison also looks after her own company "Kiobaj - Cloth Diapers & Consulting", which she founded in 2020.

Elias Groesel
High Priest of Datafiction

Who we are missing:

In September 2022, we unfortunately had to lay off 1/3 of our team in response to the ongoing recession and thus lack of funding. We are independently funded.

For us, this was a big cut. We are now slowly recovering from this and fighting with the remaining team to keep Startnext meaningful and more helpful than ever before. Read more about that at the blog (german).

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