Stephan Uhrenbacher on building startups, investing, sometimes green stuff

Stephan Uhrenbacher

Entrepreneur. Founder of Qype.com, 9flats.com, avocadostore.  Aspiring minimalist. Proud European. Learning investor. Believer in experience sharing. 

In my business life, I try to separate and therefore simplify my key activities:

Entrepreneur: I build companies.  I pursue the luxury of only doing things that make sense to me. Making sense can mean making life easier for people like Qype.com or thinking about intelligent consumption like Avocadostore.de, the largest marketplace for eco friendly goods in Geramny. 9flats.com is Europe’s best peer-to-peer accommodation website, enabling less consumption and more sharing.

Investor: I love investing. However I am pretty conservative and try to follow Buffet’s rule number one: “Don’t lose money”. This makes me not an ideal angel investor, as I am convinced the only way not to lose money in angel investments is having way more money to invest than I can allocate to this.

Coach for Entrepeneurs. With more than 15 years in building consumer internet companies I have experienced most ups and downs that you can have with companies, investors, cofounders, partners as well as the challenges in maintaining something that resembles a balanced life while you go a long. I have started giving back by sharing experience and doing individual coaching with very few very talented entrepreneurs.

This blog reflects on some experiences I gain on going along these sometimes intertwining paths.

The standard CV I use for if being asked:

Stephan is a serial entrepreneur based in Hamburg, Germany. Stephan is founder and CEO of leading private accommodation marketplace 9flats, previously Stephan founded Qype which he built into Europe’s largest local review web site, first as CEO and then on  the board of directors until Qype was acquired by Yelp in 2012. Before starting Qype, he was COO for DocMorris, Europe’s largest mail order pharmacy, acquired in 2008. His background in the web business goes back to 1996 when he started GEO.de, later on he founded travelchannel.de before joining lastminute.com in London as Head of Northern European Operations.