2017 went by too fast

This year I wasn't ready for Christmas time at all. The year could have lasted a few weeks longer. On the other hand, I really needed a break as it was a very fast and hectic year.

The biggest change this year and also the biggest challenge for us as a family was that my wife went back to work after 14 years. This of course had a tremendous impact of how we have to organize ourselves as a family. I think we're still adapting. A family with four kids is all about logistics and with both parents working, this can really get complicated, regardless of how flexible I can be with my schedule.

At the company we successfully managed to raise our second fund from more than 20 investors. This success meant talking to a lot of people during the fundraising process and it also meant lots of rejections and lots of hope that got killed in meetings, emails or phone calls. Although many people were involved in this fundraising process, it was still a very time consuming endeavor for me, but something I needed to focus on with top priority this year. We now secured enough funding to carry on with next media accelerator for five more years. We had two batches of media startups participate in our accelerator program this year, the last one (batch #4) from the first fund and the first batch (batch #5) from the second fund. Our last demo day broke all the records and we're extremely thrilled how we're moving forward! From our 28 investments only two have failed so far, which is a pretty good record after 2 1/2 years, I think.

I did do some traveling this year. Most notably I went to UK, Estonia, Finland, Israel and USA twice, which shows on which areas of the world we concentrate our efforts as a company. I like Estonia, Finland and Israel as sources for great tech startups and we look to UK and USA because of their market size and their importance in VC investments.

My two trips to Israel were probably the most exciting and I really fell in love with the country and its people. I had known about the tech focus in Israel, but somehow I never had any interest to visit the country. This changed this year and I truly regret that I never went earlier. What an interesting country with an amazing tech scene! I read Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle on my first flight to Israel to better understand its tech ecosystem. I went to Europe Days in March and DLD Tel Aviv in September, both events are highly recommendable. Since the purpose of my trip was to connect with very early-stage media startups to invite them over to Hamburg, Germany, for 6 months, Europe Days clearly were more helpful.

One of this year's highlights was my trip to Washington, DC, Pittsburgh and Mexico City as part of the delegation traveling with our Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. What I remember most fondly was how fast we got from the plane into the motorcade and into the city, a process that usually takes up way too much time (and for me never involves a motorcade). In Pittsburgh we learned how the city managed to change from steel to tech and met with Mayor Bill Peduto. We also visited the Robotics Department at Carnegie Mellon which is one of the world's leading research institutions in the field of robotics.

We also announced our partnership with Elevator Startups in Tallinn, Estonia, later this year, which will allow us to tap into the Estonian startup scene and hopefully find great media startups there as well. I also attended Latitude 59 for the first time and I'm sure that I'll be back next year. Estonia is a very exciting and special place as there is no nation on earth that is more digital than Estonia. I'm very happy that we were able to extend our reach to the Nordics this year.

As the baltic region is very important to us, I also traveled to Media Honeypot and Slush in Helsinki. Both conferences are very well managed and offer really good networking opportunities. The region Helsinki/Tallinn really has a lot of potential for startup investments.

In 2017 I continued my civic engagement as the Co-Chairperson of D64 - Zentrum für digitalen Fortschritt e.V., an organization I co-founded 6 years ago with some friends to push the political parties to create better digital policy. We now have more than 450 members and I'm always amazed how many interesting people join us every month. My friend and co-founder Lars Klingbeil just got elected to become General Secretary of the SPD, a step that will hopefully change the way the SPD works as a party.

After my first trip to Israel I joined the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft e.V., because I want to help improve the relations between Germany and Israel. I think there is great value in a better cooperation between the two countries and an improved exchange of ideas. Germany could also benefit tremendously from the innovative potential of Israeli companies. This year was also a stress-test for the transatlantic relations between Germany and the USA. I'm really happy that I got invited to join the Atlantik-Brücke e.V., a non-profit organization that was established to improve the friendship between Germany and the USA. As did both my senior year of high school and my senior year of college in the USA, I feel a strong bond with the USA, but I also think that we have to renew our transatlantic ties and include more people in it.

In 2016 I almost managed to read 52 books, something I tried again in 2017 but failed by a long shot. This year just was too short, I guess. Among the many books I read, I found Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There the most thought-provoking. The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life reassured me that the state has to provide for its people so they can achieve a greater personal freedom and need to worry less about health, income and the future.

I still read a ton of stuff and I like to share the best articles I find. That's why I started a newsletter called Five Things, which does exactly what it says. Every day I send out an email with the five things I read that I found the most interesting. The articles are mostly long(ish) form and the topics range from tech and startups to politics, society and the future. You should subscribe here: Five Things. If you like it, please share it with your friends!

Have a great start into 2018!