Kai Buehler

Co-Founder

ZALUD

Present

ZALUD - the Sake Citrus Aperitivo from the Mediterranean Blending premium Junmai Sake from organic Spanish rice with zesty citrus and botanicals from Mallorca. Crafted for aperitif moments—light, refreshing umami, and unforgettable.

Founding Investor & Advisor

World Fund · Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Present

WorldFund backs entrepreneurs building climate tech that can save at least 100Mt CO2e emissions per year.

Business Angel & Seed Investor

KB Ventures · Los Angeles, Germany, Mallorca

Present

Partnering with visionary founders who transform everyday consumer experiences towards a more sustainable, healthier future. Investments include among others better-for-you and tech products like Ciphero.AI, fakespot (acq. by Mozilla), mimik, FUNQ, HealingCompany, DueDash, Honey (acq. by PayPal), Vire/Storrito, Deskcloud, MightyVR, RewardFX, ...

Founder & Ceo

KARMAKARMA · Greater Los Angeles Area

KARMAKARMA was a social impact community where users could see and track their impact on the world. We worked with 150+ nonprofit partners and defined tangible social impacts such as Giving a child a meal, Planting a tree or Feeding a rescued puppy. Our community created millions of measurable social impacts for the 100+ non-profits that we worked with during the last decade, among others we gave thousands of meals to veterans & hungry children, removed millions of CO2 from the atmosphere, built several wells, helped hundreds of children with school supplies, planted thousands of trees, fed thousands of shelter dogs/cats, and supported numerous disaster relief efforts (Corona crisis, Ukraine refugees, wildfires, …).

Professor of Digital Entrepreneurship & Startup Management

Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln · Cologne Area, Germany

In 2016, I started teaching Startup Management and Financing in the Master of Digital Business-program. My areas of research included Digital Entrepreneurship, Start-up Management, Climate Tech and Digital Transformation. My research was focused on startup success predictabililty, see studies with the 4T Model to determine startup success. We also launched our new Open Innovation Platform, https://projectcologne.de/ , where students cooperated with multinationals such as Microsoft, Viega, Deutsche Telekom and the Ford Motor Company to collectively launch more university startups and spin-outs.

Representative of the German State of Nrw in California

NRW.INVEST · Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, California, United States

NRW.INVEST is the economic development agency of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). As One-Stop-Agency for foreign investors, NRW.INVEST supports international companies with their investment projects and settlements in NRW throughout the entire investment process.

First Outside Investor&Advisor

Honey (joinhoney.com, acquired by PayPal) · Greater Los Angeles Area

Honey automatically finds and applies the best coupon codes online with just one click. Honey was acquired by Paypal in November 2019 for $4 billion. http://joinhoney.com

Co-Founder 5g Accelerator & Venture Partner

Quake Capital Partners · Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia

Quake Europe is a unique 5G accelerator focused on making seed level investments in 5G new media & tech startups. Partners include Deutsche Telekom and RTL. Our team boasts unparalleled access to the top players in finance, development, manufacturing, and distribution.

Svp and Gm

Viggle Inc. (acquired by perk) · Los Angeles, New York

Viggle is an entertainment marketing and rewards platform with an average monthly total reach of 23.6 million users. In my role as SVP and GM, I spearheaded the integration of new acquisitions and managed the existing Loyalize business platform with customers such as Motorola, yahoo Australia, Spike and MTV. We successfully launched Viggle in early 2012, quickly passed the million users mark and partnered with all major US TV stations such as Fox, NBC, ABC, Sony.

Ceo

mms - mobile messaging solutions (acquired by Viggle) · Los Angeles, Boston

mobile messaging solutions (mms), Inc. was divested out of Verisign in 2009 (NASDAQ: VRSN). While serving as CEO of mms Inc, we processed over 1 billion premium and standard text messages for America’s top TV-shows such as American Idol, America's Got Talent, Deal or No Deal, Sabado Gigante, Survivor and Big Brother. Created unique app experiences and mobile solutions for Coca-Cola, Bell mobility, AT&T and the company grew 40% in revenues. Developed Watchpoints, first loyalty program for TV, which was acquired by Viggle in September 2011 (NASDAQ: VGGL).