Michael MENZEL

Co-Founder

fanz · Hamburg, Germany

Present

We are building amazing, easy-to-use, value-added services on top of the existing digital payment infrastructure that both businesses and customers love. Once you combine smart ways of accepting digital payments with loyalty rules, review automation, direct messaging, smart referrals, loyalty ad networks, smart tipping, machine learning, and more, we can rethink the way businesses transact, interact and connect with new and existing customers.

Trusted Advisor

Movelo · Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria, Germany

Saddle up! Climate-friendly mobility does not just start with the much-maligned air traffic; it is a weighty topic, especially in everyday business life. Especially in urban areas with relatively short business trips, an eBike fleet offers a sustainable alternative to the company car (company bike leasing 2.0).

Trusted Advisor

Superlinked · Greater London

superlinked.com makes it easier to turn data into vector embeddings

Svp Strategic Partnerships

TrustYou · Munich Area, Germany

Getting back to the frontline of the business - my team was by far the most successful business unit at TrustYou. Empowering them with a strong startup attitude made each one of them CEO of their particular business field with all the benefits that come with it. Net new sales was regularly 25% - 35% Y2Y, churn rate the lowest in the company.

Interim Chief Revenue Officer & Vp Strategic Partnerships

TrustYou · Munich Area, Germany

In the process of an investment round, I additionally took over responsibility ad interim as CRO, overseeing the whole sales teams (at times 35 people) in EMEA, APAC, JAP and the Americas with their dedicated VPs. Jointly ensuring to generate an approx. 30% net new sales quota per year. Think of what you would do as a CRO - consider it part of my work.

Vp Strategic Partnerships

TrustYou · Munich Area, Germany

In addition to DMOs, hotel technology companies eg. OTAs, Meta Search, IBE, PMS, CRM would help the traveller to make an educated choice when looking for and booking an accommodation. Task was to build up and service the market, so TrustYou's data points would be an integral part of any search-shop-buy decision. With monthly 250M eyeballs on TrustYou's data this has been well achieved, servicing the best of breed hotel technology companies. Acting with the competence of a general manager I managed to reach the desired outcome.

Director Dmo Sales

TrustYou · Munich Area, Germany

TrustYou's prime customers were hotels and accommodations, in addition those that market them - for non-corporate hotels these are the destination marketing organisations. I build up the complete business field, with a go-to-market strategy, business development, client acquisition, contracting, ... - I acted with the competence of a general manager for this business unit. Output was the market leadership for online reputation management software in this particular field.

Family, Fools and Friends

TrustYou · Munich Area, Germany

TrustYou wanted to be a portal where booking decisions are based on sentiments of traveller reviews. I got introduced to the founders while working at iPUBLISH. Being intrigued by the business idea (and being the strategic partnership director), I introduced it to other people at Ganske Publishing Group - long story short, the group turned into a seed investor. I accompanied TrustYou ever since.

Managing Partner

Gecko-Publishing GmbH · Rosenheim Area, Germany

Gecko-Publishing GmbH was setup to service publishing groups as well as establishing own publishing trends. Main task was mapping production for 300+ ‘Merian’ and ‘Polyglott’ branded travel guides. Boldest development was publishing the self-financed in-house production of ‘Forsetas’ - a ‘James Bond’ type novel that sets nowadays Denmark in the perspective of WWI with the sinking of RMS Lusitania (Saying is, the sinking presaged the United States declaration of war on Germany). In the printed edition, pictures are QR-style linked with further information of the Danish countryside. The perception of the book was very good. My tasks as a managing partner were any that you can fancy in a professional life.

Sr. Director

iPUBLISH Ganske Interactive Publishing GmbH · Munich Area, Germany

Founded in the midst of the Dotcom bubble, iPublish was the then electronic publishing spear head of Ganske Publishing Group. Main product was to market the then world wide unique hotel and restaurant database ‘Merian contentbase’ with some 300k points of interest with editorial descriptions in various languages (pre-Google phase!) that was licensed under the brand ‘Merian scout’ to in-car navigation providers eg. Bosch Blaupunkt, Siemens VDO, Becker Harman Kordon - ultimately to be supplied to car makers eg. Audi, Volkswagen, BMW. In addition establishing own services and licensing content to location based services eg. telematic services, tour operators and others. Boldest product was ‘Merian scout Navigator’ - an completely in-house developed personal navigation assistant with eg. location based audio files of points of interest, that stood out by design and a stellar UX. Sadly iPhone came around the corner with a bit more marketing power. Over time, I lead different teams, eg. mapp…

Publishing Director Cartography

GRÄFE UND UNZER VERLAG GmbH · Munich Area, Germany

Gräfe und Unzer Verlag, part of the Ganske Publishing Group, is the German market leading publisher of how-to-books, mainly around cooking, pet care, personal development, health care, travel. Under the brand ‘Merian’ different types of travel books are published. Being the Publishing Director Cartography, I oversaw the mapping production for the entire publishing group as well as the business development in this specific field. Output was around 2,000+ maps sized A6 - A2 for various publications (travel guides, gourmet magazine, ‘time out’ style magazine, ...).

Director Electronic Publishing

Werbeagentur Regelmann GmbH & Co. KG · Pforzheim Area, Germany

Werbeagentur Regelmann GmbH & Co. KG is a full service advertising agency, mainly w clients from the capital goods industry and jewellery industry, offering full stack advertising. At the beginning of 'Internet', main task was to design 'New Market' offers for customers of the marketing agency, in addition consulting and servicing them in respect to Internet, Database Publishing and other then 'New Market/eCommerce' opportunities. Other tasks were managing the local Novell network with OS2, MS DOS, W NT, W 95 and MacOS work stations, solving PostScript/PCL plotting issues, setting up/maintaining database publishing processes ( eg. w Adobe FrameMaker), establishing an internal academy to share knowledge with the account managers.

Technical Project Manager

Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH · Stuttgart Area, Germany

Reise- und Verkehrsverlag GmbH, as part of Verlagsgruppe Bertelsmann (a predecessor of now Verlagsgruppe Random House), was a market leading publishing house for travel information, mainly maps, atlases, travel guides. I was assigned to the New World Edition project team - goal was to be the first publishing house world wide to publish maps and atlases from a vector data base covering the entire world in the scale of 1:2,5M. Main task was to firstly find as a team reproducible methods and processes to compile and edit maps to ensure a timely and cost efficient map production. And secondly to then lead a production team of cartographers to label some 200K geographical names (w/o local adaptions). And thirdly to lead production to derive, maintain various products from the data base. Technical ecosystem was quite unique with Scitex Response 280, Intergraph Microstation, Apple Macintosh and Barco Laser Plotter with a lot of unique adaptions and software developments. Ultimate output was t…

Trainee

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) · Greater Denver Area

Unites States Geological Survey is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior - mostly providing science in various ways about Mother Earth. I was assigned to the National Mapping Division, Cartometric Operations that produced the 1:100K Digital Line Graphs (DLG) for the National Digital Cartographic Data Base (NDCDB). Main task as an intern was within the Data Processing, Data Editing and Data Collection processes.