Project Portfolio

Tabular CV

Click here for my CV.

Verbal CV (Chronological)

My first freelance project started in August 2017, right after my undergrad in International Management from WHU. Back then, I helped a startup to raise money and professionalize their accounting and controlling. The full-time project lasted for about four months.

From early 2018, a year of working on a software startup followed. We developed a tool to improve banks’ Know Your Customer (KYC) processes.

In the summer of 2018, I did a web development bootcamp at Le Wagon in Berlin to deepen my coding skills. Shortly after that, a year after undergrad, I enrolled in the first intake of the newly-created Applied Data Science program at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.

In 2019, I got excited about crypto while attending a blockchain elective at Frankfurt School, held by late Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner and Christoph Kreiterling. I freelanced for multiple companies and implemented backtesting solutions for them, and these were my first highly technical freelancing projects.

In 2020, I graduated from Frankfurt School and started to work at Commerzbank AG as a software engineer.

In the same year, I enrolled in a Ph.D. program in computer science at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). Find more about it here.

Furthermore, I co-founded 21e6 Capital AG, a startup that provides investment advice to professional investors seeking to invest in crypto markets.

You read correctly. I had three demanding responsibilities starting from August 2020. 2020 to 2023 was an intense period of time.

I worked with Commerzbank AG and 21e6 AG until October 2023, and am currently (in 2024) wrapping up my Ph.D., allowing me to focus on only one major endeavor from 2024 onward.

Projects (Anti-Chronological)

2024

• University of St. Gallen (HSG)
  • Wrote scientific articles about the generation of long, knowledge-intensive financial texts using artificial intelligence.
  • Conducted research on central bank communication, and FOMC minutes in particular.

2023

• University of St. Gallen (HSG)
  • Wrote several scientific articles about the scaling behavior of language and computer vision models.
  • Developed prompt engineering strategies for financial text tasks.
  • Participated in scientific conferences.
• 21e6 Capital AG
  • Ideated and created a new product: a database subscription (21e6 Crypto Fund Database).
  • Wrote weekly articles to present and advertise the database.
  • Contacted hundreds of leads for the database, converted many of the top world-wide crypto companies to buy the subscription.
  • I am still involved here, and the business is developing beyond my expectations. We have a first-class team of quant portfolio analysts and crypto experts. We have three business areas: 1) consulting, 2) fund of funds, and 3) other financial products; 2) is our primary business. Unfortunately, the business was shut down at the end of 2023. We did not generate enough revenue to sustain our salaries, and our main investor pulled the plug. I am happy with the experience, but am sorry for our investors and clients that we were not able to keep this ship afloat. I am grateful for the valuable learnings spent working with my late co-founder Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner, our COO Suresh Ghalsasi, our interim CEO Felix Fernandez, our quant Dr. Tobias Setz, our crypto experts Dr. Victor von Wachter and Maximilian Bruckner, and everyone who helped along the way, including Elias Mendel, Katharina Zeuch, Leon Berghoff, and Tobias Rethmeyer.

2022

• DLT Lab Commerzbank
  • Worked on a self-sovereign identity application based on Java Spring Boot and Angular.
  • Organized monthly “DLT Affiliate Call” to align interested employees on DLT-related activities within the bank.
  • Held numerous knowledge sharing presentations for colleagues interested in crypto/DLT.
  • Supervised junior software development colleagues.
• University of St. Gallen (HSG)
  • Completed the proposal for my dissertation.
  • Outlined a software infrastructure for processing financial texts.
  • Please refer to my Ph.D. blog posts to see the most recent progress.
• 21e6 Capital AG
  • Launched the fund of funds, our flagship product, in April 2022.
  • We achieved exceptional performance of the fund of funds throughout the Q2 crypto meltdown.

2021

• DLT Lab Commerzbank
  • Assisted in a request for proposal (RfP): created proposal documents, managed bidder workshops, evaluated proposals, managed internal stakeholders from different divisions, ensured compliance with internal guidelines.
  • Created a full-stack application (based on React.js, Python Flask, Java Spring Boot, and enterprise-internal services) that allows clients to have decentralized identity information signed by Commerzbank.
• Trading Infrastructure Commerzbank
  • Developed a FIX converter in Java for new FIX connections. FIX converters are used to translate financial messages from other financial companies into one’s own data infrastructure.
  • Smaller data wrangling in a Front Arena trading application.
• 21e6 Capital AG
  • Set up a data infrastructure for 21e6 with data of about 1000 crypto funds. Created a data pipeline for monthly performance data for crypto funds.
  • High-touch outreach to crypto funds; due diligence. Talked to many crypto fund managers to assess their suitability for the 21e6 Crypto Fund of Funds (21e6 Crypto FoF).
  • We hired seasoned professionals and received funding commitments to scale the business. The Swiss 21e6 Capital AG (stock-based corporation, Aktiengesellschaft) was incorporated.
• University of St. Gallen (HSG)
  • Completed Ph.D. courses in econometrics, natural language processing, and software for AI (S4AI).
• Spoerico GmbH
  • Incorporated a GmbH to bundle my business activities into a more professional corporate structure/legal entity to reduce personal liability and to reduce my tax burden.
  • Developed a massive scraper-based product for a large HR/recruitment agency (Personalvermittlung/Headhunter).
  • Failed to get a permanent software-as-a-service contract.
  • Put the scraper on my shelf; maybe it becomes useful later. (A partner and I own all rights.)

2020

• Started working at Commerzbank AG (software engineering), co-founded 21e6 Capital AG, and started the Ph.D. in computer science at the University of St. Gallen (HSG).
• Commerzbank Big Data Division
  • Continued development of a D3-/React-based web UI for transaction monitoring (network diagram).
  • Implemented a micro application with Java Servlets and connected it to an HBase.
  • Deployed the micro application with OpenShift.
• 21e6 Capital AG
  • Developed and refined a business model for the startup.
  • High-touch outreach to professional investors (sales) to test the market. Business development and hypothesis validation.

2019

• Freelancing
  • ITSA e.V.: Occasionally supporting ITSA in promoting their blockchain database (TOKENBASE) through creating insightful visualizations and stories from their data. Created Tableau-based diagram templates that produce insightful visualizations about the blockchain space.
  • Conducted a comprehensive market study for a Swiss private equity company.
  • Developed a comprehensive backtesting software in Python that provides practically all financial metrics relevant for (quantitative) asset managers. The key characteristic of the software is that it has an interface to blockchain price data, making backtesting for algorithmic blockchain trading convenient.
  • Supported a German startup in the luxury segment with finance, accounting, and ERP issues.
  • Specific areas of competence included the following: Cost center accounting, management accounting/controlling, cash management/treasury, venture capital financing, external reporting, profitability analyses, ERP troubleshooting, database design, competition analyses, algorithmic trading, backtesting, trading dashboard, risk management dashboards, text extraction, text classification, natural language processing, and web scraping.
• Sinpex GmbH
  • I dropped out of Sinpex in 2019, but my co-founder (the ex-supervisor at Deloitte, Dr. Camillo Werdich), decided to continue working on Sinpex. I wish him all the best.

2018

• Frankfurt School M.Sc. in Applied Data Science
  • I enrolled in the Data Science program at Frankfurt School.
  • In this time, I became proficient in Python, through coding every single day.
• Sinpex GmbH
  • We secured funding for our startup and developed an MVP. We pitched our software to major German banks and networked with relevant decision-makers.

2017

• Graduated from WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.
• Deutsche Beteiligungs AG
  • DBAG is the largest private equity team in Germany.
  • Through my experience in valuation, I was able to secure an internship at this prestigious private equity company.
  • I was lucky to work on one full and successful deal. By the time of this writing, the deal was public, so I can disclose that it was the Duagon AG deal. Working on this transaction was intense and insightful, as I was fortunate to be involved throughout the entire process, starting with the one-pager and ending with completing the final investment memorandum.
  • Also, I performed the usual duties of an analyst. I created short profiles, drafted operating models, created one-pagers, created longlists, and updated data sheets.
• At the end of 2017, I began freelancing for a startup, helping their finance department to raise more than 30m€ in equity funding.
• Sinpex GmbH
  • Start of Sinpex GmbH (not incorporated at this point in time).
  • With my former supervisor from Deloitte, I decided to found a Sinpex. We wanted to take our insights from the KYC project and were determined to produce software to improve inefficient KYC processes.
• Le Wagon coding bootcamp
  • 2017 was the year that I realized that to found a software company, one should also have some skills in software engineering.
  • I went to Berlin for two months to take part in a coding bootcamp.

2016

• KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft
  • I spent the first half of the summer with KPMG Financial Services Consulting.
  • I was staffed on a data & compliance project at a large German bank. The project implemented BCBS 239 regulations into the bank’s technical infrastructure.
  • In the internship, I prepared meetings and worked on other PMO tasks.
  • I also helped to draft technical interface documents to facilitate communication between subsidiaries and the bank-wide data warehouse.
• Deloitte Consulting GmbH
  • Deloitte was my second summer internship in 2016.
  • Like the KPMG internship, I was staffed at another significant German bank.
  • I worked on a KYC project for correspondent banking relationships.
  • Deloitte sent out questionnaires to correspondent banks of the client. The problem was that the questionnaire was in Excel, and the regulatory requirements formulated by the internal compliance department kept changing. Complexity emerged, and about 40 consultants were working on tedious tasks such as aligning old Excel questionnaires with new requirements, taking existing answers and copying them into new versions of the Excel questionnaire, and emailing the internal relationship managers to follow up on missing answers. Also, the responses had to be assessed for sanctions risks, politically exposed persons (PEP) risks, and negative news, which also took a lot of time.
  • I was hired for this internship on a very short notice through a spontaneous referral. They needed somebody that can automate the above-mentioned processes. Back then, my coding knowledge was limited, but my supervisor and me hacked our way through the problems, often working long ours together.
  • We automated major work streams, and allowed the team to produce the necessary work even though the team was reduced to about 10-15 consultants.
  • We only used Excel VBA to perform these tasks.

2015

• Flick Gocke Schaumburg (FGS) Rechtsanwälte Wirtschaftsprüfer Steuerberater Partnerschaft mbB
  • FGS is the most prestigious law firm for tax crime proceedings.
  • I worked in the equity valuation department, which is part of the audit division.
  • I worked on several valuation projects, using equity beta factors, yield curves, working with the Bloomberg Terminal for the first time, identifying comps/comparables/peer groups, and doing many other M&A/investment banking-like tasks.
  • My major project was to build an internal tool for stock option and convertible bond valuation. It took me almost the entire 3-month internship to complete this tool.
  • While there is the Black-Scholes formula, this formula comes with limitations as it cannot incorporate custom contractual agreements.
  • The tool I built was a binominal options and convertible bond pricing algorithm. With this tool, the firm can now evaluate American options, European options, any type of Bermuda options, and has maximum flexibility to include custom contractual agreements into the pricing.
  • The code was written in Excel VBA.

2014

• Started B.Sc. in International Management studies at WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management.