Dr. Frank Pawlitschek

Managing Director

Robin Staszek

Venture Partner

Maximilian Mense

Investment Associate

Annalena Lorson

Investment Associate

Tolga Buz

Investment Associate

Michael Mansfeld

Investment Associate

Rebecca Lepadus

Executive Assistant

Dr. Jens Schmidt-Sceery

Managing Director

Frank Pawlitschek

Managing Director

Frank became part of the HPI Seed Fund management in October 2020. He is also Director of the School of Entrepreneurship at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam following the goal of supporting a new entrepreneurship in Europe through outstanding startups from the digital university environment.

Previously, Frank founded the successful Berlin-based company ubitricity in 2008, which develops solutions for charging and smart grid integration of electric cars to limit climate change, e.g. by charging at street lamps, and was acquired by Shell in 2021. Frank’s entrepreneurial spirit was sparked as a high school and college student by numerous stays in Sillicon Valley, where as a software developer he was fascinated by the open and inspiring startup ecosystem.

Before founding his own company, Frank first completed a legal education in Mainz, Frankfurt, San Francisco and Auckland (New Zealand), which he finished with a doctorate and an international master’s degree. He then worked for several years as a lawyer in leading international and national law firms, where he advised large and medium-sized companies, primarily in the high-tech sector. Since 2018, Frank Pawlitschek has been president of the Berlin-Brandenburg Energy Network (BEN). In addition, he is frequently involved as a mentor for young founders.

Robin Staszek

Managing Director

Robin Staszek has been Senior Manager Direct Investments for the Hasso Plattner Foundation since May 2019.

With his passion for innovation and advancing business models he enjoys to back entrepreneurial activity in all its facets and create strong network effects throughout the entire portfolio.

After graduating as M.Sc. in International Finance, he gathered several years of experience as a financial analyst with various major German companies.

Maximilian Mense

Investment Associate

Maximilian studied law at the Westfälische Wilhelmsuniversität Münster and completed his studies with the first state examination. Already during his studies he worked for several start-ups and was, among other things, self-employed in the event sector.

After his studies he focused on the innovation area of legal-tech and worked as Head of Business Development for one of the leading German providers in the field of document automation, where he was responsible for sales and strategy issues in particular.

Since December 2019 Maximilian has been a research assistant at the HPI E-School. He is doing his doctorate in the field of legal tech at the University of Leipzig on the foundation of a digital GmbH.

Annalena Lorson

Investment Associate

Annalena completed her studies in International Management (M.Sc.) at the University of Applied Sciences Karlsruhe – Technik und Wirtschaft and gained her first experiences in the start-up industry through study projects, an internship abroad and her work as a research assistant. 

After her studies, she joined Urban Sports GmbH – Europe’s leading provider of sports flat rates – as Corporate Account Manager. There she was responsible for onboarding and the support of business cooperation with a focus on Berlin start-ups and the region of Southern Germany.

Since January 2020 Annalena has been working as a research assistant at the HPI E-School and will soon begin her doctoral studies in IT entrepreneurship.

Tolga Buz

Investment Associate

Tolga has studied Industrial Engineering at TU Berlin (B.Sc. and M.Sc.) and has completed an additional Double Degree in Data Science und Entrepreneurship (M.Sc.) at EIT Digital Master School, including abroad studies in Istanbul and Madrid. He has focused on topics like B2C technology acceptance, project management, data science and machine learning.

During his studies, he has spent significant time with entrepreneurship and gained work experience in multiple startups in Berlin, initially in sales and operations, afterwards as data scientist and machine learning engineer.

Tolga has joined HPI E-School in October 2020 and is working on his dissertation in the domain of automated text processing utilizing machine learning algorithms.

Helena studied International Business Management (B.A.) and Business Informatics (M. Sc.) at the Berlin School of Economics and Law with stations in Mexico, France and Cuba. During her master studies she completed the Basic and Advanced Track at the HPI School of Design Thinking and did research on data literacy in NGOs in cooperation with the Open Knowledge Foundation. After graduating, she worked as a service designer and project manager in a Berlin-based digital agency and a digital education start-up. As part of this, she developed products and programs on Open Data, Sustainable Development and Artificial Intelligence.

Since June 2021, Helena is part of the HPI E-School and is doing her PhD at the Chair of Design Thinking and Innovation Research at the intersection of Sustainable Development and Digital Innovation.

Rebecca Lepadus

Executive Assistant

Rebecca studied art history in Jena and Lyon and museum management in Berlin. During her studies, she worked at the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, where she organized the Global Social Intrapreneurship Summit, among other things.

Inspired by innovative approaches and new event formats, she was subsequently responsible for the organization and implementation of various challenging workshops on an international level at the HPI Academy.

Since January 2021, Rebecca supports Dr. Frank Pawlitschek and the E-School in numerous organizational and administrative matters. She is mainly responsible for the planning of events such as the business plan competition and the organizational support of the co-working space.

Dr. Jens Schmidt-Sceery

Advisor

Helena Sternkopf

Investment Associate

Jens started at the HPI Seed Fund as a Venture partner in 2021. He is a partner at Cowen Europe AG, a leading international Investment Bank where he focuses on M&A and Equity Financing in the Software sector. He has dedicated his career to working with startups and software companies on achieving their fullest potential through precise positioning and financing. He is particularly passionate supporting young startups in meeting the critical challenges of early growth.

Prior to working at Cowen he worked as an investment manager at Hasso Plattner Ventures and was the personal advisor of the president of the German Institut for Economic Research (DIW).

Jens holds a Ph.D. from the Europa-Universität Viadrina in economics with a focus on applied econometrics and statistics. He studied at the Freie Univesität of Berlin and the Tel Aviv University and was a research fellow at Georgetown University.