About Us
Developing SaaS solutions that accelerate the diffusion of sustainable innovation
ImpactNexus team
20+ years of industry experience, 7+ years in software development, a strong academic background and large network in the startup ecosystem
Dr. Jannic Horne
CEO
Leading the overall venture development
- 4+ years in management consulting
- PhD in innovation & entrepreneurship on impact measurement
- 4+ years experience in sustainable development
Marie-Sophie Litz
CTO
Leading the technical development
- 5+ years as software developer in NLP & knowledge mgmt.
- 2+ years in project management & as scrum master
- Masters in mathematics focus on modeling & optimization
Oğuz Şerbetçi
CDO
Leading the development of machine learning
- ~2 years working in NLP research projects
- 2+ years working on customer-facing NLP solutions
- Master in Computer Science with a focus on NLP & ML
Constanze Trautwein
CPO
Leading the product development
- 4+ years as researcher & project manager on sustainable entrepreneurship
- 1 year growth strategy & financial planning
- 4+ years in internat. strategy & business development
Alexander Schabel
CSO
Leading sales and marketing
- 4+ years in project management, marketing & business development
- Founder of a service company
- ~2 years building up a new institute
Advisors
Prof. Dr. Klaus Fichter
Borderstep Institut, Universität Oldenburg
Prof. Dr. habil. Odej Kao
TU Berlin
Our story
2019 – The Guiding question
Sustainability, innovation, and entrepreneurship were topics we had been working on for years in our daily work and in our academic research. This joined interest brought Alexander, Constanze, Jannic and Klaus together with one leading question, how can we leverage technology to improve the sustainability impact of businesses?
Building on our past experiences we decided to join forces around this question and to build up ImpactNexus as a spin-off from the Borderstep Institute for Innovation & Sustainability.
2021 – Launching ImpactNexus
In January Marie, Oguz and Jannic started as a full-time team with the product development. We kicked off the technical product development with multiple design sprints with startups, investors, and others experts from the innovation ecosystem. In constant exchange with customers, we developed a first MVP for the assessment and measurement of impact in new ventures. Building on this, we were soon able to generate first customer interest for our impact assessment solutions.
In our discussions with customers, we also realized that many customers need support in the field of ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance). Accordingly, we decided to expand our offering. Today, we can offer support to individual ventures and portfolio owners in the field of ESG as well as impact. So customers can choose the level of support they need to increase their impact and mitigate social and environmental risks.
2020 – Building the foundation
Under the roof of the Borderstep Institute we began to set the foundations for ImpactNexus. We conducted an extensive customer discovery phase, developed and prototyped product concepts and applied for public support programs.
We were lucky to find Marie early on in the development of ImpactNexus and to convince her to join us. With her strong software development and mathematical background she helped us to experiment with first prototypes along her full-time job.
At the end of the year, we received approval for the EXIST grant from the German Ministry of Economics. This gave us the funds to kick off ImpactNexus as an independent venture in 2021 and we were able to recruit Oğuz with his strong background in machine learning and NLP.
