VISION
We are at the beginning of the fourth technological revolution, and I believe that the recent mass adoption of AI, in combination with web 3.0/blockchain structures, will be the biggest growth drivers for businesses in the next five to ten years.
This trend is being accelerated by quantum computing and 5G/6G internet speeds and is driven by efforts to address a poly crisis:
- The war in Ukraine with millions dying or impacted
- The climate emergency,
- The loss of biodiversity,
- The cost-of-living crisis,
- and the supply chain reorganization and de-
globalization of the world's economy
On the positive side, this will bring and accelerate a new era of human development, allowing us to solve many problems in a matter of weeks or months, rather than decades. Necessity-driven AI innovations will give birth to new unicorns, add a new flavor to the global workforce.
Hyper-scale automation will hit us in waves, starting with the recent mass adoption of ChatGPT in late November 2022, already changing the way we communicate, learn, promote, and buy products and services.
As an optimist by nature, I believe this will also lead to the creation of an unprecedented wealth, and more of us will have the opportunity to participate.
MISSION
As a Business Owner I am passionate about exploring the cutting-edge science and technologies of longevity, a USD trillion dollar market opportunity.
Through my journey and unique access to experts, scientists, researchers, engineers, and brands, I aim to share the latest breakthroughs and knowledge with business owners, providing a platform to connect with providers, brands, investors, and companies in the field.
With my expertise as the founder of the largest AI monetization expert group on LinkedIn and as an AI/healthcare specialist, I am dedicated to leveraging groundbreaking AI models to advance longevity science, products, and services and empower people to live longer, healthier and wealthier lives, enjoy greater independence, and experience a higher quality of life.
GO LONGEVITY AHEAD
Owners of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses control 44% of the wealth in the United States. They maintain a driver's seat mindset and the necessary skills, deeply understanding:
No health, no business.
That's precisely why many business owners are now investing in longevity solutions. It's because they genuinely care—about the financial sustainability of their loved ones, the legacy of the businesses they've painstakingly built over many years, and the wellbeing of their employees and their families.
BIOGRAPHY
My parents are classical musicians.
When I was young and they couldn't find a babysitter, they took me to rehearsals of their top-level German Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig. Spending so many hours listening to classical music and having my father teach me at home, I started playing the piano when I was 5 years old. My parents managed to get me the best teachers, and as a result, I was able to compete internationally. I made it into the top 10 of the renowned International Bach Music Contest twice, at the ages of 8 and 12. With that success, I transitioned into my journey of 21 years of musical education at special schools and 5 years of scientific studies, eventually earning a Master's degree in Art and Engineering from the Hochschule für Musik and the Academy of Science in Berlin, Germany.
While in my final year of university, I started writing and producing songs.
Started as a study project, and mentored by seasoned producers at the largest music studio in Berlin, Germany, I co-wrote and co-produced my first song there. While sound mixing at night, one of the most influential executive producers stepped in, loved the song, and promoted it to radio DJs. This is how my very first song became a top 10 radio hit in 1989.
After fleeing the Iron Curtain from the Russian-occupied Eastern Germany via Hungary to Austria in early August 1989, I became a TV producer at ZDF, Europe's largest television station.
My breakthrough success came through my music-related companies in the late 90s, when I relocated the business from Europe to California and expanded it to Japan, Australia, and later, to Canada.
In the early 2000s, the international music business was at its revenue peak. Life was good. While running our record labels, music publishing companies, artist management, and music production firms, I realized that we were losing approximately two-thirds of our projected international music-related royalty income due to human errors, licensee-related system failures, and international tax fraud.
Losing millions of dollars was not an option, so I had to find a solution.
After two years of extensive travel, talking with all partners and stakeholders to uncover the underlying causes, I invented a forensic international accounting system and established our own licensing hubs in multiple countries. This resulted in a 3.5x increase in revenue for our own catalogs and up to a 70x increase for some partners and clients using our innovative solution.
I also created and grew our unique international licensing system with over 300 licensing partners in 35 countries and 5,000 licensing deals acquired and negotiated.
On that journey, I met, signed, managed and learned from some outstanding creative and business talent and colleagues.
Besides my work as music executive,
I also co-wrote and co-produced many songs, some internationally successful like SWEETBOX’s Everything’s Gonna Be Alright
which sold 40 million copies worldwide...
...and the self named album "SWEETBOX" more than one million copies in Japan alone.
Over a period of more than 15 years, we released multiple albums under the same brand but with different recording artists, and achieved commercial success in many countries.
Remarkable True Story:
The song "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" is based on "Air on G String" from Johann Sebastian Bach's 3rd Orchestral Suite or Ouverture No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068.
The "Air" is one of the most famous pieces of Baroque music from the 18th century and today, it is mostly used as background music for funerals in Europe.
When we wrote and produced the song in 1997, we added a hip-hop beat and thought we need to counter the sad emotion with a positive message, inspired by a typical and often-used reggae phrase "Everything's gonna be alright."
When I started promoting the song on German radios, it was not an immediate success. Despite all our good efforts and support from our record label BMG Germany, the record became a radio hit in Germany but wasn't reaching the top 10 single charts.
It was only when I started licensing the record into other countries and promoting it in France that we got some traction. Top French radio station NRJ started playing it almost every hour, and the song became the #1 single in the charts in France.
Coincidentally, at the same time in the UK, Lady Diana had a deadly accident, and the British BBC and BBC Radio One picked "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" as the main background music to report about the tragedy. Most TV and radio stations worldwide rebroadcasted this BBC reporting, and with it, the song.
This is how it became such a massive worldwide hit. The song met the feelings of many people at that time.
But here is the amazing world of human emotions: The same song eventually became the most successful in Japan, won two Japanese Grammys in 1998 (best international song and best newcomer), sold millions of copies, and turned into the most-played song at Japanese weddings.
As Parasongs International's data-driven forensic international royalty system was able to identify significantly undervalued music publishing assets, I convinced two Private Equity Firms (Lloyds Development Capital in London and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch in NYC) to co-sponsor my bid to buy, aggregate, enhance and flip music publishing catalogs.
With $300m in equity commitments and another $250m additional debt guarantees from UBS and Credit Suisse, I spent about two years creating an M&A pipeline with 2,000 potential targets, 200 in pre-due diligence, 20 in detailed DD leading to 3 fully backed final bids.
Although I wasn't successful with my acquisition attempts, badly outnumbered and outsmarted by larger elephants like KKR and Pension Funds who had the much cheaper cost of capital and teams of hundred plus people working on the closing, this has been the most intense learning experience of my life.
On that journey and without regret, I lost a lot of money in bad deal fees but gained incredible knowledge and some friendships with amazing people along the way.
While crunching the financial data of potential acquisition targets, I realized something:
Hit songs are very well monitored and managed. No matter how clever a buyer is, he will not be able to double or triple the revenues making it a 2X opportunity only.
On the other hand, songs with zero or less than $20 in yearly revenues are not well administrated, neither is anyone actively managing these music publishing assets because a human work hour is too expensive and you would lose money trying.
But what if...
these assets could be monitored and well administrated and matched to some smaller licensing opportunities in videos, film, TV, brand commercials...
The revenue of these assets would multiply.
The solution was to significantly lower the admin costs by building the first fully automated record label and music publishing company and lower the active asset management costs by serving it with a 3.0 shared economy model to incentivize all stakeholders involved.
We were awarded the #1 innovation prize at the 2014 MusicTech Summit in San Francisco.
Although despite this initial success, I was too early and could not find enough early adopters back in the day. Now, blockchain tech is more developed and 3.0 shared economy models more accepted. I'm confident that some great entrepreneurs will pick that up again in the near future and make it a commercial success.
In 2015, I took a chance to help a friend with his AI-centered company, Beyond Limits, by commercializing AI algorithms originally developed for NASA's unmanned space mission. While the technology was super-advanced, the challenge was to find and fund entrepreneurs who could make it successful. I called this the "entrepreneur-market-fit".
Working with potential candidates, I soon realized it takes a special type of blueprint to help an entrepreneur not only find their calling but also help them along the way to become “blockbuster successful”, creating a company with an exit value of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
Just to be clear: I’m not a role model nor am I a billionaire. I’m just an entrepreneur.
Over a period of 30 years, I have built and run many companies in different sectors and geographies, going through countless trials and errors in the process of finally achieving the results I was hoping for. Therefore, I have decided to share my findings and teach the rules I have learned.
That is why I created a basic 6-week starter program and help talented entrepreneurs find their way.
In this online course, developed over many years of fieldwork with data scientists, AI engineers, innovation experts, CEOs, and investors, you can explore exactly how entrepreneurs match promising products and services with customers to scale their businesses to success.
WHAT YOU'LL GET
A better understanding of who you are and what you want
A mapped-out AI-centered use case leveraging your unique talents and skills
A detailed execution plan
Lifetime access to a peer network of entrepreneurs, mentors, and investors
A few years back, when my teenage daughter became depressed and started having suicidal thoughts, I went on a very bold personal mission with my startup allforlife.
Allforlife is an AI-centered marketplace and teleconsulting platform helping patients and loved ones find the best mental help worldwide. Approximately two billion people globally suffer from mental health problems but only one out of 17 receive the correct diagnosis and a treatment that works.
That’s only six percent! It’s ridiculous.
One example: A recent UK study revealed that it takes on average 13.4 years to diagnose bipolar disorder correctly. Because of the existing trial-and-error Q&A-based system, patients and their loved ones suffer for years, leading to 800,000 suicides annually. There are thousands of apps and ideas to tackle parts of this problem but nearly all of them lack the data and science to prove efficacy.
After talking and collaborating with leading experts from L.A. school districts, scientists from top universities, expert practitioners, and Veterans Affairs (VA), my team and I decided to go after the root cause in order to change the existing system.
When patients teleconsult with a practitioner, they have the option to record a new form of clinical-grade emotional and behavioral vital sign data. AI algorithms capture, categorize and analyze it.
Here is an example of one set of AI machine-vision algorithms capturing and classifying emotions 15 times per second.
The combination of many other biosensors analyzes the sound of the voice, body language, color change/oxygen saturation of your facial skin, speech in connection with behavioral analyses like frequency of cell phone and app use, what and how fast you text, etc. This generates an individual emotional and behavioral profile with clinical-grade data. It helps a patient to measure and understand their mental health problems and assesses whether a therapy works for them.
Human psychology is complicated and this is not a system on autopilot. But it is the first hard science-based step in the right direction helping patients and loved ones stop guessing and start knowing.
In my role as advisor and business coach, I'm helping colleagues and friends in the AI and healthcare sector succeed in their mission to buy, invest, develop and grow med-tech businesses.
I’m very much into longevity-related science and love working on investments in companies that help people enjoy a higher quality of life over an extended period of time.
One part of this work is building efficient M&A pipelines, generating top quality deal flow, deal execution and asset integration.
If your business needs to grow quickly, I might be able to help you, too.
Other Achievements
I started as an intern in 1990, and just a few months later, I advanced to become a TV line producer, working on prime-time shows with top ratings.
Between 1993 and 1999, I founded and managed Paramusic (music productions), G&S (record labels), Parasongs (music publishing companies), and Paramedia (artist management and media marketing). Additionally, I acquired and negotiated over 5,000 licensing deals with 200+ partners across 35 countries, including a partial exit.
In 1998, I invented a new system to engineer music that increased brand recognition by a factor of 4.5 for Pringles, which is one of P&G's well-known consumer brands.
I initiated and won a seven-year lawsuit that resulted in a change to the German law, benefiting songwriters, producers, and artists who are now able to cancel their contracts if labels or publishers cheated with royalty accounting.
In 2016, I coined the term 'AI monetization' to describe a blueprint for training AI neural nets using feedback loops. This method allows them to accelerate growth so rapidly that no one can outcompete the resulting niche product or service, leading to explosive company valuations.
Along the way, I built the largest AI monetization expert network on LinkedIn, which now has over 6,500 members and a following of 30,000 AI researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, and innovation executives.
Since the mass adoption of AI began in November 2022, the term 'AI monetization' has evolved to refer to the use of AI in specific use cases to aid growth and enable breakthrough innovations.
In 2016 and 2017, together with private investors and a team of AI engineers, we developed unique AI algorithms and designed and conducted a clinical trial with 1,756 UCLA heart patients to find correlations between facial features and cardiovascular diseases.
From 2017 to 2019, I had the opportunity to collaborate with experts from the best L.A. school districts, scientists from top universities, expert practitioners, Veterans Affairs, UCLA, AI data scientists, and engineers to establish a new form of clinical-grade and objective emotional and behavioral vital sign data. This has advanced the accuracy of diagnoses and treatment success rates, with the potential to change textbook psychology as we know it.