#5 Florian Heinemann | Project A Ventures

Florian Heinemann is a Founding Partner at Project A Ventures,
where he is responsible for the areas of marketing, CRM, and
business intelligence. Before co-founding Project A, he was
Managing Director at Rocket Internet with the same areas of
responsibility (2007-2012). During his time at Rocket, he was
mainly involved at Zalando, Global Fashion Group, and Spark
Networks (aka eDarling/Affinitas).Prior to Rocket, Florian was
Co-Founder and Managing Director of JustBooks/AbeBooks being in
charge of marketing and product (1999-2002, exit to Amazon in
2008). Then, he was co-heading the online marketing department of
Jamba! and the online dating portal iLove (2003-2005, exit to
Verisign). In 2006, he was Co-Founder of the online marketplace
antibodies-online.com (exit to Broadoak).Moreover, he has been an
investor/business angel in more than 80 startups including
Trivago (seed investor), Zalando (founding investor), Audibene
(seed investor), Home24 (founding investor), CityDeal/Groupon
(founding investor), Betreut.de/Care (seed investor), ClassPass
(early stage investor), Mimi Hearing (early stage investor),
Bitbond (seed investor), Lillydoo (early stage investor), and the
Code University (seed stage investor).Apart from his Project
A-related board activities he sits on the board of Koerber AG and
About You and the digital advisory boards of Henkel and Oetker.








Florian Heinemann, Project A Ventures | Making It Real Podcast
with Jan Brinckmann | Episode #5





00:00 How Florian got into the Entrepreneurship domain


02:45 Florian’s role as a founder in the early internet days


05:05 Knowing your strengths and growing into an expert in your
field


12:26 Should you join a startup with funding or start your own
venture for best possible learnings?


18:46 Florian’s entrepreneurial path and his start at Rocket
Internet


23:13 Rocket Internet’s first ventures and how they decided which
new companies to launch


30:35 What Rocket Internet underestimated


34:50 Advantages of B2B business models over consumer businesses


37:18 The role of sales is mostly underestimated in B2B


38:36 Why Florian left Rocket Internet and started Project A
Ventures


43:05 Was Florian scared of starting his own company?


46:25 Florian’s advice for founders who want to make it real





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https://makingitreal.io/5