January 30, 2020
Florian Bogenschütz joins the management of Wayra Germany
Successful start-up founder Florian Bogenschütz is from now on managing director of Wayra Germany. Christian Lindener, who has been in charge before, left the company at the end of October.
Munich,January 30, 2020 – Florian Bogenschütz, previously founder and CEO of a home-sharing service provider, took over the management of Wayra, Telefónica's Open Innovation Hub, on January 1, 2020. Christian Lindener, former managing director at Wayra, left the company at the end of October and handed over the management to Katrin Bacic, Head of Venture Development at Wayra.
Bogenschütz brings expertise in establishing cooperation between start-ups and corporates. As the founder of Airgreets, a service provider for users of home-sharing platforms, he was responsible for the development and commercial success of the company, which was founded in2016. In the role of CEO, he negotiated strategic partnerships with industry heavy weights such as Airbnb and Booking.com.
Thanks to this experience, Bogenschütz understands the needs of both corporates and start-ups. Therefore he understands the importance of the venture client model, where Wayra helps to build partnerships between corporations and start-ups. Together with Wayra, Bogenschütz wants to support start-ups even more comprehensively within the development of resilient processes. This should help the start-ups to establish valuable customer relationships with companies more quickly.
"Successful cooperations between start-ups and large corporations are crucial for the successful scaling of innovative approaches and solutions – and are of absolute benefit to both sides. But since the worlds are so different, the hurdles often seem almost impossible without consulting support. I know that from my own experience. With its client-venturing approach, Wayra forms the perfect interface between corporates and start-ups. I am looking forward to being able to develop the principle of this Open Innovation Hub further", says Florian Bogenschütz.
Katrin Bacic, who had taken over Wayra Germany, will continue to be part of the management team. While Bogenschütz entirely focuses on supporting the start-ups in setting up the processes necessary for cooperation with large companies such as Telefónica, Bacic, through her corporate background, acts primarily as a link between Telefónica and Wayra. She is in charge of venture development.
About Wayra Germany
Wayra Germany is the open innovation hub of the telecommunications group Telefónica. As an early-stage-investment-arm, Wayra scales technology-oriented start-ups and pursues a "venture client" model in which the parent company Telefónica acts as a customer for the start-ups' products. With the Wayra-as-a-Service program, the corporate venture provider supports Telefónica as well as other groups in their cooperation with young companies.