Berlin

Thomas Reby is a Customer Experience professional with practical experience from well-known technology companies, such as Electronic Arts, Dell, eBay and Google. During his 15 year career in Tech, he has been developing service capability with clear outcome-focus - improving the customer’s journey when interacting with service organisations, regardless of channel, language and geography.

He has advanced CX research methodology by shifting traditional survey processes towards a progressive action-oriented insights, centring on pre-empting failure and knowing when to deviate from standards. With a SixSigma and PMI-accredited background, he has demonstrated ability to drive change programs at global scale and with C-level visibility.

Through 7 years of dedicated Knowledge Management experience he has transformed KM capabilities of 2 fortune 500 companies. This includes establishing knowledge sharing culture, implementing KM systems and tools integrated with CRM systems as well as tracking and optimising the value of knowledge and knowledge contributors across global teams.

Recently, Thomas has been fully engaged in launching 100% outsourced programs, with and aim to strike a balance between customer and revenue retention whilst leveraging the scalability of vendor operations.

He is a father of two and currently lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Simultaneously along with pursuing his undergraduate degree, Dominic was employed at Siemens AG, going through a 4-year apprenticeship and management program. As a management trainee he was passing through all major departments of a globally operating company, including commercial management, marketing and sales, reporting and controlling, project management and internal efficiency and performance management.

Upon completion of the program, he went on to work as an account manager for Siemens’ Telecommunication and IT division, managing mid to large-sized business accounts. The German National Academic Foundation and the Fulbright Association both awarded him two-year scholarships to pursue his masters degree in the US. He earned his MBA with concentrations in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial strategy.

In 2014, Dominic founded POSpulse, a POS analytics company which enables FMCG manufacturers and retailers achieve better execution and more excellence at the Point of Sale.

Ingmar Knudsen is Senior Product Specialist at Zalando, responsible for personalized discovery experiences at their main customer touchpoints. Prior to this, he built up and scaled several customer facing products for the Zalando Fashion Store, which now serves more than 18 million active customers across 15 European countries.

Lukas Hasik has over a decade of experience in the daily use of software testing methodologies. He previously worked as a QA engineer on various parts of the NetBeans IDE and other products at Sun Microsystems.

In 2010, he joined Avast Software as the QA Director and was responsible for planning the work of the team, as well as communicating with developer teams and user communities.

He currently works as the VP of Customer Care and Satisfaction at Avast, where his main goal is to create and maintain the best support organization possible - a challenging goal, as Avast Software has over 230 million users worldwide.

Arik Meyer is the founder of SwitchUp.de, a service that continuously auto-optimizes your subscriptions on your behalf (electricity, broadband Internet, mobile phone). Previously, Arik founded and led Audible.de, which was acquired by Amazon.com, Inc. in 2009.

Arik is a firm believer that not only meeting, but exceeding customer expectations is the key driver to success. In order to accomplish this, Arik believes that customer service should not be limited to a set of individuals, but be a joint responsibility of the whole team.

Dr. Axel Niclas is the Chief Operating Officer of the celexon Group, which is headquartered in Germany and has offices in nine European countries. Prior to becoming their COO, he led business development at celexon. celexon is involved in the manufacture and supply of a wide range of projector accessory products for the AV market, including projector screens, mounts, projection furniture and other accessory products.

Maciek worked as a journalist since the age of 12 covering technology, science and business. At 19, he was the youngest editor at a tech magazine. Before Startup Safary, he has founded a couple of companies and startups, including such ventures as chocolate distribution, sailboats import, building a functional Augmented Reality engine and two software platforms. After moving to Berlin, he cofounded Startup Safary and since then, has grown it to cities in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Girish is the founder and CEO of Freshdesk, a global leader in customer support software. He has over 16 years of experience in product management and is passionate about building technology products with intuitive user experiences.

Prior to founding Freshdesk, Girish was the VP of Product Management at Zoho Corporation. He was named ‘Startup Entrepreneur of the Year’ by TiE Chennai in 2012, and also won the CII Connect ‘Emerging Star of the Year’ award in 2013 and Infocom CEO of the Year in 2014. He was also named as one of the 40 Under Forty, published by Fortune India in 2015.

In addition, Girish is part of the team behind the NASSCOM Product Council, which works in promoting and nurturing product companies from India. He is also an active member of iSpirt, actively advising the startup community in India about scaling, and building a global product company out of India.

Girish completed his BE in Electrical and Electronics and finished his MBA from the University of Madras. Girish and his wife, Shoba live in Chennai with their two sons. Girish plays tennis regularly, and enjoys watching movies in his free time.

Arun Mani joined Freshdesk in early 2016 with the goal of supporting the European market and growing the company’s presence in the region. His initial focus will be on the support and growth of the mid-market and enterprise business. Furthermore he is responsible for hiring exceptional talent in Berlin, to service customers in Europe and scale the business in the regions.

Prior to joining Freshdesk, Mani built and scaled a global sales team for AppNexus, growing revenue of their core network business by five times in just three years. Mani previously worked at McKinsey & Company and Accenture, managing client relationships and advising C-level executives on growth strategies and sales enablement. He also holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Arun Mani is an engineer and problem solver at heart. Just recently he moved with his wife and daughter to Berlin.