HitFox Group

Jan Beckers

CEO & Founder

30-year old serial entrepreneur Jan Beckers is the Founder and CEO of HitFox. Prior to HitFox Jan founded 5 other successful companies – among them SponsorPay, Madvertise & Absolventa. Jan started to invest in the stock market with 14 years and founded his first company with 20 while he was studying business at University of Muenster. He has invested in Start-ups such as Delivery Hero, Brands4Friends, and Clio. In 2013 Beckers was named No. 1 on the NEXT100 list of "Influencers of the Digital Industry" in Europe.

Outside of the office, Jan enjoys nightlife, travelling and meeting people. Jan plans to extend his business expertise into Social Entrepreneurship in the future.

Dr. Hanno Fichtner

Founder & Partner, Managing Director AppLift US

Before starting to hunt for the best business ideas at HitFox Group, Hanno worked at management consulting firm McKinsey. For seven years he mainly helped clients on strategic and sales & marketing topics and setting up their online business models.

Prior to McKinsey, Hanno was Founder and CEO of mobile marketing firm SMS-Rabatt – the first rebate-based mobile marketing service in Germany. Furthermore, he founded squeaker.net, an online career network for high-potential talents.

Hanno studied Business at the University of Cologne and received a PhD for his dissertation on company culture in strategic management from the University of Bremen.

Tim Koschella

Founder & COO HitFox Group, Managing Director AppLift

Tim is a dedicated expert in international mobile and online performance marketing (CPI, CPL, CPA, CPE) with particular focus on the games industry. As Partner & Co-Founder of HitFox Group and Co-CEO of AppLift, one of the Group’s subsidiaries, he is working with 100+ game companies to acquire users for their free2play titles. Among these companies are many of the industries’ leading game publishers.

Tim has been an Internet entrepreneur for several years prior to co-founding HitFox Group and AppLift. He was a founder and managing director of the Leipzig based eLearning startup, lecturio.de and as Interim-CFO at one of Europe's leading sports apparel online retailers, mysportgroup.de.

Tim graduated with a Master Degree in Business & Economics from the leading German business school for entrepreneurial education (HHL) after studying at the University of Mainz and Universidad del Pacifico in Quito/Ecuador.

Kaya Taner

CEO AppLift & Co-Founder

Before his current focus on the mobile space, Kaya gathered ample experience in the start-up environment where among other engagements he was as “Head of Publisher Relations” at HitFox responsible for building relationships with online game publishers.

Kaya holds an International Master's in Management degree from ESCP Europe, where he completed his Master's thesis best of class and was awarded the Prix Vital Roux, the school's yearly prize for best research. He also studied for a Master's degree in Latin American studies with focus on economics at Sorbonne University, where he graduated best of class.

Stephen Chung

Managing Director AppLift Asia

Stephen joined AppLift as Managing Director for Asia and is responsible for the companies' operations and expansion to all APAC markets. He developed a passion for the mobile industry while managing e-commerce ventures across both developed and emerging markets in Asia, seeing first-hand it's impact and ability to leap traditional business models.

Before joining AppLift, Stephen worked for Rocket Internet as Managing Director, where he built several ventures in Korea, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and Vietnam. Prior to joining Rocket Internet, Stephen worked for PPC, a financial sponsor based in Palo Alto, California. Stephen started his career with Teach For America, where he managed corporate development projects at the national headquarters in New York.

Johannes Rolf

CMO & Managing Director ad2games

Johannes Rolf brings more than 6 years of experience in the games and performance marketing industries. He joins from Hamburg based developer Goodgame Studios where he led the Display Marketing Department.

Prior to that Rolf worked at Frogster and NEONGA, building up their global performance marketing and advertising strategies. With a marketing background including browser, social and client games, Johannes reinforces ad2games’ “quality at scale” approach.

Albert Schwarzmeier

CEO & Managing Director ad2games

Before joining ad2games, serial entrepreneur Schwarzmeier successfully lead Groupon Germany as founder and also founded mysportgroup the fastest growing eCommerce company for sports in Europe. He combines vast experience in business strategy with strong hands-on execution.

Albert comes with over 8 years of know-how in online marketing and management operations.

Daniel Nathan

Managing Director & Co-Founder, New Venture

Daniel is currently building a new venture focused on Big Data management for performance marketing in the mobile industry.

Before working on this new venture, Daniel worked on the launch and growth of AppLift, the leading mobile games marketing platform, where he built and led all the strategic partnerships on the publishers side.

Prior to AppLift, Daniel started his career as a consultant for Deloitte, focusing on tax restructuring for M&A and private equity deals.

Daniel studied entrepreneurship at the leading German business school HHL and holds a Master of Sciences from Reims Management School with a major in financial analysis and behavioral finance.

Dr. Steffen Wachenfeld

Managing Director & Co-Founder, New Venture

Steffen is a digital native and got his first appointment in the IT industry at the age of 14. Parallel to owning and running two IT-related businesses, he completed two Masters degrees in Business and Computer Science. Steffen holds a PhD in the field of Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition. After teaching and conducting research on Machine Learning and Data Analysis at different universities, he joined The Boston Consulting Group to work on Big Data and Digital Strategies with industry clients from different verticals including Pharma, Insurance, Banking, Telecom and Consumer Electronics. Steffen is Co-Founder and Managing Director a new HitFox Group Startup, currently in stealth mode.

Xavier Rezgui

Managing Director & Co-Founder, Game Finder

Xavier has been working in the fields of games and marketing for more than ten years before joining our team. He provides outstanding expertise in the fields of online games and advertising. In 2001, when he already had several years work experience with major companies like HP, he started and developed Atlanteam Video Games, a retail based business specialized in online videogames, which got funded by BNP Paribas Private Equity.

Later on, he also worked in Acquisition, Turnarounds and Business Development at Bertelsmann, the largest European Media group.

Xavier holds an MBA from INSEAD.

Dr. Hendrik Harren

Managing Director & COO, AppLift

Hendrik has founded 6 companies so far. He started his career as a renewable energy consultant managing teams in China and India, taught leadership at the Technical University Berlin and then moved on to become Managing Director of Rocket Internet, where he built the start-up incubator for Africa. Among the ventures he founded is Africa’s most successful e-commerce venture: Jumia Nigeria. Recently he headed fashion retail businesses (Zalora) in Jakarta and Bangkok.

Hendrik holds engineering and management master degrees of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. of the Technical University Berlin – all three with highest honors.

Daniel Nippes

Entrepreneur in Residence

Daniel has been a data enthusiast since he studied Business Engineering with majors in IT and Operations Research. He later implemented many of the algorithms he had learned working for Daimler Financial Services at top-tier consulting firm Bain & Company.

From this experience he learned about the disconnect between the Data Science and Engineering community and Business practitioners. With the goal of bridging this gap he joined HitFox Group at the end of 2013

Daniel also holds an MBA from Insead in Singapore and loves outdoor sports and the mountains.

Sebastian Sujka

CEO & Co-Founder, Datamonk

Before Hitfox’s acquisition of Datamonk, Sebastian gained entrepreneurial experience in as Co-Founder and Managing Director of the industry blog SocialGamesObserver, as one of the first team members at SponsorPay and as Co-Founder and Managing Director of whitewall, a health foods startup that was acquired by Schober Ventures, a Schober Holding International Company, in early 2014.

Prior to his startup life Sebastian worked for NATO and finished a Bachelor’s Degree in International Business with a Major in Finance at Maastricht University.

Outside his startup life Sebastian is passionate about travelling as well as playing, watching and extensively discussing football.

Gary Merrett

COO & Co-Founder, Datamonk

Gary gained expertise in online and mobile marketing while building his first company Whitewall, a health foods startup that was later sold to a global marketing corporation. Today he heads operations at Datamonk as the company´s COO with a strong focus on product development.

Besides his passion for entrepreneurship, Gary has a keen interest in ideas on politics, society and technology. He developed an interest in data science during a Summer School on Quantitative Methods at the University of Michigan.

He holds an MA in Economics from San Jose State University, California.

Hugo Gersanois

Co-Founder, apploop

Before starting apploop, Hugo gained experience in the mobile advertising space though a business development role at AppGratis. He previously worked as an Analyst in the Private Equity team of BNP Paribas New York focusing on Oil & Gas investments. He also gained exposure to Venture Capital through Analyst positions at Ventech and Gamma Capital Partners evaluating business models in the TMT space.

He graduated from EMLyon Business School with a Master in Finance and Strategy.

Stefan Benndorf

Managing Director & Co-Founder, apploop

Before starting apploop together with Hitfox Group, Stefan worked as CFO and COO in the Executive Team of the mobile advertising company madvertise, where he scaled the company internationally in Europe and Turkey. Prior to madvertise, Stefan worked multiple years for the top-tier strategy-consulting firm Solon where he advised leading Media and Telecommunication companies as well as Private Equity clients.

Stefan originally studied Business Administration at Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL) where he focused on Finance and Strategy. He also holds a double degree with distinction in Public Administration with a focus on Public Management from the London School of Economics (MPA) and the Hertie School of Governance (MPP), Berlin.

Thorsten Bleich

CTO & Co-Founder, Datamonk

Thorsten took his first steps in entrepreneurship by co-founding the health food startup company Whitewall, gaining experience in online marketing and analytics. Whitewall was acquired by Schober Ventures in 2013. Besides, he built Appstats, a Facebook app analytics suite. Today he is DataMonk's CTO, focussed on shedding light onto the jungle of data.

Apart from his passion for entrepeneurship he enjoys playing drums and checking out latest open-source technologies.

Thorsten studied Industrial Engineering at the Technical University of Hamburg and UC Berkeley.