My name is Jan. I grew up in Germany knowing I wanted to work on problems that mattered. I just hadn't figured out where, or how.
At 18, that became concrete. I chose Barcelona specifically for ESADE, one of Europe's top business schools, and for the city itself: international and entrepreneurial. I wanted an environment that would demand more of me. It delivered.
Two things grabbed me, and I've been following both ever since.
The first is technology. I took every programming elective ESADE offered, attended an AI summer school at Oxford, completed a data analytics programme with CBS Copenhagen, and stayed on for a Master's in Business Analytics. Python, SQL, R, and AWS became part of my weekly toolkit, not credentials on a page, but tools I actually use. Most evenings I'm building something: prototypes, apps, websites. I can't help it.
The second is what you do with it. I spent my university years doing pro-bono consulting through student organisations, leading teams of 15+, co-designing a financial literacy programme with an ESADE professor, and interning at Porsche back in Germany. But the education that stayed with me happened further afield. I consulted businesses in South Africa's townships outside Cape Town. I worked with local companies on the ground in Bolivia, did an exchange in Vancouver, and joined study tours in Seoul. Germany, Spain, the UK, Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Bolivia: seven countries across five continents before 25, each one teaching me something a classroom couldn't: that the right answer is almost never purely technical or purely strategic.
BetterNotes
An AI platform three of us built for students, turning raw notes and lecture slides into study materials, practice exams, and LaTeX documents. Winding down as the team moves on.
Students paste or upload any content and instantly receive organized summaries, flashcard-ready questions, and exam simulations. LaTeX output makes it especially useful for technical coursework. The product is being sunset in 2026.
better-notes.ai ↗
The Seed Podcast
A podcast about ventures I co-hosted for its second season, wrapping in June 2026. Conversations with founders and investors about fundraising, failure, and what it really takes to get from idea to something real.
Season 2 ran through June 2026 with Hassan Baraka. Not the polished success story, but the real decisions, pivots, and hard-won lessons that shaped each venture.
spotify ↗
AuraEat
A circadian nutrition concept built for Esade's Ideaup Start-Up Challenge, syncing your eating window to your biological clock via Apple HealthKit. Currently prepping for App Store release.
Reads sleep, HRV, and resting heart rate to compute your Aura Score, a daily readiness metric that determines the optimal eating window. Built with friends as a challenge project, no company behind it yet, but the plan is to get it live on the App Store.
Website Hosting
Over seven years hosting and building websites (mostly WordPress) for clients from Germany and Spain to a water company in South Africa, an NGO in Uganda, and a startup in Bolivia.
Each project brought its own constraints: different infrastructure, languages, connectivity, and expectations. Building for markets where reliability really matters has made me a more thoughtful developer.
@PacenosAlemanes
A Spanish-language YouTube channel documenting volunteer life, consulting work, and adventure in Bolivia: what we built, what surprised us, and what it's really like to work there.
In 2024, I traveled to Bolivia as part of a consulting project and filmed the whole experience. The channel captures the work with local businesses, the culture, and the challenges of navigating it all as an outsider.
youtube ↗
Zwei Jungs, ein Podcast
My first real project, a German-language podcast born out of COVID-era curiosity. What started as casual conversations about side jobs grew into interviews with parliament members, comedians, and TV presenters.
A friend and I were finishing school with no idea what came next, so we just started asking people. First friends about their mini jobs, then increasingly well-known guests. Proof that "let's just try it" is usually reason enough to start.
spotify ↗
