Alexander Straub (born June 14, 1972) is an Internet and Telecom entrepreneur and investor.

Biography

Alexander Straub is a German-born entrepreneur, the head of the London firm Straub Ventures, and Cambridge Accelerator Partners. He was a

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. He holds degrees from

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

(Dipl. Ing) and the other from

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

(MEng). He also attended Stanford University. He also attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar for Germany as a PhD Student. In 1999, Straub and business partner Rouzbeh Pirouz won a ''

Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' entrepreneurship contest. With the prize money and additional funding of around £7.6m they launched Mondus, an online B2B marketplace for

SMEs Superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) systems store energy in the magnetic field created by the flow of direct current in a Superconductivity, superconducting coil which has been Cryogenics, cryogenically cooled to a temperature below ...

. By April 2000 the business was valued at £760 million (Financial Times Article). Later that year, in August, a 40.7% stake was sold to the Italian firm Seat Pagine Gialle for £100m in cash and shares. Soon after the transaction Straub was appointed as Vice Chairman. He moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to establish Lazard Technology Partners II, a $300 million venture fund, while Pirouz stayed on with Mondus. The duo later bought back Mondus . In 2006 he co-founded mobile

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of speech, voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms In ...

specialist

Truphone Truphone is a GSMA accredited global mobile network that operates its service internationally. The company is headquartered in London and has offices in ten other countries, being spread across four continents. Truphone offers e SIM-based GSM m ...

with James Tagg. Straub was named Technology Pioneer at the World Economic Forum in 2007 and 2008 for his work with Truphone. In 2007, Straub co-founded Pixsta, a visual search company that later merged into Empora Group. Today, he remains CEO and Chairman of Empora Group, which operates the social sharing network Fashionfreax and Avenue7. He acquired fashionfreax in 2010."Empora acquired fashionfreax"
/ref> In early 2017 Straub launched SnapMe, an App-based e-commerce company, based on e-commerce enabled via computer vision, machine learning and A.I. in preparation for an augmented reality and VR enabled world.

Personal life

Straub lives in London with his wife Tilla Lindig, founder of Luxury Family Affair, and three children.

References

External links

Straub Ventures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Straub, Alexander 1972 births Living people German expatriates in the United Kingdom Cornell University alumni Businesspeople from Bavaria German Rhodes Scholars