Cornelius Boersch (born April 11, 1968 in

Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German States of Germany, state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germa ...

) is a German

serial entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

, technology investor,

business angel An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

, and author. He is the founder of the investment companie
Mountain Partners AG
an
Conny & Co
Boersch is considered as one of the most active and well-known investors in the (European) technology and start-up scene and is the initiator of the annua
Entrepreneurs Day
at

Tegernsee Tegernsee is a town in the Miesbach district of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the shore of Lake Tegernsee, which is 747 m (2,451 ft) above sea level. A spa town, it is surrounded by an alpine landscape of Upper Bavaria, and has an e ...

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

, which takes place annually since 2007. His best-known investments are Alando.de (predecessor of

Ebay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

Germany), Lieferando, th
Scout Group
(Autoscout, Immoscout)
wefox
Kavak, an
reBuy

Education and academic career

Boersch studied business administration at the European Business School in

Oestrich-Winkel Oestrich-Winkel () is a town with roughly 12,000 inhabitants in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in the ''Regierungsbezirk'' of Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. Geography Location Oestrich-Winkel, which culturally belongs to the Rheingau region, lies ...

, Paris Business School and the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University of Co ...

from 1989 to 1994. In 1998, Boersch completed his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

on "Mutual savings banks and Venture Capital" at the

University of Essen The University of Duisburg-Essen (german: link=no, Universität Duisburg-Essen) is a public research university in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In the 2019 ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'', the university was awarded ...

. He later also served as an

honorary professor Honorary titles (professor, reader, lecturer) in academia may be conferred on persons in recognition of contributions by a non-employee or by an employee beyond regular duties. This practice primarily exists in the UK and Germany, as well as in m ...

there.

Investment career

Cornelius Boersch is working as an entrepreneur in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

since 1991. He already founded his first company "Sabeco GmbH" during his studies, which was the beginning of the German electronic health card, and from which the smart card broker and

RFID Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromag ...

manufacturer ACG AG developed in 1995. ACG AG was originally listed on the stock exchange segment Neuer Markt in Germany (NEMAX 50) in 1999Dr. Cornelius Boersch
at Mountain Partners Group, retrieved 15 February 2011 with a valuation of more than EUR 1 billion. Boersch sold his shares in the company in March 2000 and since 2003, the former ACG AG belonged to the Assa Abloy Group, which became insolvent in 2008. After Boersch withdrew from the operational business of ACG AG, he worked as an

investment manager Investment management is the professional asset management of various securities, including shareholdings, bonds, and other assets, such as real estate, to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors. Investors may be institutio ...

in the field of

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

and subsequently initiated the development of other RFID-based companies such as

Smartrac Smartrac N.V. is a Dutch manufacturer of high security RFID inlays. It is the world's largest supplier of inlays for ePassports. Since 2006 its shares are listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The JPMorgan-owned private equity firm One Equity ...

(

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

2006) and Identiv (

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

since 2006). Boersch’s focus lies mainly in investing in young Internet companies. As an active

, he has invested in more than 350 companies since 1995. He was able to sell more than 50 companies during this time, of which 14 went public. In 2009, Boersch was elected "European Business Angel of the Year". Additionally, he is part of the European Angels Fund initiative of the

European Investment Fund The European Investment Fund (EIF), established in 1994, is a financial institution for the provision of finance to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), headquartered in Luxembourg. It is part of the European Investment Bank Group. It ...

(EIF), a EUR 800 million program that mirrors investments of selected business angels on a pari-passu basis. In 2004, he founde
Mountain Partners AG
together with Daniel S. Wenzel, which is an investment company focusing on investments in technology startups and venture capital companies. Mountain Partners AG is mainly active in growth regions such as

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

South-East Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...

, but still invests in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

as well. In Latin America, Mountain Partners is one of the market-leading funds through Nazca. However, the investment company hardly invests directly in

startups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses t ...

these days. Instead, it acts as a global multi-fund manager in the sense of a house of funds, through which it is currently invested in more than 120 companies. In 2007, Boersch initiated for the first time th
Entrepreneurs Day
at

, which is now held annually. The aim is to give

entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...

s a networking platform to exchange ideas in an informal atmosphere. The 2-day program includes annual key-notes on current topics, presentations of start-ups and investment opportunities as well as a social program. Meanwhile, the event is considered one of the most popular ones in the

and

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

scene. Beginning of 2019, Boersch founded another venture capital company, namely "Conny & Co". This company has no particular industry focus but again concentrates geographically on growth markets. The current portfolio includes recent highlights such as Flash Coffee, Albo, and Luuna.

Politics

Politically, Boersch worked as an advisor to Dr.

Guido Westerwelle Guido Westerwelle (; 27 December 1961 – 18 March 2016) was a German politician who served as Foreign Minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice-Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011, being the first openly gay person ...

, the former German

foreign minister A foreign affairs minister or minister of foreign affairs (less commonly minister for foreign affairs) is generally a cabinet minister in charge of a state's foreign policy and relations. The formal title of the top official varies between cou ...

, for 12 years. He organized his

election campaigns A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making progress within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen or referend ...

and in 2009 was the founder of the first digital election campaign in Germany. In the course of this, he also accompanied Guido Westerwelle on trips abroad (

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

and the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

) and donated around EUR 160,000 to the FDP.

Authorship

Boersch published four German books between 2006 and 2009, each co-authored with renowned personalities from politics and business. All of these are united in the book title by the word Summa Summarum, and the first three works deal in particular with topics from the everyday life of a manager. His fourth book in this series "Das Summa Summarum der Politik und Wirtschaft" ''("The Summa Summarum of Politics and Business")'', which he co-authored with

, was published in 2009. His latest book, "Zukunft verpasst_?" ''(“Future missed”)'' , was published in 2020 together with Dr. Thomas Middelhoff. In this, the both authors discuss the state of digitalisation in Germany and the impact of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

on it.

Publications

Boersch wrote all of his books in German and therefore, the list includes the original titles in German language. * Cornelius Boersch & Friedrich Diest (2006)
Das Summa Summarum des Erfolgs. Die 25 wichtigsten Werke für Motivation, Effektivität und persönlichen Erfolg.
ISBN 978-3-8349-9251-2 * Cornelius Boersch & Rainer Elschen (2007)
Das Summa Summarum des Management. Die 25 wichtigsten Werke für Strategie, Führung und Veränderung.
ISBN 978-3-8349-9320-5 * Cornelius Boersch, Christian Holubarsch, Helmut Soikker, Hans-Reinhard Zerkowski (2008)
Das Summa Summarum der Gesundheit. 20 wichtige Aspekte zu Gesundheit und Wohlbefinden für Manager und Führungskräfte.
ISBN 978-3-8349-9683-1 * Cornelius Boersch & Guido Westerwelle (2009)
Das Summa Summarum von Politik und Wirtschaft. Ein Überblick über die wichtigsten wirtschaftlich-politischen Auseinandersetzungen der Gegenwart.
ISBN 978-3-8349-1473-6 * Cornelius Boersch &

Thomas Middelhoff Thomas Middelhoff (born 11 May 1953) is a German retired corporate manager. He was on the board of directors of Bertelsmann from 1990–2002, being CEO from 1998. From 2004 to March 2009, Middelhoff was chairman of the supervisory board of Arcand ...

(2020)
Zukunft verpasst?_. Warum Deutschland die Digitalisierung verschlafen hat. Und wie uns die Krise hilft, den Anschluss doch noch zu schaffen.
ISBN 978-3-86334-284-5

Honors and awards

* 2000 "Deutscher Unternehmerpreis", awarded by Harvard Clubs of Germany.O. Numrich
Cornelius Boersch als bester Business Angel Europas ausgezeichnet
, News, Business Angels Club Berlin Brandenburg e.V., 27 April 2009 * 2000 "Entrepreneur of the Year", awarded by Ernst & Young Consulting GmbH for the business concept of ACG AG. * 2009 "Business Angel of the Year," awarded by the European Trade Association for Business Angels and Early Stage Investors (EBAN).Claus G. Schmalholz
"Business-Angel Boersch: 'Da wird massenhaft geblufft'"
''Manager Magazin'' 1 July 2009

Footnotes

External links

at Mountain Partners Group {{DEFAULTSORT:Boersch, Cornelius 1968 births Living people Businesspeople from Hanover