Serial entrepreneur.
AI search builder.
Ironman finisher.

The classic startup origin story involves a garage. Mine involves a private library in Vienna in 1999 — the early days of the web, MySQL databases, and the genuine belief that the internet was going to change everything. (We were right, just a bit early on the timeline.)

I was born in Vienna in 1975, studied business at WU Wien, and co-founded my first company before the dot-com bubble had fully inflated. What I didn't know then — what took years of building, selling, failing, and rebuilding to understand — is that the most important skill in entrepreneurship isn't vision. It's persistence.

That conviction has shaped everything I've built since. Including completing an Ironman at the age of 40. But that's a different story — read it here.

Every company I've built has taught me something different. Gentics taught me how to build and scale a team from scratch. Wikidocs taught me that timing matters — sometimes the right product exists, the market just isn't ready yet. has.to.be showed me what it feels like to be part of something that becomes Austria's largest software exit. Usersnap taught me the power of relentless customer feedback. And OtterlyAI is teaching me how to build a category.

One thing worth mentioning about Wikidocs: yes, it got acquired by Atlassian in 2014. No, it didn't become a blockbuster product within Atlassian. The technology was sound; the timing and positioning were still being figured out. I've learned more from that experience than from any of the clean exits. Failure that ends in an acquisition is still a fascinating kind of failure.

OtterlyAI came out of a simple problem: in 2024, Thomas Peham, Josef Trauner and I realised we had no idea how our brands were showing up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews — and neither did anyone else. The tools simply didn't exist.

We built the first version for ourselves. Then 1,000 marketers signed up in the first two months. Then TechCrunch wrote about us. Then Gartner named us a Cool Vendor. Then G2 gave us Rookie of the Year for 2026 — the only AEO/GEO tool in G2's Top 10 Best New Software list, in a category that grew 2,000% in one year.

Today OtterlyAI helps 25,000+ marketing professionals monitor and optimize their brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. The partnership with Semrush brought enterprise distribution. The Recommendations feature, launched in early 2026, closes the gap between "I see the problem" and "here's how to fix it."

I'm still building. Still learning. And still genuinely convinced that AI search is the most important structural shift in marketing since Google launched AdWords.

Persistence beats talent. This is the thing I'm most certain about after 25 years. Most businesses don't fail because the founder wasn't smart enough. They fail because the founder stopped before the compounding started. Ironman taught me this too — 226km isn't completed by the fastest athlete, it's completed by the one who doesn't stop.

Customer feedback is the most underused asset in B2B SaaS. I built Usersnap because I believed this, and I still believe it. The companies that win are the ones closest to their customers' actual frustrations — not the ones with the best feature roadmap or the most sophisticated GTM theory.

Small, focused teams move faster than large ones. Every company I've built has been leaner than the market expected. Wikidocs was acquired by Atlassian with a tiny team. OtterlyAI hit 25K users bootstrapped. Size is a liability as often as it's an asset.

The best marketing is a product people talk about. I've run growth campaigns, paid acquisition, content marketing, PLG strategies, community plays. The one thing that outperforms all of them is shipping something genuinely useful and letting customers do the talking.

I don't believe in work-life balance as a static state. Life is imbalanced by nature — accepting that has helped me more than trying to perfectly distribute time across every category. What I do believe in is showing up fully in whatever I'm doing: fully present in a meeting, fully present on a bike at 5am, fully present at the dinner table.

On Sundays I still journal on paper. Same questions every week — about self, social life, and work. It's the most useful tool I've found for early problem detection. Brutally honest reflection, once a week, at a fixed cadence. I started doing it during one of the hardest periods of my life. I've never stopped.

Climate change is the one topic I feel strongly enough about to spend time on outside of work. I support CLAW — Climate Law Austria and other initiatives building legal and policy frameworks for a liveable future. I'm part of the problem, like most of us. That makes it more important to be part of the solution.

I also wrote a bestselling book once, about diving. With my friend Leo. We held an underwater press conference to launch it and accidentally set a Guinness World Record. That story has nothing to do with AI search — but it does prove that persistence and creativity work anywhere.

If you want to talk about AI search, GEO, SaaS growth, building and selling companies, investing in AI micro SaaS, or anything else worth discussing — find me on LinkedIn where I post 3-4 times a week, or reach the investment side of my work at gro.wtf.

For OtterlyAI partnerships, enterprise inquiries, or press: otterly.ai.