What makes a diverse founding team successful? How do co-founders with vastly different backgrounds and areas of expertise collaborate effectively to build a great business?

Juan and Alan are experienced CTOs and founders respectively who have faced these questions multiple times throughout their careers in various settings, including when building the now publicly listed e-commerce shop WestwingNow together as a team. In a panel discussion, moderated by Johann Romefort, they will explore the key challenges and share best practices from their experience.

Juan is currently the CTO at EQS Group, a publicly listed Munich based RegTech provider operating in the fields of Corporate Compliance and Investor Relations. Juan threw his first line of code at age 10 and started his career in Barcelona as a Software Engineer. Although you can still find him coding every now and then, he has spent most of the last 10 years making engineering teams successful in every way. He served in senior management roles in big E-commerce players such as Smartbox and Westwing as well as other companies in the IoT and Fintech areas.

Alan, Partner at the early stage VC Antler, brings extensive experience in building and scaling technology businesses. He was previously MD and Co-Founder at Westwing, a home & living e-commerce company, and one of Europe’s few e-commerce IPOs of the past years.

Before Westwing, he built the software development hub at Rocket Internet, and was CEO of a SEA e-commerce company, along with working for a VC and starting his own company in Spain.

Antler (antler.co) is one of the largest global very early-stage venture capital firms. With offices across six continents and most major startup ecosystems, Antler is enabling founders and investing in the top 1% of more than 50,000 entrepreneurs and ideas evaluated every year. Antler allows technical founders to commercialize their vision by creating the opportunity to find a cofounder with a complementary skill set - 50% of all founders Antler invests in have deep technical and data experience.