Denis Bartelt

Denis Bartelt, co-founder of Startnext, a crowdfunding platform that allows artists, creative people and inventors to fund their projects through contributions of many user. Launched in early 2010, Startnext is the biggest platform for creative projects in German-speaking countries which also established subplatforms like nordstarter.org for the city of Hamburg. The aim of Startnext is to further develop the crowdfunding model with new features like the community based crowdfonds, the starting phase and crowdfunding vouchers. Denis Bartelt is one of the initiators of the co:funding (www.cofunding.de) conferences and workshops, which follows the german claim: "Kreativität gemeinsam finanzieren". His motivation to build up a crowdfunding community in Germany goes back to his own profession as an advertising photographer and the financial challenges that come along.

In 2003 Denis Bartelt founded tyclipso.net as an internet software development agency. tyclipso.net is responsible for the infrastructure of community platforms like Startnext. The team of 20 employees also developped a complex software framework over the years which combines functionalities such as web-to-print, e-commerce, social media monitoring as well as communication and moreover content contribution to mobile devices. It all gives a strong base to his crowdfunding activities.