Experienced Management Team

Ragnar Kruse

CEO & Co-Founder
As a serial entrepreneur with 30+ years experience in IT, Ragnar Kruse understands the unique challenges in bringing new technologies to market. He has built up several companies from inception to market launch in both the US and Europe.

At Intershop Communications, a leader in E-Commerce software solutions, Ragnar was VP of Sales and Marketing in San Francisco. During his tenure, Ragnar was instrumental in the company’s growth and ushering it through a successful IPO on NASDAQ and the “Neuer Markt” in 1998. More recently, Ragnar held key management positions at high-tech companies in the U.S. and Europe including eCharge and Xtramind. Through his many years in IT, Ragnar maintains strong relationships with companies in the telecommunications and mobile sectors, including Deutsche Telekom, Telekom New Zealand, Telstra, Telia, Cable & Wireless, Siemens, T-Online, T-Mobile, France Telecom, HP and SUN.

Ragnar started his career as an entrepreneur. In 1980, he founded IPT GmbH, a computer retail business that imported products into Germany from the USA and Taiwan. In 1987 he expanded his business by starting DTP Partner GmbH, a distribution company in Hamburg. DTP Partner was the exclusive distributor of several desktop publishing solutions such as Corel and was instrumental in establishing international distribution agreements with American and Taiwanese companies. Ragnar studied law at the universities of Hamburg and Munich, Germany.

Petra Vorsteher

EVP Strategic Alliances & Co-Founder
Petra has over 18 years of business development experience in the US and Europe. She was VP of Business Development and Strategic Alliances at Intershop Communications, Inc. with responsibility for all strategic, business and technical partnerships globally.

As founding member of Intershop, Petra was instrumental in growing the company from a start-up to a publicly listed company with a market cap of $12B and worldwide offices in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. She was largely responsible for Intershop’s $25M licensing deal with Deutsche Telekom and their subsequent investment in the company. Petra has formed partnerships with IBM, HP, Apple, Intel, SAP, Oracle, Procter & Gamble, eBay, Visa, FedEx, UPS and major telecommunication companies including AT & T, Sprint, Telstra, Hong Kong Telecom, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom. Prior to Intershop she did market entry strategies for companies wanting to establish a presence in the US or Europe. She is a board member of Hamburg@work responsible for International alliances.

Petra was named Mobile Women to Watch 2010 by Mobile Marketer and Top Female Executive 2010 by Mobile Entertainment.

Harald Neidhardt

Co-Founder
Harald has over 20 years of experience in marketing and business development, having led interactive agencies and marketing consulting firms in both the US and Europe. He was the CEO of Pixelpark (US), a former Bertelsmann company based in New York and headquartered in Berlin. As VP International he set up offices and new business initiatives in New York, Paris and London in preparation for Pixelpark’s IPO in 1999.

More recently, Harald managed a successful viral marketing company, Cardmine in New York. Cardmine serves clients in the luxury beauty market including Estee Lauder and Procter & Gamble. In his career, Harald has served clients such as France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, EMI, Lufthansa, Bertelsmann, BMG, Unilever and MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Harald has a BA in Marketing Communications from Communications Academy, Hamburg.

Marc Junker

CIO & CTO
Marc Junker has over 10 years experience in IT and mobile business. Before joining Smaato, he was Co-Founder and CTO of mobileview, one of Europe’s leading Wireless Application Service Provider (WASP) for mobile entertainment, infotainment and data services. For seven years Marc has successfully led the company, with 35 employees to being profitable after only three years and having a turnover of 27 million Euros. In his position Marc also established client relationships to leading international carriers and companies like Lufthansa, Talkline and T-Mobile in 17 countries and mobileview has worked with over 50 MVNOs globally.

Before Marc co-founded mobileview, he was Vice-President Development for OBS-AG and worked as an IT consultant for Geo++, Germany. Marc Junker has studied Mathematics, IT and Business Studies at the University of Hanover.

Joerg Anhalt

SVP Mobile Publisher Development & Monetization
Joerg brings over 20 years of IT sales experience to Smaato’s executive team. In his role as VP Sales he is responsible to grow worldwide sales efforts with carriers, mobile developers and ad sales networks. At Intershop Communications, he was VP Business Development being responsible for growing the European and Asian markets.

Jörg’s list of client relationships include the who’s who of telecommunications (T-COM, T-Systems, T-Online, KPN, Telecom Italia, Swisscom, Easynet, Freenet and Strato), mail order houses (otto group, Karstadt Quelle, Tchibo), media companies (Bertelsmann, Axel Springer Verlag, Gruner+Jahr) and consumer brands (Hewlett Packard, Sony). Jörg’s broad professional experience covers the fields of electronic commerce, electronic communication, 1 to 1 marketing, database publishing combined with a strong high level sales background.

Oliver Reiss

CFO
Oliver has over fifteen years of experience in building internet and telecommunications businesses. Most recently, he was co-founder and CFO of the mobile platform service provider Exit Games based in Germany and the USA. Oliver was instrumental in securing funding from some high profile venture capital firms over the course of several years.

His background involves senior positions with a leading European online agency and a renowned management consulting firm, where he was involved in a large number of client projects for European telecommunications and media clients, focusing on corporate development and finance projects. More recently, he founded and headed a consulting venture in the software business. Oliver received a MBA degree and Ph.D. from the Philipps-University in Marburg.

Axel Hoehnke

VP Strategy & Business Development
Axel Hoehnke is a graduated economist and marketeer with many years international market know-how in Digital Advertising Technology and the Mobile Industry. His expertise is the development and execution of Go To Market Strategies for Technology companies, having facilitated the European Go to market of technology leaders like DigitalEnvoy (the de facto standard in IP Intelligence), atlas solutions, (also known as Microsoft Publisher Suite) and ImproveDigital/pubmatic the Yield Management and Real Time Bidding specialists.

Having been a trusted advisor, supplier, partner and customer at various Companies in the Digital Media EcoSystem Axel has a precise understanding of the needs and imperatives for interactive services and is able to position products and value propositions at all levels.

Axel is the Co Founder and Chapter Rep of Mobile Monday Hamburg. In 2011 MoMo is the largest mobile community worldwide and connects innovators and influencer’s in more than 60 countries fostering cooperation and cross-border business.

Axel has started his career in Marketing & Sales Management positions a global brand leader Mars and European Media giants Bertelsmann and Thomson Multimedia. He holds a Marketing and Technology Management Diploma from the CAU Kiel University.

Marcus Tan

Managing Director APAC
Marcus spent his last 20 years in business technology and media leadership roles with companies such as Velti, Nokia, Travelocity, Lycos and Media Corporation of Singapore where he managed business development, sales and marketing activities across Asia Pacific region.

Marcus started his career with United Parcel Service, moved into the traditional broadcast media business soon after. During the years, he had successful developed and built global and regional media sales and marketing teams with successful sales strategies that generated “win-win” partnerships and campaigns across traditional, online and mobile media platforms.

He traveled extensively and had live and worked in many parts of Asia and is well endowed with a good understanding of the diversified business cultures in the region. His “can do” and hardworking attitude won him numerous positive results. Together with his “never say die” and hands-on leadership skills, he had successfully built strong and effective sales and business development teams. Marcus completed his Masters in Business Administration at Victoria University in Australia.

Peter Baldwin

General Manager, Americas
Peter has a distinguished track record as a mobile pioneer with over 25 years of experience in Mobile Technology start ups. Prior to Smaato, Peter has been helping out start up mobile companies with their go-to-market, corporate development and product strategies. Amobee was the last company that Peter helped as Interim Head of Products and Strategy.

Peter’s last full-time role was CEO and Founder of MSX which was acquired by Cellmania in January 2008 and then became VP Strategic Business Development at Cellmania (acquired by RIM), a leading mobile content platform provider.

Before founding MSX, Peter was the executive vice president of operations at Insignia Solutions (INSG), responsible for repositioning the company as the leading mobile technology vendor, starting the end to end system provisioning business and divesting the Java Virtual machine product line.

Peter came to Silcon Valley when his company, DIP, was acquired by Phoenix Technologies (PTEC). While at Phoenix, Peter was the vice president responsible for growing the emerging businesses, including the Phoenix Information Appliance Division. From 1986 to 1994, Peter was founder and director of Distributed Information Processing Limited (DIP) who designed revolutionary software for the world’s first Pocket PCs, licensed to Atari and Sharp.Prior to DIP, Peter was one of the first employees of Psion Limited, Europe’s leading hand-held manufacturer which spun out Symbian. Peter holds a Degree in Engineering Mathematics at Bristol University.