Gerald Heydenreich

Gerald has been an entrepreneur since 1999. At the age of 25 he founded PORTUM AG, the first European provider of b2b reverse online auctions and sourcing events with a trading volume of more than €10 billion which was sold to IBX / Cap Gemini in 2006. He then co-founded BuyVIP, an eCommerce shopping community and sold it to Amazon in 2010 with more than 8 million members, 320 employees and a turnover of more than 140 million USD. In 2012, he founded Pippa&Jean, a social selling community that has helped more than 5,000 women to become self-employed and paid more than €10 million in commissions before being sold in 2018. In 2019, he founded youtiful, the world's first climate-neutral beauty involvement brand and cang.eco a subscription service for healthy and sustainable FMCG products which eventually had to shut down. Since then he has been focusing on Blockchain & Web 3.0 Investments and created with Shant Kevonian the Barcelona Blockchain Network, a tech incubator, venture studio and seed investor focused on web 3.0 from which they jointly founded EtherMail, the first web 3.0 email provider allowing wallet-to-wallet communication. Since 2006, Gerald has also been an active investor in start-up companies through Omnis Mundi and Firestartr, a network of entrepreneurs that he founded together with Alain Falys. He is a member of the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) and strongly believes in entrepreneurship as a way of life and, above all, as a means to make the world a better place.