Hi, I'm Lara.
I am a builder and operator with a background in startups and venture capital. I design and ship products, using AI where it actually helps. I turn messy systems into operating backbones, run unconventional growth experiments, and care about products that people keep using because they quietly make their lives better.
What I am doing now
Building AI products
I design and ship applied AI tools, agents, internal systems, and workflow automation. My focus is on invisible interfaces, products that work where you already are instead of asking you to change behavior. I prototype fast and ship regularly.
Supporting founders
As an Associate at Tungsten, I help early-stage founders raise from the right investors. I work on narrative, materials, investor mapping, and warm intros. Building informs my advice, and working with founders inspires what I build next.
My Operating System
The principles that guide how I work.
Ship fast. A working prototype reveals more than any plan.
Own the problem. I work across product, design, engineering, and operations to build solutions people actually rely on.
Build with people. Momentum and insight compound in real networks, not in isolation.
Reduce friction. The best products create real value, then disappear into habit and workflow.
The Trajectory
My near-term focus is on building and shipping. I am still exploring which problems are worth a much longer commitment, and each project is a way to learn faster. Long term, my goal is to build a company that stands for usefulness and taste, built on everything I have learned in startups and venture. The operating, advising, and writing I do today are all in service of that mission, because I believe the most impactful leaders are practitioners first.
Background
A few stops on the path that shaped how I build today.
Early Experiments. I grew up in a small village in Germany and treated it like my first lab. I built tree houses, took laptops apart to see how they worked, made PowerPoint pitches to negotiate a higher allowance, taught myself to sew, and convinced my mum to help me start the town’s first cheerleading club because there was no place to join. If something was missing and I cared enough, I built it.
Foundation. I studied Management and Technology at TUM, combining computer science and finance to understand how systems work and how decisions get made. Semesters in Shanghai and Istanbul taught me to adapt fast and sharpened my curiosity for how different ecosystems operate. My theses on investor biases and digital tipping still influence how I think about incentives, nudges, and product behavior.
Operator. Inside startups, I learned what execution looks like. At Usercentrics, I took ownership of the CRM migration, rebuilt the data model, and shipped dashboards that still run company reporting today. At Moss, I designed GTM for the Midcap segment and ran unconventional outreach pilots, like sending roses to CFOs on Valentine’s Day instead of another cold email.
Investor. At b2venture in Berlin, I supported follow-ons in DeepL and SumUp, helped set up a new fund vehicle, and learned to ramp fast into new technical domains. At 212 VC in Istanbul I ran first founder calls across Türkiye, CEE, and MENA and learned to evaluate teams, products, and markets far outside my home context. That experience now shapes how I build, not just how I evaluate ideas.
Builder. To sharpen how I build with modern tools, I completed an AI Engineering certification focused on agents, evaluation, and safe deployment. This combines my operator background and investor lens with a practical understanding of the modern AI stack. It's the backbone for the applied AI products and tools I work on today.
Toolkit
A selection of the tools and domains I work with.
AI and prototyping
Systems and data
Product and behavior
Execution
Communities
five.degrees. Active in a curated circle of European builders and founders, contributing to strategy and community initiatives.
TU Investment Club. Recruited and trained analysts and ran club events. This is where I built my foundation in finance and investing before focusing on tech.
START Berlin. Helped revive the Berlin chapter post-COVID, organising the first get-togethers and early meetings before it took off again.