Career
According to his own autobiography, Thelen founds his first company, Solter Solutions Media, in 1994. The company developed a platform for the production of multimedia CD-ROMs and merged with another company in 1996, resulting in Twisd AG, for which Thelen receives 1.4 million DM in venture capital in 1997. The company developed and sold a Linux-based router that connected local networks to the Internet and enabled management via a web application.[5] In 1999, the company prepared for an IPO, but then had to file for bankruptcy in the wake of the bursting of the dot-com bubble.[6][7]
Thelen is also a co-founder of companies such as ip.labs and doo. ip.labs GmbH, founded in 2004, was an online photo service. The company got acquired by the Fujifilm Group in 2008. The estimated price of the acquisition was between 13 and 19 million euros.[8] Doo GmbH, which he founds in 2011 after leaving ip.labs, developed a central document management app.[9] Initially, venture investors Lars Hinrichs and DuMont Venture, among others, invested over ten million US dollars in the company.[10][11] After the original approach of the app failed, the doo app became the scanner app Scanbot in 2014, and the company was renamed accordingly.[12] Scanbot started focusing more on selling their software to companies, and decided to sell their Scanbot app to the American company Maple Media in 2020, and the company then being renamed Scanbot SDK.[13][14] In July 2025, Scanbot SDK announced its acquisition by the American technology company Apryse.[15]
As of 2014, he is the CEO of venture capital firm e42,[16][17] now Freigeist Capital,[18] which has invested in startups such as Wunderlist,[19][20] MyTaxi,[21] KaufDa, pitch,[22] Lilium, Hardt Hyperloop and Endurosat.
Thelen consults the Microsoft Ventures accelerator in Berlin,[23][24] and he also supports startups in German politics.[25] Together with the German State Minister for Digitization, Dorothee Bär, he is a leading member of the German Innovation Council.[26]
In 2012, Thelen spoke at the Founders Conference in New York and was given the "Innovate 4 Society Award" by Microsoft handed out by German Chancellor Angela Merkel that same year for his startup "doo".[27][28]
Thelen is an advocate of some form of universal basic income (UBI).[29] He supports startups in German politics.[30] Europe is in danger of falling behind in economic competition with the U.S. and China, he said, and to change that, Europe needs to show more commitment and unity.[31]
In 2014, he joined the German version of the TV show Dragons' Den (Shark Tank), called Die Höhle der Löwen, as investor.[32] He is also a regular guest in German talk show Hart aber fair.[33]
In 2018, his autobiography Startup-DNA – Hinfallen, aufstehen, die Welt verändern was published[34] and has been a bestseller for several weeks.[35] He is convinced that "The next decade will be the biggest challenge in humankind's history".[36] The same year, he became the first investor of Xentral.[37]
