Lars Hinrichs

Lars Hinrichs is the founder of HackFwd and a serial entrepreneur and investor. One of his first efforts, politik-digital.de, was an award-winning platform for politics and new media he launched at 22. Following that early success, his next venture, a respected new media consulting firm, went bust -- but not without first paying rich dividends in learning.

Lars applied those learnings to his third major effort, XING, a highly successful business networking platform. As Founder and CEO, Lars oversaw its 2006 IPO, making XING the world’s first Web 2.0 company to go public. He then successfully steered it for two years post IPO. His most recent startup, HackFwd, is an innovative pre-seed investment company that supports Europe’s most passionate geeks in launching the world’s most exciting tech startups.

When he’s not working to promote European tech innovation, Lars can be found advising on the Global Leaders of World Economic Forum, the Young Global Leaders, and helping Germany with their digital strategy as part of the UNICEF council.