"Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne" German poet Hermann Hesse once said. And it was certainly magic, when we decided to found The Otherland Group in August of 2008 - when the hype cycle around virtual worlds was approaching the trough of disillusionment.
But can (or should) that stop three promising entrepreneurs? Certainly not!
Markus (born 1960) is the CEO of Otherland and a seasoned entrepreneur since 1985. The Otherland Group is actually his fourth company. He founded one of Germany’s first Multimedia agencies in 1992, which later became part of Elephant Seven AG (now part of Pixelpark AG). There he served as CTO and member of the board. After a 2 year sabbatical he went back to his old company as chief consultant, coordinating the consulting activities at Elephant Seven before starting this new venture.
Markus discovered virtual worlds (in the Form of Second Life) in January 2005. Since then he was active as avatar Pham Neutra. These days, you can find him under the very same name in many other virtual world. Since Autumn of 2005 he leads one of Second Life's largest real estate companies with another alter ego calles Dana Bergson.
Markus got together with Sebastian Küpers for the overall concept of the first big German Second Life project for BILD.T-Online in November 2006.
Markus is not only a seasoned practitioner in the field of Virtual Worlds but also one of the best known experts on this field in the German marketing industry. He was the main author of the much-cited white paper „Business in virtual Worlds“ and is a regular contributor to trade conferences and seminars on the topic.
Thomas (born 1968) is Head of Project Management at Otherland and an experienced project manager both in the field of software development and projects for marketing and communication. Thomas is working in the Internet sector since 1995. In 2001 he joined Elephant Seven and lead a broad variety of ebusiness projects for German blue chip companies as project manager and senior consultant. Mainly his projects where about consulting and selling complex financial and logistic consumer services with a clear focus on a measurable Return on Investment.
At Elephant Seven West he served as Head of Project Management and was responsible for establishing agile project management and user centered design methodologies. Therefore Thomas not only is a senior project manager but a proficient user experience expert. A profound knowledge of web analytics completes his profile.
Thomas discovered virtual worlds in 2005 and is a regular user since 2006.
Sebastian Küpers (Pixelsebi) is another German pioneer of the Web3D. He founded Otherland together with Markus and Thomas in the summer of 2007. He had to leave the company for health reasons on early 2008, though.
