Iskender Dirik

Iskender Dirik is a German serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and tech expert with 20 years of experience in the digital world.

Since October 2019 he is Managing Director / General Manager Samsung NEXT Europe.

Last Iskender Dirik was employed as MD/CEO at Microsoft ScaleUp in Berlin. Microsoft ScaleUp is the most exclusive startup program within Microsoft worldwide. At Microsoft ScaleUp, Iskender was focused on AI and deep tech startups from continental Europe. Microsoft ScaleUp is an innovative and award-winning concept and the leading corporate accelerator worldwide. Iskender is also Venture Partner for EQT Ventures, one of the largest Venture Capital funds in Europe.

Before that, Iskender led a 100 Million Euro Corporate Venture Capital Fund at Bauer Venture Partners. Bauer Venture Partners was the Corporate VC Arm of Bauer Media, Europe’s leading magazine publishing and radio broadcasting house.

Prior to that, Iskender was for six years MD/CEO of COPE, a tech consulting and software development boutique that was acquired by C3 Creative Code and Content, a leading European content marketing agency. Iskender consulted clients like Axel Springer, Bertelsmann, Otto, Deutsche Telekom, Porsche and Volkswagen in digital strategy, technology and software development.

He founded his first company at the age of 21 and built and exited a couple of tech startups afterwards.

He is member of the German AI Association and spokesman for the cooperation of AI startups with the established industry. He is also founder of alphalist, a network of the most important influencers of the tech scene.

Iskender is a proven tech, startup and venture capital expert. He is currently dedicating his time primarily to startups and technologies around Artificial Intelligence. He develops visions on the impact of AI on our future business and personal life. Besides his enthusiasm for deep tech, Iskender is also known for being a design lover and creative mind. He is excited about the intersection of technology and creativity.

He is a regular content writer and contributor and known for publishing thought leadership articles around AI, technology, startups, venture capital, impactful presentations and leadership principles. He has written various whitepapers like “A Manual for Corporate Venture Capital”, “The Simple Guide to Deep Learning”, “A Striking Explanation of VC Mechanics” and “The Digital Transformation and AI Transformation Pyramids”.

Iskender holds a degree as Master of Science in Data- and Information-Management and a diploma in Business Administration.

Topic Areas

• AI
• Corporate Venture Capital
• Startups
• Digital Transformation
• Presentation Skills

“The Future of AI-Driven Marketing”

• What are the pains of (online) marketing today?
• How will AI change the marketing of the future?
• An inspirational journey to the day to day life of a marketer in ten years.
• Examples of exciting AI solutions that already exist and others that will exist in ten years.
• Which skills should the marketer of the future have?
• The format is also applicable to adjacent areas like „The Future of AI-Driven Sales”.

„How AI Will Change Our Everyday Life”

• How will AI influence our everyday life?
• An inspirational and visionary journey to the day-to-day life of a normal human being in fifteen years.
• Covered topics (excerpt): Autonomous driving, voice assistants, robots, on- and offline shopping, eating, TV consumption, advertising, virtual reality.

COUP – „Commandments of Outstanding Presentations”

• Framework for impactful, outstanding presentations for all possible use cases like sales pitches, company and startup pitches, inner company presentations, workshops etc.
• Content: Storytelling, script development, slide design, body language, engaging the audience, maximizing the learning effects.
• Variable format from a 15min keynote to a half day Workshop.

“Corporate Venture Capital & Accelerators: Advantages, Pitfalls and Best-Practices from Microsoft”

• Advantages of corporate venture capital and other corporate startup initiatives (e.g. accelerator programs) for the corporate core business, the corporate M&A and startups.
• Pitfalls – what most corporates do wrong.
• How Microsoft uses startups to strengthen its core business in order to become the market leader in the (b2b) cloud and AI market.

“What Corporates could learn from startups”, especially from following perspectives:

• Culture
• HR
• Strategy
• Product Development
• Business Development

„The Digitale & AI Transformation Layers“

• The different layers of the digital transformation and the transformation into an AI-driven company.
• Dos and Dont’s.
• Examples from Microsoft.

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