Frank Thelen


Frank Thelen is a German businessman, investor and author based in Bonn. He is best known as a former investor in the TV series Die Höhle der Löwen, the German version of Shark Tank.

Life

Frank Thelen first attended the Pädagogium Bad Godesberg and then the Carl-Schurz-Realschule in Bonn.
Before turning to software engineering, Thelen's youth was primarily dominated by skateboarding and snowboarding. He still supports projects in this field today, such as "Skate-Aid" by Titus Dittman. Thelen later began studying computer science at the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, but dropped out to build his first company. Today, he is active as an investor, entrepreneur, and author.
Thelen lives in Bonn and is married to orthodontist Nathalie Thelen-Sattler.

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. 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.
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. Doo GmbH, which he founds in 2011 after leaving ip.labs, developed a central document management app. Initially, venture investors Lars Hinrichs and DuMont Venture, among others, invested over ten million US dollars in the company. After the original approach of the app failed, the doo app became the scanner app Scanbot in 2014, and the company was renamed accordingly. 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. In July 2025, Scanbot SDK announced its acquisition by the American technology company Apryse.
As of 2014, he is the CEO of venture capital firm e42, now Freigeist Capital, which has invested in startups such as Wunderlist, MyTaxi, KaufDa, pitch, Lilium, Hardt Hyperloop and Endurosat.
Thelen consults the Microsoft Ventures accelerator in Berlin, and he also supports startups in German politics. Together with the German State Minister for Digitization, Dorothee Bär, he is a leading member of the German Innovation Council.
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".
Thelen is an advocate of some form of universal basic income. He supports startups in German politics. 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.
In 2014, he joined the German version of the TV show Dragons' Den, called Die Höhle der Löwen, as investor. He is also a regular guest in German talk show Hart aber fair.
In 2018, his autobiography Startup-DNA – Hinfallen, aufstehen, die Welt verändern was published and has been a bestseller for several weeks. He is convinced that "The next decade will be the biggest challenge in humankind's history". The same year, he became the first investor of Xentral.

Awards

In 2012, Thelen received the "Innovate 4 Society Award" from Microsoft for the startup "doo". The award was handed over by Angela Merkel.

Publications

  • Die Autobiografie: Startup-DNA – Hinfallen, aufstehen, die Welt verändern. Murmann Publishers. 2018..
  • Europa kann es besser: Wie unser Kontinent zu neuer Stärke findet. Ein Weckruf der Wirtschaft. Autorenbeitrag. Publisher: Thomas Sigmund & Sven Afhüppe. Herder, Freiburg 2019,.
  • 10xDNA: Das Mindset der Zukunft. Frank Thelen Media,.
  • Frank Thelen – Mein Leben, Meine Firma, Meine Strategie; Author: Volker ter Haseborg Publisher: Beat Balzli. GABAL Verlag, Offenbach 2022,.