Ralph Kunz

Ralph Eric Kunz has more than 20 years of experience as entrepreneur and business angel, as well as in top-level management and strategy consulting on a global scale. Today he runs a portfolio of enterprises in fields ranging from the technology / mobile telecommunications space to marketing / sales automation, as well as oil and gas exploration in North America. Ralph Kunz founded his first successful company in 2001. Today, tyntec (www.tyntec.com) is one of the leading global companies in mobile messaging and interaction, and has managed to win renowned US and European private equity players as investors. More recently he started Deutsche Messe Interactive (www.messe-interactive.de), a joint venture with Deutsche Messe AG, responsible for leading trade shows such as CeBIT and the Hannover Industrial Fair. Within 3 years of its inception, the company has become a leading player in B2B lead generation in the German speaking markets. Previously Ralph Kunz held senior executive positions with the Nokia Corporation, Bertelsmann and the Boston Consulting Group. For Nokia he introduced GPS, street maps and turn-by-turn navigation to Nokia’s handsets on a global basis. The division he created and ran, now called HERE, in the meantime generates over $1 Billion in revenues from software implemented on over 1 billion handsets globally. After an early acquisition of a Berlin-based startup, he headquartered the division in Berlin, most likely creating Berlin’s most widespread export product. For Bertelsmann he co-ran the company’s corporate venturing arm, after having conducted an IPO of an internet-related business on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 1999. Ralph Kunz was born in Germany and spent his childhood in the US. He studied physics and political sciences at the University of Chicago and the Berlin Institute of Technology, where he earned a PhD and Master with summa cum laude, respectively, in both fields. An author of numerous scientific articles in renowned journals, he holds several patents in the telecommunications space and is a frequent conference speaker.