My path

From 1973 to today, with one look ahead

1. 1973
   Born in Freiburg im Breisgau. The city is still where I live and work. Little Christian has braces and glasses. And back then I still had hair.
2. 1993
   My first own keyboard. The beginning of the music, slowly, with whatever the technology of the day allowed.
3. 1995
   I study media informatics at Furtwangen University and graduate in 1999 as Dipl. Inform. (FH). At night, in the studio, the music takes shape.
4. 1997
   Europa-Park opens the Euro-Mir rollercoaster. Lift Off !, the track that carries the ride, is entirely mine and Ben Klug’s, along with seven of the ten tracks on the soundtrack album. The same year brings my first own record.

   

5. 1999
   I join the Haufe media group at the height of the new economy. I go on to lead eCommerce and later programme and project management.
6. 2008
   I found Zaplive Media GmbH, a platform for live streaming and web TV, three years before Twitch starts as a platform of its own. We stream safaris live from South Africa and learn that streaming from the bush is easier than through some German towns. By 2010 it is over. Had we got further, I would probably be talking about yachts today. Being too early is a particular kind of failure, and it teaches timing.

   

7. 2010
   Back at Haufe, tasked with building the Blue Ocean division from zero. For half a year I accompany a student team in the Stanford programme ME310, together with the University of St. Gallen. At the end of the year I begin with lexoffice, as employee number zero.

   

8. 2012
   lexoffice goes to market. I thought that with the Lexware brand behind us it would be easy. It was not, the first customers were won door by door. Still, by the end of the first year it is 5,000 customers. Until 2019 I head innovation and new products at the Haufe Group, with more than 150 people.

   

9. 2019
   I become CEO Business Group Lexware. The mission: making entrepreneurship simple. The same year lexoffice gets payroll, moves entirely to AWS and opens up with an interface for other software. Tell Your Story starts too, the initiative that gives the self-employed a stage, with a magazine that appears in national media.

   

10. 2020
    Lexware Buchhaltung turns 25. Four people built the first version in 1995. Today more than 500 people work at Lexware.
11. 2022
    On 17 January the biggest campaign for the Lexware brand so far starts, #MachDeinenTraumZumErfolg. In November it wins the Effie “Evergreen”.
12. 2023
    After nearly 25 years of partnership, Lexware becomes exclusive partner and sleeve sponsor of SC Freiburg. Together we launch “Support Your Local Heroes” for amateur and grassroots sport.
13. 2024
    lexoffice becomes Lexware Office. On 17 October, 700 guests celebrate five years of Tell Your Story at the Lexware Festival in the Black Forest Studios.
14. 2025
    From 1 April I lead Lexware together with Carsten Block, who becomes co-managing director. In June the Lexware Tell Your Story podcast starts, with me as host. Das Lena Prinzip reaches the stage for the first time, in October at the Business Creator Summit and at Black Forest Space.
15. 2026
    Das Lena Prinzip is published on das-lena-prinzip.de. Handelsblatt and Badische Zeitung report on it. In spring it becomes known that Europa-Park is taking down the Euro-Mir. A petition with around 75,000 signatures and more than twenty newspaper articles follow, and my reel about the soundtrack passes 4.2 million views. On 12 June the park confirms that the melody stays. Lexware becomes main shirt sponsor of SC Freiburg.
16. 2027
    On 9 January Europa-Park retires the Euro-Mir after thirty seasons. The melody stays.

The full curriculum vitae is at Lexware, the personal version at das-lena-prinzip.de, the music in detail at urban-listening.com. Those pages are in German.

Off duty

What holds me outside the work

One sentence by Charles Eames hangs over everything I like, and over much of what I do for a living: “The details are not the details. They make the design.”

Design and furniture

USM and Vitra above all, plus Gufram and lighting by Hue. The Lounge Chair by Charles and Ray Eames, the clocks by George Nelson, the cork bowls by Jasper Morrison, the birds by Kay Bojesen, the Haller system by USM. The look, yes. But just as much the story of every single piece: who designed it, why it looks the way it does, where it comes from, and that it lasts for decades. The same idea as in software.

What individual people have made

I am drawn to work with a person behind it who thought it through to the end. A piece of furniture, an album, a program. The books of Taschen are my shelf for that: architecture, design, photography, at the length the subject deserves.

Star Wars

Since childhood. A story that began in 1977 and became a universe, built by people who glued models, sewed costumes and invented sounds. Again: details that make the whole.

Freiburg

Born there, stayed there, never seriously away. The city is the constant behind all of it: the studio, the company, the rollercoaster half an hour north, the club in the stadium.