About Me

The ‘Somewhat-Official’ Bio

Karsten is a 30-something pro-gamer turned tech entrepreneur. He’s the youngest of three sons to a British mom and a German dad who met in a sing-along bar in Canada. As management trainee at Lufthansa German Airlines, he worked in India, Dubai, Austria and Germany. A profound fear of missing out led him to give up his corporate career and try his beard at entrepreneurship. At the age of 23, he negotiated an investment promotion with the Royal Thai Government to leverage a Bangkok-based video game company from zero to a million USD in revenue within five years. Today, he passionately provides advice to and invests in fellow tech entrepreneurs. Making use of his fluency in Thai, he gives talks at events and universities, checks nutrition labels for carbohydrates, and gets into trouble with tuk-tuk touts. Karsten co-authored the book ‘Working in Thailand‘ and founded expatden.com.

The ‘Random-Facts-About-Myself’ Bio

My general tendency to optimize and improve extends to eating with purpose, sleeping plenty, exercising for mental and physical health, as well as reducing non-productive stress.
Whenever I meet someone new I have this compulsive habit of trying to find out what makes them tick. What drives them? How do they think? What made them the way they are? Who do they want to be? What are their limits? Not turning a conversation into the equivalent of a subconscious job interview is a daily challenge for me.
At one point in my life, I got paid to play video games. I actually leveraged that into starting my own company in the game industry, first in Germany, then in Thailand. Things turned out well.
In total, I’ve spent more than a decade running software and e-commerce companies out of Thailand, so I know a fair share about that.
Contrary to potential bearded prejudice, I called the corporate world my home for a number years while I completed a management trainee program at an airline (Lufthansa), right before I set out on my own.
One of my favorite playgrounds is competitive digital marketing. That encompasses anything from search engine optimization to affiliate marketing and monetization. While I’m probably still most at home in the online gaming industry, I’m also working in domain registrations and online dating.
I’ve given guest lectures on entrepreneurship at a number of universities in Germany and Thailand. Working with students is great fun, and if you are looking for a speaker, you should definitely get in touch with me.
Traveling and playing video games are two of my top three forms of distraction.
I’m fluent in German, English and Thai. My French skills are sufficient to explain to people that I don’t actually speak the language, in spite of suffering through six years of high school French.
Traveling to me is about experiencing adventures. That lead me to some 60 different countries, most of which you might know more from the news than from a travel guide. The list includes Armenia, Iceland, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Rwanda, Timor Leste, Turkmenistan, Uganda and Zimbabwe among others.

Interviews

I give interviews on entrepreneurship, doing business in Thailand, the intersection of games and business, and entrepreneurial productivity. Some of my prior interviews in newspapers, digital print media and podcasts are linked below.