Team
We are a global and leading boutique specialized in Tech & Product DD.
As entrepreneurs, we have scaled tech firms globally. As builders, we have crafted software for multinational corporations. Leveraging our operational expertise and entrepreneurial track record, we advise leading funds on their investment decisions.
Leadership Team
As Founding Partner & Managing Director of Code & Co., Dan Bender uses his ample operational experience based on years of technological knowledge and accumulated know-how to deliver operational excellence.
Since Code & Co.’s inception (2016), Dan and his colleagues have successfully completed more than 300+ Tech & Product DDs in various industries and across the globe.
After finishing his Executive MBA at Germany’s top-ranked university, Technical University of Munich, in cooperation with Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, Dan joined Rocket Internet (2014), a global incubator and investor in internet and technology companies. In his capacity as Director of Product and interim co-founding CPO at Rocket Internet, he supported several companies during their journeys from whiteboard to scale. This included building the largest jobs classifieds in Africa and other emerging markets (e.g. Southeast Asia) and a number of marketplaces as well as quick commerce, e-commerce, and FinTech companies. Dan also contributed significantly to Rocket’s own IPO.
Dan served startups and corporates as a web/mobile developer and UX engineer in both the US and Germany before making product & UX his predominant focal area. Furthermore, Dan acted as a Senior Digital Advisor to FGH (the world’s leading strategic communications advisory firm) where he advised Fortune 500 CEOs, private equity funds, and strategic investors.
In 2010, he founded the e-publisher MySkoob, with the unique vision of creating an interactive reading experience by merging film, sound, video, games, art, and text. MySkoob received numerous accolades and prestigious awards, including the Red Dot Design Awards, Art Directors Club Award, Clio Awards for Design at the 53rd CLIO Awards, The Type Directors Club Communication Design Award at the 58th TDC Communication Design Competition, and a Cannes Lion (Bronze), among others.
Dan has been an active investor/business angel and has co-invested in several technology companies alongside Code & Co.’s clients.
Dan lives with his wife and daughter in Berlin and enjoys the freedom and flexibility of working from everywhere, including the US, London, snowy mountains, and wavy oceans.
As Founding Partner & Managing Director of Code & Co., Lukas Ingelheim contributes his extensive professional knowledge of the global finance and technology industries. Since Code & Co.’s inception (2016), Lukas and his colleagues have successfully completed more than 300+ Tech & Product DDs in various industries and across the globe.
During his undergraduate studies in Finance & Economics at EBS University Business School in Germany (majoring in Finance and Accounting) and Cass Business School in London (majoring in Alternative Investments), Lukas interned at various investment banks and consultancies, including Jefferies Group (M&A) and Simon-Kucher & Partners (financial services group).
He joined the M&A and ECM team of Merrill Lynch in Frankfurt/Germany as one of only three hires that year. As a full-time investment banking analyst, Lukas focused on TMT and was involved in major PE-focused transactions, such as the delisting and subsequent acquisition of Versatel, a large telecommunications provider, by KKR.
Thereafter, Lukas followed his lifelong passion for technology and spent a decade working as a Software Engineer in various positions, including as interim CTO. During this time, he also founded his own company in the e-commerce space, an experience that provided valuable insight into building a successful and sustainable business.
Lukas joined the leading Chicago-headquartered software consultancy ThoughtWorks (NASDAQ:TWKS) as an early hire and Software Engineer at the company’s first German office in Hamburg. Lukas worked on many national and international projects across various industries (e.g. financial services, e-commerce, IoT, cash and carry, and logistics), architectures, and technology stacks. In addition to being a Software Engineer on various product development teams in enterprise-scale bespoke software development projects, Lukas was a speaker at industry conferences, occasionally collaborating with well-established colleagues such as Martin Fowler, one of the founding fathers of the agile movement.
Lukas has been an active investor/business angel and has co-invested in several technology companies alongside Code & Co.’s clients.
Lukas lives with his wife and two sons in Frankfurt/Germany. However, he enjoys the opportunity to work from anywhere in the world, including frequently from the US, where his wife is from, and London.
David has been working with Code & Co. as a Senior Specialist Advisor for more than 5 years. He joined the team full-time as VP in 2022.
While studying Computer Science and Business at the University of Koblenz, Germany, he founded a software company in the social app and gaming space. It achieved 7-digit ARR in its first year and quickly became one of Europe’s most highly scaled social apps. His final thesis and related papers on computer vision (in particular, visual pattern recognition) were published in Springer Science+Business Media journals, and he was invited to speak at conferences, including the 2nd International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Applications and Methods in Barcelona.
At the age of 23, he co-founded another venture-backed software company in Berlin. He has since co-founded two more highly recognized technology companies, one of which was acquired by a market leader after 3 years (Dreamflats, acquired by ImmoWelt). His most recent company (Layer) was funded by investors like Index Ventures and prominent business angels from Dropbox, N26, Nested, and GoCardless.
Over the past few years, he has advised, served as an Interim Manager, and invested in fast-growing product teams at e.g. Smava, Raisin, Athletic Greens, and Fincompare.
At Code & Co., he is involved in Tech & Product DD, with a focus on product development and engineering, and brings a wealth of knowledge from early-stage, fast-growing, SMB, and mid-level enterprise environments. He also focuses on internal processes, further organizational scale, and global expansion in his role as COO.
Jan Saputra Müller is a highly-accomplished and long-time ML Researcher, Consultant and Entrepreneur in the field of Machine Learning/AI with almost three decades of software development experience. He completed his education in Mathematics and Computer Science at TU Berlin and started his research career in 2008 as a member of the prestigious Machine Learning Group led by Klaus-Robert Müller. While there, he mainly focused on time series analysis, particularly blind source separation (Stationary Subspace Analysis) and co-adaptive learning. He developed the first purely mathematical formulation for co-adaptive learning.
Since 2012, Jan has been part of Berlin's entrepreneurial scene, where he offers his expertise as a consultant in the fields of mathematical modeling and ML. As idalab's first Consultant, he tackled many practical problems for customers using data science and mathematical modeling. Clients ranged from early-stage startups to large companies in the financial and pharmaceutical industries. Some of the projects initiated back then continue to grow and evolve today.
Since 2014, Jan's entrepreneurial spirit has led to the co-founding of several startups, all centered around Machine Learning, where he also served as CTO. One product he is particularly proud of is a natural-language-to-database-queries technology that worked exceptionally well almost six years before ChatGPT. The most important companies Jan co-founded include: AskBy, a software that allows people to ask questions to a database in plain English, which was founded in 2017, and MorphAIs, a venture capital firm that makes data-driven investment decisions, which was founded in 2020.
Passionate about Math, Computer Science, and Philosophy since childhood. Jan's passion for coding started early when he learned the programming language C at the age of 8. As a teenager, he got involved in the early open-source scene of the 1990s. He even experimented with self-implemented neural networks in high school. Jan’s interest in tech innovation also extends to Bitcoin, which he has been passionate about since 2012. Outside of work, he spends time learning about this complex and exciting topic nearly every day. Apart from the technology, he is very interested in its social and economic/monetary impacts.
Jan also enjoys spending time in nature and connecting with new people. He is fascinated by the mysteries of the universe, life, and consciousness, and loves to philosophize and explore these topics. Jan welcomes conversations about creating a better future for the world.Andrew joined Code & Co. in 2019 and has since overseen the development of a range of products — from in-house project management tools to B2B SaaS solutions to cloud-based deal execution software.
Prior to joining Code & Co., Andrew co-founded Common Goal in 2014, a global movement in which professional soccer players pledge 1% of their salaries to a collective fund that supports various high-impact charities around the world.
During his time with the organization, Common Goal grew from an idea on paper to an internationally-recognized movement that garnered participation from 100+ world class football players and managers — including Jürgen Klopp, Julian Nagelsmann, Giorgio Chiellini, Serge Gnabry, Megan Rapinoe, Juan Mata, and many more. It also attracted involvement from global brands like Adidas and EA Sports, unlocking millions of euros in yearly funding for grassroots charities the world over.
Andrew has an academic background in Psychology and received a master’s in Psychology & Education at the University of Cambridge. He gained accreditation from the British Psychological Society in 2014. Andrew also has a master’s in Digital Media from Utrecht University as well as a BA in Communications from RMIT University in his native Australia.
When he’s not staring blankly into his text editor, he likes testing the (diminishing) limits of his body by going for needlessly long runs.
Code & Co. has been a trusted relationship partner of Investcorp for many years. What we value most is their unique mix of deep technical expertise (from the infrastructure to the application layer), hands-on operational background as well as strong experience in UX / UI. Most importantly, as a nimble and partner-led firm they constantly strive to put our needs first and have over delivered on every single project we have worked on with them.
Georg Knoflach
Managing Director, Investcorp Technology Partners
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