Interviews
Interviews
Podcast
30.7.2021
Christoph Bornschein does not look like a man who is CEO of a 200-man company. With his wild hair and beard, he is more reminiscent of a Berlin hipster. But Bornschein is the founder of Germany's leading digital consultancy TLGG (formerly Torben, Lucie und die gelbe Gefahr) and also a "digitalization whisperer", as the press sometimes reverently calls him. The Merkel government has also used his services. He takes an hour for the interview, between all kinds of digital and physical meetings. "This back and forth is almost more exhausting than purely digital or purely personal," he complains.
That was probably the third scoop of redcurrant ice cream at Hokey Pokey, a trendy ice cream parlor here in Berlin. A scoop there now costs 2.20 euros - pretty hefty, in my opinion.
What can I say, I am very Prussian socialized. Status symbols mean nothing to me. I would never buy a Rolex, for example, if only because I can't stand watches on my wrist.
A friend of mine always likes to say: "The 911 is just the Golf VI of Frankfurt's West End. I think that's very apt; in another way, it's just very bourgeois. At the end of the day, I always have to think of my mother, who would probably say: "What would the neighbors think?"
I don't know if you should say that. I once attended law school until I got my bogus freedom. But that doesn't make me a lawyer. It was just time to study something back then, and I chose law more by chance. I always liked John Grisham's books, that was enough motivation for me.
"Law teaches you a very interesting school of thought, a way of solving legal Sudokus, so to speak."
Because something else came up. My friend Dirk Weyel wanted to take a games company he had founded public and got me on board. It was a company that had previously put boxes of computer games in the Media Markt, the classic low-cost offer. He now wanted to move this business to the Internet.
He didn't ask me because of that, but because I was one of the few people in Germany at the time who had experience in e-commerce, as I had already worked in the field before I graduated. The new economy bubble had burst shortly before and many people had left the sector. So Dirk chose me. From then on, I did online marketing for his company.
I didn't finish it, but I wouldn't say it didn't help. Law teaches you a very interesting school of thought, a way of solving legal Sudokus, so to speak. Getting to know things like the cherry tree case is really exciting. It's about a man in a wheelchair who wants to defend his cherry tree against thieves, but uses a gun because of his disability. Is that appropriate or not?
I certainly don't shoot people out of cherry trees. But seriously, I wouldn't overestimate it. For me, my visit to university was more of a general course, law was the hook. I could just as easily have studied architecture.
Firstly, my later co-founders Fränzi Kühne, Boontham Temaismithi and I found that many of us in the company took this gaming thing too seriously. It was all about buying swords, fantasy worlds, we weren't so enthusiastic about it and mentally took refuge in the idea of founding our own agency. Then came the realization that the online marketing we were doing at Frogster could also work for other companies.
"In my opinion, my journey at TLGG is not over yet."
That was actually still very new at the time. Just one example: Facebook becoming the leading global communication platform may seem banal in retrospect, but it was a revolutionary idea at the time. We had to show our customers that marketing in this area could also be translated into sales in the "real" world. We achieved this for the first time with the Subway sandwich chain. We were able to show that Facebook friends who receive vouchers actually redeem them. This was quickly followed by major customers such as Vodafone and Lufthansa, and with them came strategic issues: internal processes, organizational empowerment, new business models.
Because we wanted to internationalize, but realized that this would be difficult for us. We had always received purchase offers in previous years, and in 2013 we started to look into the idea intensively. Over the course of 18 months, we really met with everyone in the agency world, and many of them expressed an interest. In the end, Omnicom was simply the best fit.
They left me hanging (laughs). Nonsense, we always said that we wanted to do this together for ten years first. In 2019, it was already eleven and a half. Fränzi and Boontham's life circumstances at the time were simply such that they both wanted to do something else. But that wasn't the case for me; I don't think my journey with TLGG is over yet.
"I can't imagine a life without work. I just don't get enough energy from things like fishing."
I'm a bit more of a totem animal than I used to be. But everyone is much nicer to me now. And thanks to Steffi (Stefanie Lüdecke, TLGG Managing Director, editor's note) as my partner, I don't have much more to do than before.
You definitely can't have a hobby, especially not a time-consuming one. I also simply have a good team around me. There's the management team here at the company, but also my lawyer, my tax advisor and my auditor. And of course my assistant, who plays appointment tetris all day long.
Oh God, that would be far too stressful for me. I look for ideas that I believe in and that have the potential to generate money. Venture capital is not altruism, it's about making money. In this respect, it's not a hobby for me, but rather wealth management.
My aim at such appointments is always to teach people digital assessment skills. I also believe that this works, but the systems often get in the way.
I don't know if we absolutely need that. But I don't want to become a politician either. My life is interesting enough as it is. If I want to do something else, there are often enough opportunities, for example on advisory boards and supervisory boards. I don't get bored.
I can't imagine a life without work. I just don't get enough energy from things like fishing.
Personal details: Christoph Bornschein, 38, is CEO of the digital agency TLGG (formerly Torben, Lucie und die gelbe Gefahr). He founded the company in 2008 together with Fränzi Kühne and Boontham Temaismithi. He is an advisor to the ZF Group, Lufthansa and the Confederation of German Employers' Associations, among others. In the past, he has also advised the German government on digitalization issues. He invests in start-ups with his company Bornschein & keine Töchter. Before founding TLGG, he worked at Frogster Interactive Pictures, among others. Bornschein studied law at the Free University of Berlin. He lives in Berlin, where he also grew up.
Interviews
30.7.2021
Lars-Thorben Niggehoff
In this interview, TLGG founder Christoph Bornschein talks about the digitalization of the German government, why he can't do without work and what all this has to do with virtual swords.
Christoph Bornschein does not look like a man who is CEO of a 200-man company. With his wild hair and beard, he is more reminiscent of a Berlin hipster. But Bornschein is the founder of Germany's leading digital consultancy TLGG (formerly Torben, Lucie und die gelbe Gefahr) and also a "digitalization whisperer", as the press sometimes reverently calls him. The Merkel government has also used his services. He takes an hour for the interview, between all kinds of digital and physical meetings. "This back and forth is almost more exhausting than purely digital or purely personal," he complains.
That was probably the third scoop of redcurrant ice cream at Hokey Pokey, a trendy ice cream parlor here in Berlin. A scoop there now costs 2.20 euros - pretty hefty, in my opinion.
What can I say, I am very Prussian socialized. Status symbols mean nothing to me. I would never buy a Rolex, for example, if only because I can't stand watches on my wrist.
A friend of mine always likes to say: "The 911 is just the Golf VI of Frankfurt's West End. I think that's very apt; in another way, it's just very bourgeois. At the end of the day, I always have to think of my mother, who would probably say: "What would the neighbors think?"
I don't know if you should say that. I once attended law school until I got my bogus freedom. But that doesn't make me a lawyer. It was just time to study something back then, and I chose law more by chance. I always liked John Grisham's books, that was enough motivation for me.
"Law teaches you a very interesting school of thought, a way of solving legal Sudokus, so to speak."
Because something else came up. My friend Dirk Weyel wanted to take a games company he had founded public and got me on board. It was a company that had previously put boxes of computer games in the Media Markt, the classic low-cost offer. He now wanted to move this business to the Internet.
He didn't ask me because of that, but because I was one of the few people in Germany at the time who had experience in e-commerce, as I had already worked in the field before I graduated. The new economy bubble had burst shortly before and many people had left the sector. So Dirk chose me. From then on, I did online marketing for his company.
I didn't finish it, but I wouldn't say it didn't help. Law teaches you a very interesting school of thought, a way of solving legal Sudokus, so to speak. Getting to know things like the cherry tree case is really exciting. It's about a man in a wheelchair who wants to defend his cherry tree against thieves, but uses a gun because of his disability. Is that appropriate or not?
I certainly don't shoot people out of cherry trees. But seriously, I wouldn't overestimate it. For me, my visit to university was more of a general course, law was the hook. I could just as easily have studied architecture.
Firstly, my later co-founders Fränzi Kühne, Boontham Temaismithi and I found that many of us in the company took this gaming thing too seriously. It was all about buying swords, fantasy worlds, we weren't so enthusiastic about it and mentally took refuge in the idea of founding our own agency. Then came the realization that the online marketing we were doing at Frogster could also work for other companies.
"In my opinion, my journey at TLGG is not over yet."
That was actually still very new at the time. Just one example: Facebook becoming the leading global communication platform may seem banal in retrospect, but it was a revolutionary idea at the time. We had to show our customers that marketing in this area could also be translated into sales in the "real" world. We achieved this for the first time with the Subway sandwich chain. We were able to show that Facebook friends who receive vouchers actually redeem them. This was quickly followed by major customers such as Vodafone and Lufthansa, and with them came strategic issues: internal processes, organizational empowerment, new business models.
Because we wanted to internationalize, but realized that this would be difficult for us. We had always received purchase offers in previous years, and in 2013 we started to look into the idea intensively. Over the course of 18 months, we really met with everyone in the agency world, and many of them expressed an interest. In the end, Omnicom was simply the best fit.
They left me hanging (laughs). Nonsense, we always said that we wanted to do this together for ten years first. In 2019, it was already eleven and a half. Fränzi and Boontham's life circumstances at the time were simply such that they both wanted to do something else. But that wasn't the case for me; I don't think my journey with TLGG is over yet.
"I can't imagine a life without work. I just don't get enough energy from things like fishing."
I'm a bit more of a totem animal than I used to be. But everyone is much nicer to me now. And thanks to Steffi (Stefanie Lüdecke, TLGG Managing Director, editor's note) as my partner, I don't have much more to do than before.
You definitely can't have a hobby, especially not a time-consuming one. I also simply have a good team around me. There's the management team here at the company, but also my lawyer, my tax advisor and my auditor. And of course my assistant, who plays appointment tetris all day long.
Oh God, that would be far too stressful for me. I look for ideas that I believe in and that have the potential to generate money. Venture capital is not altruism, it's about making money. In this respect, it's not a hobby for me, but rather wealth management.
My aim at such appointments is always to teach people digital assessment skills. I also believe that this works, but the systems often get in the way.
I don't know if we absolutely need that. But I don't want to become a politician either. My life is interesting enough as it is. If I want to do something else, there are often enough opportunities, for example on advisory boards and supervisory boards. I don't get bored.
I can't imagine a life without work. I just don't get enough energy from things like fishing.
Personal details: Christoph Bornschein, 38, is CEO of the digital agency TLGG (formerly Torben, Lucie und die gelbe Gefahr). He founded the company in 2008 together with Fränzi Kühne and Boontham Temaismithi. He is an advisor to the ZF Group, Lufthansa and the Confederation of German Employers' Associations, among others. In the past, he has also advised the German government on digitalization issues. He invests in start-ups with his company Bornschein & keine Töchter. Before founding TLGG, he worked at Frogster Interactive Pictures, among others. Bornschein studied law at the Free University of Berlin. He lives in Berlin, where he also grew up.
About the author
Lars-Thorben Niggehoff
Lars-Thorben Niggehoff writes about real estate, start-ups and investing.
