Meet the Team
Beat Knecht is co-founder, President, and CEO of Zattoo. In an earlier life Beat was the co-creator of UBS OpenLAN, SAP xRPM, and Levanta. Before joining Zattoo, Beat was vice president of marketing at Linuxcare (now Levanta) in San Francisco and experienced the consulting world as associate partner at McKinsey & Company. Beat holds a BA in Computer Science from the University of California (Berkeley) and received his MBA at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Nick Brambring is Vice President Countries. Before he joined Zattoo, Nick worked for the Boston Consulting Group, where he did strategic consulting for companies in the consumer goods industry. His industry expertise includes the TV and music business. Nick is a qualified lawyer and holds a PHD in law from the University of Cologne and an MBA from Insead in France and Singapore.
Nick on TV:
“I’m not a TV junky, I always preferred reality – spending time with my dear friends Heathcliff Huxtable, Homer Simpson and Colt Sivas. Ironically, now that Zattoo enables them to visit me even during office hours, I’m too busy working because of Zattoo. Most games of German Bundesliga are shown on the week-ends though and fortunately my favourite team 1. FC Koeln is back again.”
Andreas Pirklbauer is co-founder and Vice President Products of Zattoo. He has about two decades of engineering, operational, senior management, startup and venture capital experience in various countries around the world. Prior to co-founding Zattoo, Andreas served as founder and managing director of OpsVC of San Francisco, California; as Associate Director at venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson ePlanet of Redwood City, California and London, UK; as engagement manager at management consulting firms McKinsey & Company of Palo Alto, California and Booz & Co of Munich, Germany and Mumbai, India. In his earlier career, Andreas was an information technology expert at UBS of Zurich, Switzerland, an applications engineer at Thinking Machines Corporation of Boston, MA and Paris, France, a programmer and systems engineer at BMW Motors of Munich, Germany, and a research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich and Lausanne, Switzerland. Andreas graduated with a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, and with an MBA degree from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He received his humanistic education at Stiftsgymnasium Kremsmünster in Austria, and is fluent in multiple languages.
Andreas on TV:
“Our TV set broke a few years ago, but instead of getting a new one I decided to help create an entirely new TV experience by mashing up Internet and television content into a single and seamless entertainment experience. My TV and information consumption is very selective - I especially enjoy high-quality documentaries and wildlife programs.”
Remo Metzger is Head of Finance at Zattoo. Remo came to Zattoo from Sun Microsystems where he was a solution architect, controller of professional services and controller of operating expenses. Prior to that he was with Herzog Küchen AG as accounting manager. Remo has an executive Master MBA of Controlling from the HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Zurich and is a Swiss certified specialist for finance and accounting from the KV Zurich Business School.
That’s not all respectively everybody we’ve got. Other team members are working on developing the software even further, acquiring hot new content for viewers all over the world, setting up new servers, taking care of our users, and and and. The techie side is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan/USA, while the business geeks experts operate from Zurich, Switzerland.