About

Before dedicating his career to the web3 space, Karl worked at The Blackstone Group in the New York and London Private Equity Teams. He learned to breath investment banking at JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank. His love for finance and dedication to performing financial services at the highest possible standards are the driving force behind his mission to establish Areta as the household name for the crypto space, similar to his previous employers in the traditional world.

Karl graduated with Distinction from the London School of Economics in Finance and Private Equity and as a PROMOS scholar from the University of Mannheim. He will be forever grateful for the year he got to spend with his guest family in Argentina early in his life.

Since he first discovered the web3 space, Jan-Philip has been extremely fascinated about the emergence of a new asset class and an opportunity to reengineer the financial industry. Combining his passion for finance and tech, he moved full-time into the industry to found Areta with a vision of establishing the leading financial institution in the blockchain-enabled era.

Prior to Areta, Jan-Philip was a private equity investor at Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager with >$1 trillion AUM, and gained experience at Boston Consulting Group, Partners Group, and Barclays Investment Bank. He earned his M.A. in Finance from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and a B.Sc. in Business Information Technology from the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management with scholarships from Konrad Adenauer and Schmalenbach foundations.

Jan-Philip loves football and water sports, and spends most of his time between Lisbon and London.

Bernard heads Areta’s Strategic Governance unit working with some of the leading DAOs and foundations in the space working on large-scale governance and growth initiatives from governance inception to optimization and ecosystem growth.

Prior to Areta, Bernard spent his time in Management Consulting at McKinsey & Company across London and Berlin, where he led business building projects and growth initiatives for tech scale-ups and S&P 500 companies. Prior to this, he was involved in scaling early- and growth-stage ventures on the founder and investor side.

Bernard holds a Master’s in Business from London School of Economics and spends his time between San Francisco, Lisbon, and Berlin.

Previously, Clemens worked as Chief of Staff and Head of M&A at Argus Media, a portfolio company of General Atlantic and Hg, and in TMT investment banking at Arma Partners, Europe's leading software M&A boutique. Clemens has a wide range of technology transaction experience, from strategic investments, growth financings, growth equity as well as large cap buyouts, and public to private transactions.

Clemens graduated from Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, in Economics and Business Administration with specialization in Finance & Accounting. During his studies he was also president of GREEN Finance Consulting, the university's consulting club.

Prior to Areta, Joseph was an investor at Superscrypt, a crypto-native venture capital firm founded by Temasek. At Superscrypt, he focused on the origination and execution of pre-seed to Series A/B investments, and supported portfolio companies on key strategic initiatives.

Before commencing his career in web3, Joseph was an Associate Director at UBS Investment Banking in Asia, where he focused on the end-to-end execution of M&A and capital markets transactions, primarily in the consumer retail & technology sectors. During his time at UBS, he successfully completed 15+ deals with over US$10bn in aggregate transaction value.

Joseph has a Bachelor of Business Administration (Finance) with Honours (Highest Distinction) from National University of Singapore. He is currently based in Singapore.

‍

Yacine brings a wealth of expertise to his role as Vice President of Investment Banking, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions. His recent tenure in Strategy at CoinMENA saw him driving strategic initiatives, contributing significantly to the firm’s growth in the region.

Prior to CoinMENA, Yacine honed his investment banking skills at J.P. Morgan in London and Lazard in Paris, where he specialized in M&A advisory services within the Technology Team.

Yacine holds a Master's in Finance from EDHEC in Paris.

Sid has deep experience in both the digital asset and traditional finance spaces, and has been involved in the blockchain space since 2017.

As a Digital Assets Strategy Manager at Motive Partners, Sid focused on innovation strategy and value creation with respect to Motive's portfolio companies and external clients, while evaluating Web3 start-ups and established companies for early-stage investments or buyout deals. Within the Global Blockchain Team at Accenture for 5 years, Sid focused on digital asset strategy projects across financial markets, working with commercial and retail banks, central banks, and financial market infrastructure players.

Sid is currently finishing his part-time Master's in Finance degree at the London Business School, where he is the Co-President of the LBS Blockchain Society and led the society’s Aave delegation from October 2022 to February 2024. His crypto expertise and depth of relationships across the ecosystem are also demonstrated by his Web3 blog and podcast, Genesis Block.

Previously, Findlay worked as a ventures analyst for Delphi Digital, where he completed due diligence and deal origination across all facets of the web3 world. His interest in web3 began when he started sharing his research on a blog, diving into a few of the most relevant topics in the space at the time. Outside of his professional career, Findlay competes on the Canadian national field hockey team where his accomplishments include competing in the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 and a bronze medal at the Pan American Games in 2023.

Findlay graduated from the Sauder School of Business with a specialization in Finance in British Columbia, Canada. During his undergraduate studies, he was awarded the Academic All-Canadian award three times for his excellence in academics as well as sports.

Previously, Timothy worked as an investment analyst at Swiss Ventures Group and Serpentine Ventures, which are part of a privately financed group known for being one of Switzerland's most active early-stage investors in ICT. An entrepreneur at heart, Timothy founded his own venture and participated in the international expansion of Hive, a German scaleup.

Timothy graduated from the University of St. Gallen with a degree in Business and Administration, specializing in Finance. During his studies, he was also very active in the consulting space, providing fundraising advisory support to startups.

Previously, Gabriel gained work experience in M&A at Morgan Stanley within their German coverage team and at Deutsche Bank. He also served as the first analyst for TigrisWeb3, a crypto hedge fund specializing in the Cosmos ecosystem. During his tenure at TigrisWeb3, Gabriel played a focused on analyzing investment opportunities and contributed to building the general investment framework for the fund. In addition, Gabriel gained valuable experience in Private Equity at Ardian.

Gabriel completed his studies at WU Vienna, earning a Bachelor's degree in Business & Economics. Throughout his academic journey, he assumed several leadership positions within Austria's largest finance club, WUTIS.

‍

Before joining Areta, Lukas was involved in the web3 space as one of the first web3 student researchers in Germany. He also did crypto research at Cambridge University and attended hackathons in Lisbon, NewYork, Amsterdam, Munich and Singapore. Lukas is a founding member of PretzelDAO and worked in the web3 space as a ventures analyst.

He is a Hanns-Seidel-Scholar pursuing a degree in management and technology with a specialization in renewable resources at the Technical University of Munich and the National University of Singapore. In his free time, Lukas enjoys running and completes a marathon every year.

Previously, Mina completed various internship positions in Finance, gathering practical experience in Investment Banking at Bank of America and J.P. Morgan in Frankfurt. Her interest in web3 started during her Master's degree through courses in Blockchain Fundamentals and Decentralized Finance taught by professionals in the field. Mina obtained her Bachelor's degree at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, in Economics and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in finance at Nova School of Business and Economy, Portugal.