Insights
Published on July 5th, 2016

Summer Strategy Event Highlights

On June 17th and 18th, HitFoxGroup, FinLeap and AppLift had their annual Summer Strategy Event. 661 employees from over 50 countries represented all companies (including FinLeap’s ventures) and participated in the two day event. This blog post will cover some of the highlights of both days.

Day 1: Morning

The first day of the strategy event began bright and early with opening speeches. Magnus Lambsdorff, Partner and Chief People Officer at HitFox Group, was first in line, speaking about the development of HitFox’s employees to a great and diverse team working in offices all over the world. Jan Beckers, CEO of HitFox, followed with an inspirational speech about the company’s journey from its beginnings to the present day as well as some future plans. Ramin Niroumand, co-founder and managing partner of FinLeap, gave a speech on the future of Fintech and banking. Next came Tim Koschella, CEO and co-founder of AppLift who presented ways for startups to become successful. To complete the pre-lunch session, the former CEO of Deutsche Telekom and MD at Warburg Pincus René Obermann spoke about the cooperation between young and established companies and gave personal experience examples.

Day 1: Afternoon

After a great lunch break, the HitFox team was separated into individual workshops. Everyone had to choose from the following topics:

  • Building Chatbots – How Deep Learning for NLP powers machines you can talk to
  • Online Marketing
  • Presentation Training
  • Feedback Training
  • Product-Methodologies for Non-Product-Managers
  • Product Training
  • Stakeholder management – Key success factors for excellent conversations
  • Self-Management
  • Meeting facilitation and moderation
  • Marketing & Sales in the digital world
  • Impro theatre training
  • Google’s creative skills for innovation
  • Cooperation and Negotiation

The 2 hour individual workshops, were followed by company workshops. FinLeap’s session discussed the basics of banking including banks’ role in the economy, the dependency of banks on the interest rate, the credit process, and adequate risk assessments.

The hard day of work continued with a surprise by Alexander Huber – a German climber and mountaineer. He gave advice about setting goals, failure, and never giving up combined with picturesque photos of mountains.


At the end of the day, everyone was invited to a group photo and great BBQ.

Day 2

The second day of the strategy event was all about having fun. All members of the HitFox and FinLeap family were invited to a pool party starting at 4 pm. From beach volleyball to watching the European Championship, everyone had something to do. The great atmosphere allowed people to network while truly enjoying themselves by the pool. The party got even bigger as guests of the employees were allowed to join after 9pm.