CV
Hello, I’m Klaus Breyer, a technology leader with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and over a decade of experience in building and managing effective teams. From kickstarting my entrepreneurial journey in 2010 with my first startup to taking on the CTO/CTPO roles in numerous ventures, I’ve been instrumental in driving technological innovation and excellence.
I’ve anchored my beliefs in Shape Up, the next wave of agile.
I turn visionary business goals into concrete results, with focused expertise at the intersection of product and tech organization. It’s not merely about coding; it’s about crafting standout products that make a mark and drive business forward.
- Startup strategy – turning ideas into impactful ventures.
- Selling the tech vision – whether it’s to investors or stakeholders.
- Prototyping & Crafting the first version of a product from scratch, if need be.
- Assembling and nurturing a killer team.
- Bringing product & engineering processes up to speed.
From startup monoliths to large microservice environments, I’ve led and launched.
But beyond the tech, I build infrastructures that empower.
Teams that innovate - Projects that matter.
I’ve penned down my thoughts in articles and shared them out loud at conferences. Whether it’s a page or a stage, I’m there. With a voice in the tech community, I am more than just a leader; I am an influencer, continually bridging the gap between technology, product, and business.
» Good software is always used but never finished.«
That’s all.
Founding & Management Experience ¶
Throughout my career, I’ve led the development and launch of numerous cutting-edge projects in modern web stacks. I pride myself on my ability to balance technical excellence with a strategic vision, enabling my teams to focus on solving problems that truly matter and delivering value to users.
Hydro Pocket ¶
Role: Tech Lead (freelance)
Industry: Industrial Internet of Things
Period: 2019 – 2023
As the Technical Lead at Hydro Pocket, the first end-customer product of the industrial company GmbH & Co. KGaA, I built the tech team from scratch within this new business unit and introduced the Shape Up method. Hydro Pocket is a leading provider of solutions for hydropower plants. It offers innovative technologies to prevent outages and optimize the performance of hydropower plants through actionable real-time data.
Gustavo Major Arantes, Global Product Manager at Voith Hydro:
Klaus is strongly recommended! We worked together the last couple of years and I am proud of what we achieved together!
Andreas Puffert, Division Lead Strategic Experience Design at Ray Sono:
Klaus is a fire starter and absolute rockstar as CTO and CPO. Love to work with him!
BuzzBird GmbH ¶
Role: Founder and Chief Technology & Product Officer
Industry: Influencer Marketplace
Period: 2016 – 2018
We embarked on an exciting journey with the goal of making social media influencers programmatically bookable - similar to Google Ads. This challenge sparked innovation, leading to the development of sophisticated software, which is now primarily used internally. This software effectively digitalizes the influencer process, acting as an “Influencer Agency on Steroids.”
Key features of our system include a billing system, a matching algorithm, and an influencer inventory management module. Furthermore, it encourages transparency and data-driven decisions by enabling social media creators to share their statistics.
buddybrand GmbH ¶
Role: Founder and managing technical director
Industry: digital agency
Period: 2010 – 2015
Right out of university, I started building Facebook apps as a freelancer with my co-founders – just at the right time. Even before I could hand in my bachelor thesis, we had earned enough money to start a GmbH. In the next 3 years alone, we built several hundred Facebook apps and grew from cash flow to 30+ employees. Nowadays, buddybrand is a full-service digital creative agency these days.
Consulting, Startup Advisory & Side Projects ¶
In addition to my professional experience, I’m also a dedicated entrepreneur and startup investor. I develop and market projects on the side and support early-stage companies through money or time. I’m also committed to giving back to the open-source community and have contributed to several projects.
Ray Sono AG ¶
Role: Technology Principal (freelance)
Industry: Technology and Industrial Solutions
Period: 2019 – Now
As a Technology Principal, I am involved in projects from the initial conceptual brainstorming stage to the eventual implementation, using either internal or external resources. In larger projects, I take on the role of Tech Lead, overseeing a development team. I perform these duties on-site with the Berlin team or remotely with an international team of developers.
touch361 ¶
Role: Startup Advisor
Industry: Business Intelligence Software
Period: 2019 – Now
I am a technical sparring partner for founders with marketing and business intelligence as their focus. The challenges we tackle here focus on data protection / DSGVO and the product development process with the technical service provider.
vitalfunktion GmbH ¶
Role: Startup Adivsor
Industry: Pharma Tech
Period: 2018 – Now
The startup’s main product is a really smooth-to-use app for medication intolerances. I am sparring with the founder Maximilian (pharmacist), weekly for product development and monetization. Currently, we have a solid number of several thousand MAU (Monthly Active Users) and refinance the app through fixed advertising cooperations in the pharmaceutical industry.
In addition, there is also a B2B variant (planned initially as a pivot) aimed at doctors and pharmacists. I developed the prototype in Material UI and still maintain the product today.
Fillter ¶
Role: Co-founder & CTPO
Industry: Social Media Tools
Period: 2021 – 2023
Fillter is a form for all social media creator requests. They link Fillter in their link tree, Instagram bio, or website. Through a unique questioning technique, the requests come as usual via email – only in good.
The tool is a joint venture with Felix and Oğuz. We all work hands-on as equal co-founders, with our individual skills, to bring the project to the world.
unixtime.app ¶
Role: Founder
Industry: Developer Tools
Period: 2022 – 2023
A tool designed for API developers to facilitate bulk timestamp conversion. The idea was born out of my work as a Tech Lead in an IIoT microservice context where data, coded as Unix timestamps, was plentiful. I sought to streamline my workflow, crafting a tool that let me bypass the laborious task of individually selecting timestamps for conversion in external services. Now, I can simply copy entire API requests into unixtime.app and view all timestamps directly within their context. The tool also allows me to capture screenshots of the conversions, useful for sharing in collaborative spaces like Slack or JIRA. What started as a straightforward HTML file has evolved into a full-fledged application for Mac and Windows and is now open source.
cloudlog ¶
Role: Solopreneuer Project
Industry: Developer Tools
Period: 2020 – 2021
Remote times necessitate remote tools. Cloudlog.dev is a tool designed for frontend developers. It allows them to stream the console.log
output from any remote browser in real-time directly into their own developer console.
Fotando GmbH ¶
Role: Founder and Chief Prototyping Officer
Industry: E-commerce
Period: 2018 – 2019
We had noticed that most photo printing vendors always send their customers to ugly, bloated, slow native apps, which in turn also always had ugly ad conversions as they sent users to the AppStore. So the challenge was clear: we need a customer journey where the user can upload, crop, and edit their photo in the mobile browser and then (after delivery) hang it on the wall (claim: from hand to the wall!). Technically, it worked great that way, too. However, at that time, the company slid into the first Corona wave shortly before it was financed. In retrospect: Pretty stupid – for all parties.
Native Studios UG ¶
Role: Technical Evangelist & Tech Lead (interim)
Industry: SaaS
Period: 2016 – 2019
I built several iterations of a prototype for the founders in 2016 and 2017 until they could convince backers and first customers with it.
Afterward, I was Tech Lead for product development and Technical Evangelist to convince customers of the startup’s technology and capabilities.
Mentoring ¶
I like to mentor and coach software engineers and first-time founders:
Appearances ¶
As an accomplished writer and public speaker, I’m always eager to share my insights and expertise with others. In addition to my own book, I’ve written numerous guest articles for top blogs and am a frequent conference speaker, comfortable addressing audiences of all sizes and backgrounds.
Talks ¶
- 2023: 🇩🇪 Shape Up: Die Kunst ständiger Risikominimierung in agiler Softwareentwicklung
- 2022: 🇺🇸 From Scrum to Shape Up – Grey Areas Dring Transit (Shape Up Practitioners Remote Meetup S2E2)
- 2022: 🇺🇸 CTO Craft Con Winter 2022 – Shape Up Experiments for a Scrum Team
- 2015: 🇩🇪 Prototyping digitaler Geschäftsmodelle – Übertragen auf Marketing / PR
- 2015: 🇩🇪 „Was bringt mir das eigentlich?“ – Ansätze zur Bestimmung des Social-Media-ROI v0.1
- 2015: 🇩🇪 The Secret of ROI – Was der Marketing Manager 2015 hören will
- 2014: 🇩🇪 What’s Up, WhatsApp? Wie man die strategische Nuss WhatsApp knacken kann.
- 2014: 🇩🇪 Das Ende der Homepage, wie wir sie kennen.
- 2014: 🇺🇸 Mobile Messenger – New Ways And Chances For Companies
- 2013: 🇩🇪 Parse: Backend as a Service
- 2013: 🇩🇪 Wie effektiv sind mobile Social Media Kampagnen?
- 2012: 🇩🇪 GET statt POST: Daten aus dem Open Graph lesen
- 2011: 🇩🇪 Fixing Facebook API – Die schönsten Workarounds
Podcasts ¶
- 2022: 🇩🇪 Shape Up – Für alle, die Scrum nicht mögen – mit Klaus Breyer
- 2015: 🇩🇪 WhatsApp für Unternehmen – Macht das Sinn?