My name is Eve Buechner. While I’m not exactly a number crunching girl, I love to inspire people and work with them to create new ideas to bring them to the market.
From my humble beginnings in East Germany I learned that teamwork makes you stronger and the moment the Berlin Wall came down I found myself in the driver’s seat to become an enthusiastic entrepreneur. I believe that he best companies are founded because the founders want to change the world. If you decide to found a company, you may develop one way of thinking but you have many options.Exploring those options and then making decisions is a genuine passion in my life!
I started my career at the renowned Henri-Nannen-Schule in Berlin and Hamburg. From there I progressed as a correspondent and host for several German TV stations like Sat.1, n-tv, N24.
In 2007, following my television career, I started my first company called switch.me, which connected viewers and live TV hosts by Internet and webcam.
Since 2011 I am CEO and founder of the venture capital company quantumReality (qR). I gathered a lot of experience on how to invest capital and knowledge in other companies.
Part of qR’s portfolio is refund.me, a claiming platform and mobile app that helps air passengers to get their compensation from airlines following flight delays or cancellations. The procedure is highly automated and reinforced by refund.me ‘s Europe wide network of passenger rights legal experts. The HQ of refund.me is Palo Alto, CA, where I live part-time.
I also enjoy living in Miami right at the beach and escaping the cold season in Potsdam, Germany. Potsdam, a beautiful mellow place with Prussian castles and wild lakes, is just 20 minutes from Berlin – a kind of German Silicon Valley. For me the combination of both worlds is the right mix of having the German sense of being precise and picky and the refreshing American “getting things done” mentality. Both attitudes are needed, they are complementary… one is needed to get off the ground, the other is helpful when it comes to precise execution and implementation of ideas.
As the CEO and founder of refund.me I know the many aspects of business and as mother of three boys I know how to reconcile on a daily basis.
Founding a company is really hard. Most things are not easy.You will need to make hard decisions.If you don’t believe in your mission, quitting is easy. Most of the best entrepreneurs won’t quit, they believe in their mission.This is really important.
All that keeps me up to date with all facets of life and that in turn helps to constantly reinvent myself… a key strategy of being successful.
Awards
- New Faces Award 1998 – Best newcomer host
- Start-up App 2013 Winner and Best Consumer App Finalist at Appsters Awards
- SABRE Red Appy Award 2013 – refund.me