Philipp Katzenstein

I am a Portuguese/German competitive sports enthusiast who has been living in Amsterdam for over 5 years. My passion for sports includes sports like surfing, football, padel, although I rarely say no to any game. I enjoy reading books and consider myself highly curious, motivated, and from coming from team sports enjoy a lot working within a team.

Additionally, my engineering background has instilled in me organizational skills, a solution-driven mindset, and a strong motivation to understand complex problems.

COO (interim CPO/CFO) – Frank Energie

Setup of Operations Department

• Hiring new members and growing team from 1 to 4
• Setting up department structure into 2 domains (invoicing and debtors management) and setting up of new working methodology structure (shifts, processes, procedures and documentation)
• Scope of department: >30k invoicing/month and >20 Mio EUR/year

Setup of IT Product Development Department

• Moving IT development in-house (previously outsourced).
• Hiring new members and growing team from 1 to 5.
• Setting up of structure for working methodology (Scrum Agile, processes, procedures and documentation)
• Scope of department: Responsible for website (traffic 1 Mio > monthly), app (>30k clients) and back office tool (>30 internal employees).

Setup of Finance Department

• Hiring first finance internal employee and going from 2 external employees to 1 internal.
• Collaborating on creation of new budget (sheet used for general meeting) and budget sessions with shareholders

Setup of Customer Support Department

• Setting up of structure for working methodology (processes, procedures and documentation)
• Improvements on service to improve external visibility of the company. Doubled incoming positive feedback on several rating websites

Other achievement/tasks include

• By introducing several risk measures reduced bad debt per customer by up to 5x, to achieve lowest % outstanding amount in the energy market
• Successfully prepared and held general meetings with shareholders in which budget, roadmap and KPI’s were approved.
• Communicating with regulators (ACM, DNB)
• Project Management (International expansion, Smart Charging for EV’s and others)

Product Tribe Lead – DEGIRO (10/2021 – 05/2022)

• Developing the right strategies and tactics to deliver desired business outcomes and to determine what work needs to get done, how much to invest in which efforts, and how to prioritize opportunities
• Aligning and communicating with C and top management on product business roadmap and department structure
• Reorganizing IT development teams to better scale for newly merged company (up to 30 team members)
• Working together with engineering and product design teams to define KPIs and vision

Product Owner – DEGIRO (09/2020 – 10/2021)

• Responsible for 2 Product Team consisting of engineers and designers (approx. 15 people)
• Aligning with business stakeholders on requirements and translate them into a prioritized backlog
• Creating structure to achieve the product roadmap goals

Risk Manager – DEGIRO (09/2018 – 09/2020)

• Monitoring and manage trading within retail and professional accounts
• Managing margin and credit risk, identify and mitigate operational risk
• Monitor and manage payments and bank transfer.

Trading Assistant – DEGIRO (09/2017 – 09/2018)

• Within a compliant and transparent framework, monitoring the effective running of the trading system, providing clients with various financial instruments and market data solutions, and monitoring portfolios with a high standard of customer service

Business Manager – PrimeIT Consulting (09/2016 – 09/2017)

• Support and preparation of client meetings, development of marketing materials
• Sales and negotiation with clients from Portugal and Germany
• Lead meetings on business trips both in Portugal and Germany
• Manager of team of 10 consultants in 3 distinct projects worth up to 1.2 million €/year

Integrated MSc in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering – Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCT)

• Final GPA: 15/20 (average grade of the class: 13/20)

Master Thesis - University of Twente (Erasmus) (2016 (5 Months)

• Cost Estimation for Chemical Processes
• Supervisors: Prof. Dr. J. P. Lange (Shell – Principal Research Scientist) and Prof. Dr. S. R. Kersten
• Final Grade: 8.5 / 10

Master Studies - Université Pierre Marie et Curie/ESPCI (Erasmus) (2015 (5 Months))