Principal engineer at Babbel · founder · Berlin
I'm a problem solver. Try me.
Getting people to use something is the hard part. That's my edge: contagious products, guerrilla launches, and out-of-the-box answers.
Things I have actually shipped: a real problem, an unusual solve, and people who showed up.
ThreadsCircles
2023Visualized your closest Threads connections as concentric circles. Built and launched in days, it caught fire: around 5M views in week one.
past projectiytemenü
2017–2026A campus survival guide for my old university: cafeteria menus, prices, transport and local services in one place. Built as a student, it ran for nine years and became how the whole area decided where to eat: students cycling through every year, staff, and the village next door. Its final, declining years alone reached 72K people and logged 510K taps to call a place.
shorten.club
2021Clubhouse was voice-only, so nobody could share a link. You cannot read a URL out loud to a room of mixed accents. So I turned links into 6-digit PINs you could simply say, like a Kahoot code. Built over one night, with real users on it inside 24 hours.
The right idea, launched the right way, travels.
Two of these are bigger than a weekend. One proven, one in progress.
Loop
Synthetic user testing: Loop runs AI-simulated users through a prototype, product or live site and shows where they click, hesitate and drop off: heatmaps, funnels and session replays, without waiting for real traffic. Early, but already a working product.
stayinloop.dev ↗Piconbello
A Web3 infrastructure and product company I co-founded. The validator and staking infrastructure we run across several blockchain networks secures over $150M in staked assets. Along the way I led the build of a zero-knowledge passport and identity system on Mina Protocol, taking novel ZK cryptography all the way to a working product.
piconbello.com ↗A habit more than a portfolio. A few worth a look:
German citizenship-test prep — clean, polished, still running
Insert log statements instantly while coding
Clickable relationship links in the AWS console
The reference list for behavior-driven development
Record browser interactions, get test code — no writing required
Compresses CLI output before it hits your AI's context window — zero dependencies
Three honest ways this tends to start — all of them can go AI-native.
Build it with you
Take an idea from zero to a shipped product, as a technical partner or embedded for a while. Product, engineering and the unglamorous market work.
co-found · embed · buildBuild something specific
A website, an app, an API, or a performance problem — scoped and shipped. AI-native by default, or we retrofit it. I run a dedicated AI-adoption practice for teams that want to move faster.
adoptnative.comBack what I build
I keep new products in motion and aimed at real users. If you back early builders, I am happy to share what I am working on.
early chats welcome