Certain question invariably come up during the first phase of getting to know someone. With this post, I want to give you the answers to the most frequently asked questions about me … so we can skip the small-talk and spend more time talking about interesting things when we meet.

What’s my work exactly?

I am the founder of NoGame – a technology company that supports singles with their offline dating lives.

Before that I was a software architect & full-stack developer at Mercedes-Benz Automotive Mobility (a corporate startup of the German car company Daimler). It took me a while to discover software and embrace it as my true calling though: In my earlier years , I was a PhD student of economics at Yale University, an independent documentary film maker, and a brand strategist at a marketing agency. You can read the whole story here.

Where am I from and what is my culture/religion?

I was born to an Indian mother and a German father. Growing up I spent a lot of time in India but nevertheless the only place in the world that really feels like home is Berlin. I do not have a strong national identity and celebrate the role of being a cultural outcast. I follow an eclectic tradition of Yoga and meditation developed by Shrii Shrii Anandamurti which has a lot of overlap with Hinduism and Buddhism.

How did I end up with all those career switches?

Until my mid-20s I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. So I simply took the biggest problem I saw and started working on that: global poverty. I studied economics, worked for Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee at J-PAL in India and subsequently enrolled in a PhD program at Yale University. During that time I found out that I was actually much more passionate about entrepreneurship, art and documentary film than about economics. So I dropped out of the PhD program and started exploring all these other avenues. I made a few films, worked at an advertisement agency and started coding at hackathons. With the help of friends and online education, I taught myself the ropes of web development and started realizing ideas for apps on the internet. Creating a piece of technology from a mere vision was clearly the most challenging, fun, meaningful and rewarding thing I had done until then. So at the age of 27 I finally decided to be a full-time software engineer and entrepreneur. Thanks to Van Gogh for the encouragement – he was the same age when he decided to become a painter and maybe I would not have done it without knowing that.

What are my favorite books and movies?

I created a list of all the books and a list of all the movies that I can remember having read/watched. I hope this gives you an additional insight into what has shaped my personality and thinking. I also added comments and ratings for the most impressive titles so you can derive recommendations for yourself. Let me know if there is something else I should read or watch!

Why am I obsessed with real-world interaction between strangers?

I believe that the progress of mankind depends on its ability to coordinate cooperation between people who do not know each other well. For this sort of cooperation to occur we need systems that allow strangers to trust each other and exchange values. I want to contribute to the development of such systems.

I am particularly interested in the exchange of immaterial values like attention, knowledge and love. I believe that these are becoming increasingly valuable as we enter an age of material and informational abundance.

We have already gotten quite good at interacting with strangers in virtual online worlds. But in the real world there are still huge opportunities for creating enriching interactions: The public spaces of the modern city often feel awkward and solitary and we still do not trust strangers enough to interact with them in those contexts. I have been obsessed with this problem ever since I was a teenager and have been working on it through various entrepreneurial projects throughout my youth. I dedicate my life to it.

Why do I have a personal website but no social media?

Social media distracts me from creating. When I was still on Instagram and Facebook I spent very little time creating content and a lot of time consuming it. It made me think about other people and their opinions way too much and it became a way to kill time when I was not motivated enough to do my life’s actual work.

I do like to express myself but I do not want to do it in an environment that is controlled by a company that has an incentive to make the experience addictive and lecherous. A personal website is a more appropriate online home for my ideas and experiences. You are always welcome to come in and check out what is going on in my life but there is no middle man trying to pull you in because he has put advertisement all over my walls.

I also believe the best way to understand the world is to interact with it directly. Books, movies and social media are fun and can be educative but ultimately they only allow you to see the world through someone else’s eyes or through heavy filters. To develop your own beliefs and gain conviction in them you need to experience things first hand and meet people in the real world.

Why do I write?

I recently discovered the work of David Perell and also read the biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Matthew McConaughey. It all made me realize that most people who change the world write a lot (even before they become famous!). There are three reasons I believe it makes sense for me to adopt this habit:

Writing improves my thinking. In fact, for me, real deep thinking can only happen when I write, because I cannot keep a long thread of logical thought just in my head without getting stuck or lost in circles. When I consolidate my existing thoughts through writing, I can also think further and have more advanced ideas when I am not writing.

Another benefit of writing is that it allows other people to access my ideas and my ideas to spread. I am building new products for new problems so I need people to hear about and understand my solutions for them to get adopted. Even if I do not see the changes that I envision in my own lifetime, someone else can build on my ideas and refine or implement them in the future.

And lastly, writing is a fun way to chronicle my life. It will make it easier for me to remember the excitement and spirit of my youth and tell the stories to my grandchildren. It will also be of immense help for whoever might decide to write a biography about me some day 😉