Sep 17 2008
Greetings to everyone
Hi! I am Carsten ¿ co-founder of LTLprints.com. Originally I am from Dresden ¿ a lovely city in Germany. I got my Diploma in Business Administration [basically an MBA equivalent] from HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. After my experiences working for companies like Nestle, SAP, and Roland Berger, I quickly realized that I was not made for the corporate world. The founder of spreadshirt, Lukasz Gadowski, (often considered as one of the fathers of entrepreneurship in German), is an HHL graduate as well. Having worked on a project for Spreadshirt as an MBA student Lukasz offered me the position of COO at spreadshirt USA upon my graduation. In 2005 I left Germany, bringing Spreadshirt.com to the U.S. market. In 2006 I became the country manager USA. I look back now with pride at the tremendous success we have had establishing spreadshirt as the U.S. leader in quality and the global leader in the custom apparel world.
In 2007, I got my feet wet as an entrepreneur with my own company CP Venture Consultants. Here at CP Venture Consultants, Kendall and I consulted various start-ups, in the US, Germany and Russia. With Spreadshirt, as well as my consultancy experience, I learned one thing quickly; before anything, team really matters. Only when smart people work 110% dedicated a common goal you have a chance to succeed as an entrepreneur. So finding the right partners one can trust and who are in the same career phase like oneself really mattered to me when thinking about what company to launch next. In this token, I am happy to have met Kendall back in 2006. We became friends over time, room mates in NYC, and ultimately decided to launch our own company together: LTLprints.com. We believe that our overlapping career paths, backgrounds and mindsets are the right basis for working together.
There is a lot more on my mind so keep on checking back from time to time.
BTW: You can send me an email any time to cpe at ltlprints.com!
September 18th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Glad you’re blogging too! I just went back and saw your comment — welcome back to the U.S… our financial system crashed just to celebrate your return!
I hope you and Kendall will share the story one day of how you met; it seems like it was a really lucky thing and has grown into a great partnership.
Let’s definitely get together soon. I’ll be in NYC this Saturday, but otherwise just let me know when.
September 18th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Hi Powen, well let’s hope the financial guys resurrect the situation soon.
Good point. Kendall and I will make a post on how we met.
NYC on Saturday - sounds great. Kendall and I might actually go, too - it’s Steuben Parade: http://www.germanparadenyc.org/
September 19th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Yup, that’s what I’m going to as well! Kendall told me he might flake out though… sad. Email me if you do end up going, we should grab a beer together.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Hi Carsten,
gute New, die man da liest. Wünsche dir, euch alles gute für den Staur up.
Grüße
Thomas
September 19th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Hi Thomas,
welch Ueberraschung von Dir zu lesen. Danke fuer die Wuensche. Wie geht es Dir? Noch in Leipzig bei Amazon?
Meld’ Dich mal wieder!
Carsten
September 19th, 2008 at 9:26 am
@ Powen: I guess i’ll go. it was great fun last year. We’ll for sure line up in NYC over the phone: 724 989 4689.
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
[...] promised in my introductory post I want to give you some more insight on me. This post will deal a little bit with me being a native [...]