Amiando Founder Departs After Earn-Out, As Eventbrite Eyes-Up European Growth

Well, that’s that. Prominent German entrepreneur Felix Haas, who started ticketing company Amiando and sold it to XING (Germany’s LinkedIn), has finished his earn-out period and is, as the phrase goes, out of here. Speaking exclusively to TechCrunch from Le Web London, he said “I’m going to fly planes for a bit. Then I’ll decide what to do.” (Haas flies light aircraft for fun).

In his stead comes Norbert Stockman, a seasoned manager in the ticketing industry, who becomes the new MD, and Julian de Grahl, currently a VP at XING.

Haas leaves in September with the other founders Dennis von Ferenczy, Sebastian Bärhold and Armin Bauer also off to “seek new challenges.”

It’s not amazingly auspicious timing for Amiando as the US-based Eventbrite has been scaling up in Europe recently. We understand Julia Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite is currently in London searching for a UK MD for their European office of 10 people and counting.

However, Amiando still has over 100,000 event organisers worldwide, including Facebook, BMW, UNESCO, Telefónica O2 – and the annual Le Web conference among them.

Meanwhile Haas, who has dabbled in Angel investing in the last few months, says he is probably going to avoid becoming a full-time Angel and stay in the ‘serial entrepreneur’ category.