Andrè Welponer

From the Alps to… pitch decks

I grew up in South Tyrol, a small region in Northern Italy where people speak German, eat Italian food, and spend an unreasonable amount of time explaining where exactly South Tyrol is (thank you, Jannik Sinner, for making this last part a bit easier).

Most of my childhood revolved around ice hockey. I left home at 14 to pursue it more seriously and eventually became an Italian champion. It taught me a lot about competition and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

My first taste of business

My interest in business started somewhat accidentally. In high school, I got into buying and reselling limited sneakers. What began as an excuse to avoid having to look for a summer job turned into a five-figure trading operation and my first lesson in markets: scarcity matters, distribution matters, and people behave surprisingly irrationally over a pair of Jordans.

Around the same time, I started investing in public tech companies, which sparked a broader fascination with technology and finance. I naturally assumed I had discovered a rare investing talent. The markets have since provided some useful additional data points.

Becoming an operator

Before moving into venture, I wanted to understand what building companies actually felt like. That led me to three Founder’s Associate roles across startups and some of Europe’s fastest-growing scale-ups, working on everything from operations and strategy to AI automation and whatever problem happened to be most annoying that week.

Along the way, I studied Business Administration in Liechtenstein, wrote my thesis on European venture capital, moved to London for a Master in Management at London Business School, and spent time living and working across a slightly excessive number of European cities.

At Notion

At Notion, I cover DACH, Southern Europe, France and Benelux, looking for ambitious founders building products where the first reaction is somewhere between “that’s obvious” and “why didn’t this exist already?”

Outside Notion

Outside of work, there’s a good chance I’m travelling to see friends who are scattered across far too many cities, hunting down great food, keeping myself fit in the gym, or hiking in the Dolomites back home (objectively the most beautiful place in the world).