Michael Jurgen Garbade

Michael Juergen Garbade is a German American serial entrepreneur, engineer and author. He is known for founding several technology companies including, Education Ecosystem (previously known as Livecoding.tv, LiveEdu), a decentralized learning platform and Kyuda, an e-commerce cashback platform. Garbade has worked for Amazon General Electric, Rebate Networks, Photobucket, and Unicredit Group. He co-founded the venture-backed start-up Education Ecosystem. The company participated in the Y-combinator class of Summer 2015.
 
Education Ecosystem (LEDU) is a project-based learning platform that teaches students how to build real products in areas such as programming, game development, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, and blockchain.
 
Garbade is founder of Roundclock Investment and has a strong experience in the tech and blockchain industry and is involved with several tech and blockhchain startups. He is also a contributor writer for Business Insider, Opensource.com, Computerworld, Huffingtonpost, Tech in Asia, Dzone and others.
 
== Early life and education ==
Garbade was born in April, 1982 in Essen, Germany. He studied international management, technology & operations management and physics at the University of Mannheim, from 2003 to 2006. Garbade attended University of Kassel, Germany to complete his doctoral dissertation in venture capital financing and completed Dissertation Paper on "Differences in Venture Capital Financing of U.S., UK, German and French Information Technology Start-ups”. He completed entrepreneurship, software development and system dynamics courses at the University of Texas at Austin and University of Virginia, Richmond.
 
== Career ==
Garbade completed three internships, first at General Electric in corporate financial planning and analysis; and second from Unicredit Investment Banking in investment banking - mergers and acquisitions. He then joined Evionik Inc. to complete his third internship in financial planning and analysis. 
 
In 2006, he started his entrepreneurial career and started an e-commerce cashback platform, Kyuda with his college friends. Kyuda was similar to Rakuten.com but for the European market and offered 50% cashback to their customers who make purchases from their platform. After the company was sold in 2008, he in 2008 to join Amazon as a business finance manager, where he was responsible for managing data analytics and business intelligence of the company. During his time at the company, he has managed $1.5 billion budget and launched several new projects for Amazon’s retail, Kindle, and supply chain teams. 
 
Garbade also built the open source quiz application Bitcoinmillionaire to educate people on Bitcoin and blockchain.
 
He simultaneously worked for the Rebate Network as their operations manager for technology and merger and acquisitions. Rebate Networks has raised over $150M from the investors and had over $200 million annual run rate.Garbade managed portfolio companies in South America and Eastern Europe with annual revenue over $75 million. He drafted several M&A and investment contracts and negotiated deal terms with investors and founders. Garbade left Rebate Network and launched Education Ecosystem, a decentralized learning platform for learning technologies. The company received media attention n Techcrunch, CNN, Spiegel, Mashable, and Venturebeat after gaining thousands of active users in a short frame of time. It raised $12 million in funding and it is considered as Netflix for professional development.
 
== Others ==
Garbade is privately an angel investor and mentor to start-ups. He works with start-ups and helps them solve their critical problems. He speaks often at tech and blockchain conferences, meetups and hackathons. Garbade is involved with many non-profits and open source projects. He is a frequent judge at hackathons in the US, Europe and Asia.
 
== Recognition and awards ==
Garbade has been praised by the major media houses for building the Education Ecosystem. 
 
* 2017: Garbade was nominated for the 2017 People's Choice Award for “How to choose a PHP framework”.
* 2015: His company Education Ecosystem was selected as part of the Y-combinator class of Summer 2015 in Mountain View, California. 
* His company won a grant from the European Union Program Horizon.
 
== Events ==
Garbade has been featured in several conferences, meetups and panels.
Year 	Event 	Function 	Location 	Notes
2017 	New York EDTECH WEEK 2017 	Panel participant, speaker 	New York 	https://edtechweek.com/
2017 	Blockchain Expo Global, London 	Panel participant, speaker 	London, UK 	https://blockchain-expo.com/global/speaker/michael-garbade/
2018 	BlockShow Europe 2018 	Panel participant, speaker 	Berlin, Germany 	https://blockshoweurope.com/
2018 	Blockchain Expo Global, Santa Clara 	Panel participant, speaker 	Santa Clara 	https://blockchain-expo.com/global/
2018 	CoinAgenda Summit 	Panel participant, speaker 	Las Vegas 	http://coinagenda.com/
2018 	World Crypto Economic Forum (WCEF) 	Panel participant, speaker, Hackthon judge	San Francisco 	http://wcef.co/
2018 	Use Cases of Blockchain, Enterprise Blockchains, Industry networking	Panel participant, speaker 	Los Angeles 	https://www.meetup.com/education-ecosystem/events/254053439/
2018 	Education Ecosystem Meetup China 	Zoom Video speaker participation 	Guangzhou, China	https://medium.com/ledu-tokens/education-ecosystem-guangzhou-meetup-review-how-blockchain-education-can-impact-china-57daff66706
2018 	Seattle Blockchain 	Panel participant, speaker 	Seattle 	https://medium.com/ledu-tokens/ledu-at-blockchain-seattle-84330dc230b1
2018 	Blockchain Fest Boston 	Panel participant, speaker 	Boston 	https://medium.com/ledu-tokens/ledu-at-token-fest-77372e6d39a4
2018 	Post Token Fest Meetup 	Panel participant, speaker 	Boston 	https://www.meetup.com/Boston-Blockchain-Meetup/
2019 	Blockshow Las Vegas 	Panel participant, speaker 	Las Vegas 	https://medium.com/ledu-tokens/ledu-at-blockshow-americas-97519a70176
2019 	Bootcamp Open House w/ Education Eco... 	Panel participant, speaker 	San Francisco 	https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-to-become-a-blockchain-developer-bootcamp-open-house-w-education-ecosystem-anchainai-tickets-62027864011#
March 2020	South by Southwest SXSW 	 	Austin, TX 	https://schedule.sxswedu.com/2020/speakers/258925
https://schedule.sxswedu.com/2020/events/PP106982
https://schedule.sxswedu.com/2020/03/10/events/type/panel
https://schedule.sxswedu.com/2020/03/10/events
https://edsx20.mapyourshow.com/8_0/exhibitor/exhibitor-details.cfm?exhid=10166
https://edsx20.mapyourshow.com/8_0/floorplan/?st=keyword&sv=education-ecosystem&hallID=A&selectedBooth=booth~SUV%2029
 
== Bibliography ==
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*
 
== Personal life ==
Garbade can fluently speak and write English and German language. He has one child, Maxwell Liam Garbade who lives in California.
 
== In the media ==
Garbade has been frequently interviewed by the major media houses
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== References ==
 
==External links==
* Livecoding.tv
* LiveEdu.com
* Michael Juergen Garbade on Linkedin
 
Category:German American serial entrepreneur 
Category:Blockchain expert