The team behind Universe.
Universe is its own company: We build and operate the platform on which universities and companies run their courses, exams, and certificates. The institutions you see on this website are our customers and partners — not us.
Four partners, one product.
- Photo to follow
Prof. Dr. Mike Friedrichsen
Founder · Founder G-UDS
CV to follow.
- Photo to follow
Prof. Dr. Christoph Meinel
Founder · Co-founder G-UDS
CV to follow.
Prof. Dr. Alexander Holtermann
Founder · Product and platform
Alexander Holtermann has been building software for over forty years and has been teaching as a professor at several international universities since 2018 – including Entrepreneurship, Digital Transformation, Design Thinking, and Artificial Intelligence. In between, he led the IT operations of a bank, held management positions in Hong Kong, and founded several companies, including one that went public. At Universe, he is responsible for product and platform – and is also its first user: the instructor in the trial course on this website is himself. He sold his first software at the age of fifteen; since then, he has been working on the question of how people learn with machines.
MoreLess
After studying political science and law (including at the American University, Washington D.C., as a Fulbright scholar), his path led him through both worlds that converge in Universe: the technical – from developing touchscreen terminals for Deutsche Börse to leading IT operations at a bank – and the entrepreneurial, with roles as Managing Director in Hong Kong and founding companies in Germany, the USA, and Estonia. This was followed by an MBA, Ph.D., and DBA, as well as AI training at MIT.
As an author, he has published an extensive range of non-fiction and textbooks (Alien Intelligence, Somebody, and many more), including the series “Professor Digital explains …” on AI in everyday professional life. He summarizes the conviction behind Universe as follows: “Good teaching does not scale through more video, but through counterparts that respond and adapt to the individual.” As a speaker, he is at home on international stages for keynotes, where he talks about the relationship between humans and machines.
- Photo to follow
Holger Danowsky
Founder
CV to follow.