About

I’m Jakob. I studied architecture at TU Berlin and then mostly built other things: brands, a few businesses, and the pages that sell them. The training stuck, though. Planned like good architecture, finished with taste.

Before university I spent a year at a school in Shimanto, Japan, and later a year volunteering at a high school in Captain Cook, Hawaii. On the side I worked on a coffee farm, which is how coffee became my first business. Back in Berlin I co-founded Mykona, a brand for directly traded coffee, and NoMoreSleep, a coffee bar in Berlin-Mitte with eleven people on the team. We sold the brand to a bigger roaster in 2012.

After that I did the marketing for an artist studio building in Berlin until all 120 studios were rented, and then spent several years at Deutsche Telekom. I started as a graduate trainee, worked on communication for a board member in Bonn, launched the T-Talks speaker series in the company lobby and later led marketing at hubraum, Telekom’s tech incubator in Berlin. Next to that I taught marketing at a cooperative university in Baden-Württemberg and mentored teenagers at Startupteens.

Sina and I also built Hausjungle together, a small shop for Japanese kokedama plants. It found a buyer, too.

In 2021 we left Berlin for the mountains of South Tyrol. For five years I led content and marketing at a company in Bolzano. I gave notice this summer, my last day is December 31.

Most of my time now goes into Okay Grazie, my small marketing studio. Every Sunday I sendFrom Europe with Love, and together with Sina I make Field Trip, seven printed letters from wherever we’re living. In October we left Merano with our three kids. Portugal first, after that we’ll see.

Everything I’ve shipped, sold or buried is onDeploy or Die. And if you’re building something, write me: jakob [at] flingelli.com