"I am passionate about building initial ideas into full-fledged businesses." This first sentence of 's LinkedIn profile distills the essence of his character and testifies to his professional success in the entrepreneurial world since the year 2000.
His career began at the end of 1993 in Germany with Mars, one of the giants of the food sector, as a product manager. In 2000, at a time when innovation as a growth driver and the start-up spirit as we know it today were not necessarily characteristic of the Luxembourg economic environment, he embarked on his first entrepreneurial adventure by creating the online bank Internaxx, a joint venture between the Banque générale du Luxembourg and the Toronto-Dominion Bank.
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"With his talent, he would have had no trouble climbing the ladder quickly within the institution, without taking any risks... It was still courageous to launch himself into the world of online business at the time," recalls a former colleague from the BGL, still in admiration. It was the time when the dot-com bubble had just burst.
He takes Talkwalker from start-up to international company in 10 years
Glaesener left the company in 2010, one year after its sale, but he did not rest on his laurels. Interested in business intelligence, he met Christophe Folschette and Thibaut Britz, who had launched Trendiction in 2008, at Technoport. Three years later, Talkwalker, a social media management tool based on online reputation analysis, was born from this almost chance meeting.
Under the leadership of Glaesener, Talkwalker grew from a start-up to an international company with some 450 employees in Europe, the United States and Asia within a decade. In 2021, Glaesener stepped down from his operational role to chair the Talkwalker board, which is now headed by .
Once again, the 'entrepreneurial truce' was short-lived, in fact, almost non-existent. At the beginning of January 2022, Glaesener announced that he was joining forces with Benjamin Tillier and Daniel Schneider to create the real estate platform Fiveoffices. Launched at the ICT Spring event in June, this platform brings together owners of unoccupied office space and companies looking for short-term business premises.
Glaesener is involved in a project that is international in scope--Paris, London, New York…--and above all that is in tune with the times, that anticipates future challenges--in this case, the increased need for flexibility that the recent pandemic has helped to highlight, but also the need to reduce the environmental footprint of real estate--and that offers solutions to the recurring ambition of maximising financial resources on both the tenant and the lessor side.
While in the case of Fiveoffices, Glaesener does not hold the position of CEO, there is little need to worry about his schedule. He has been a member of the Fedil Board of Directors since 2019 and has also recently joined the Board of Directors of Governance.com, which he has accompanied for the past two years as a member of the advisory board.
Talkwalker's success story has sometimes been compared to the myth of Steve Jobs, who launched the giant Apple from his parents' garage. There are certainly some common traits between Glaesener and many successful entrepreneurs, including his discretion in the media and elsewhere.
Without getting carried away by his success, Glaesener continues on his way with a determined step, even at a run. It will be interesting to watch his journey over the next 10 years. See you in 2032!
This article was first published in French on . It was translated and edited in English for Delano.
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