Venture Athlete & International Expansion Expert | Thriving as Generalist in a Specialized Economy

I’m Dominik, founder, athlete, & creator. A proud generalist. This is my story: 

For the last 7 years, I helped bootstrap one startup from 0 to 1M in revenue and built the international business from scratch for one of Europe’s fastest growing EdTech companies (50 -> 240 employees in my three years there).

All while competing at the highest level of the beautiful sport of Lacrosse, including an appearance for the German National Team at the 2022 World Games (the Olympics’ little brother).

While my professional achievements may seem more impressive on paper, representing Germany on an international stage is the feat that I’m most proud of.

I wasn’t very athletic up until my mid-twenties. Very little talent, but a lot of injuries to make up for it.

Until one day, I started working with a personal trainer. He helped me break down the fundamentals I needed to fix.

I worked hard, and I worked consistently. Showed up to every practice, every gym session. Did my recovery & mobility work daily.

4 years later, I made the national team roster.

The potential was in me. But it needed help unlocking.

Throughout my entire career, I’ve also helped humans unlock their potential, just in different ways:

- By teaching people in rural Rwanda and Brazilian homeless shelter how to make glasses for less than $1, and how to build a business around it
- By bringing unemployed nurses from Italy to Germany and teaching them German, opening a completely different career path for them
- By expanding the leading operating system for schools throughout Europe, so that education becomes more digital and thus accessible
- By writing about my experiences online and sharing them with the world

In late 2023, I made the decision to quit my cozy, well-paid, full-time job that fit my profile perfectly.

I'm on a mission to build my own portfolio career - and help others to unlock theirs. Join me on my journey towards building a portfolio of cashflow-positive, impact-driven businesses.

These businesses have one goal: help others unlock their potential. Just like my personal trainer did for me.

I wish that some of the best portfolio company owners turned creators had documented their journey from day 1, and not retrospectively.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I write for generalists like myself, who want to make a living in a specialized economy without specializing themselves. 

You can do more than one thing in your life. 
Let’s design that life together. 

Sign up for my newsletter here: www.dominiknitsch.com/newsletter

Dominik Nitsch

The cool thing about a portfolio career: you can literally just do things. Like, star in a Prime Video series. 

The guys from Maxton Hall needed some people who actually play Lacrosse to play in the series. Shooting was in Berlin. So I took 2 days off and became the oldest high schooler you'll ever see. (and had to keep my helmet on at all times 😂)

Would I do it again? Probably not.
Was it fun? Absolutely. 

PS – wanna build your own portfolio career where you do more than just one thing? Download the Portfolio Career Playbook here: https://lnkd.in/dGZaPsrv

Founder @ Generalyst | building talent infrastructure for early-stage startups | 1,163 generalists read my newsletter to future-proof their career

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When I graduated from university, I was the perfect business-school cliché. 

Top 11% at TUM.
760 GMAT.
Ran a student org with 120 people.
Startup experience at a massively scaling company (Flix). 

What do you do as high-potential graduate? It felt like I had two options: 
1. Apply to McKinsey, BCG, or Bain. 
2. Apply to Siemens, Allianz, or BMW. 

That's what everyone did. It was the safe, high-status, well-paid career path. And at 22, I just didn't know any better. 

But here's the uncomfortable truth: 
Following the beaten path is intellectually lazy.

You don’t have to think about what you actually want.
You just copy-paste the life everyone around you is living.
Go to business school. Get a master’s. Work in consulting. Buy real estate.

But in the end, by doing so, you postpone the only decision that actually matters:
→ What do I want to spend my life building?

To answer this, you don't need more information. You need action. 

The beaten path is paved with other people’s dreams.
Build your own instead.

(Photo: me, fall 2016, on my way to a consulting interview)

Gonna be a busy week at Generalyst: 

- 3 startups pitching to a pool of ~80 hand-picked candidates (feels like quality on both sides is going up)
- launching a new product (in beta) on Wednesday 
- 10 in-person meetings with startups, candidates, partners 
- fully onboarding a new team member 

Guess the late evening sessions (photo below) paid off. 

LFG. 🔥

PS – 2 out of 3 of the positions being pitched currently aren't published anywhere else (in case you needed another reason to apply). 

PPS – just kidding, this was at 16:45, Berlin is just dark af in the winter

In 2025, Generalyst was just for full-time hires. In 2026, we’re adding internships. ⬇️

Starting today, you can hire interns via Generalyst. 
Why? 

Throughout my career, I’ve always had interns. Having them on board was awesome; some of them developed into close friends. 

Finding them was the difficult part. I remember vividly scouring university Facebook groups and posting my internship ad everywhere, with little resonance. If you don’t have a strong brand or infinite time, this intern sourcing can get kind of … tedious. 

I would’ve needed this back then. And I’m not the only one: when several companies started reaching out about hiring generalist interns, we HAD to do something. 

At the same time, throughout my studies, I would’ve needed to hear that it’s actually possible to build a career as a generalist. Even when I graduated, I believed that the only valid way to build a career was to go into consulting or join one of the Munich corporate behemoths. 

Little did I know that startups are a possibility, and that jobs where you can do a little bit of everything exist. 

Today, I believe the future belongs to generalists. This message needs to reach not just people actively looking for a full-time job, but also students. And by opening up the hard-to-navigate world of early-stage startups to them, I hope to spread the gospel of generalism. 

Here’s how it works: 

1. Aspiring interns apply to the Generalyst Internship Program 
2. We screen all applications and pick the very best (using our expertise from ~2.5k screened CVs)
3. Those create a profile in the Generalyst Internship Database 
4. As a founder, you can access this database (if you agree to our terms) – it includes everything you need to know and then some
5. You can request an interview with the candidate directly and set it up within 1-2 days 

From a company perspective: 
→ skip the entire job posting draft
→ skip the screening of 100s of applications (we do this for you)
→ skip the guessing game of who’s available now vs. later 

From an intern perspective: 
→ apply once, get several interviews
→ see companies you would’ve never found otherwise
→ access help from professional generalists 

Sounds too good to be true? Maybe, we’re just launching this thing. Probably will have a few kinks that still need to be worked out. 

But as with the Generalyst Flagship Program (see what we did there?), we’re trying to create an offer that’d be stupid not to take. 

For aspiring interns: apply via the link in the comments below. 
For founders looking to hire: email me (dominik at generalyst dot de) and I’ll send you the sales deck. 20% discount on your first internship hire if you comment on this post. 

LFG.

Simple trick that’ll 10X your networking ability: the “to-see list”. 

I keep an Apple Note with different cities in the world. Whenever I meet someone online that I want to meet, I simply add them to the list. 

And when I eventually come to the city, I simply reach out to all people on the list. Usually leads to 3-4 in-person meetings that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. 

Feel free to add me to yours for Berlin. (Or shoot me a DM if you wanna be on mine :)).

In my bubble, it’s become so sexy to be an entrepreneur that it’s almost cringe not to be one.

That’s not healthy – it pushes people into entrepreneurship who really shouldn’t be in entrepreneurship for their own sake.

If you value security, sleeping through the night and not waking up drenched in sweat, being able to buy nice things and watching movies on an airplane (like everyone around me as I’m typing these lines), then being an employee is absolutely, perfectly fine!

At the end of the day, most entrepreneurs do what they do simply because they can’t be bothered to do anything else (such as being stuck working for someone else).

I’ve tried the employee thing, it’s nice to close the laptop at the end of the day and say “not my f**king problem”, to receive a salary no matter how good or bad your performance was.

I realized: I just f**king hate following instructions that I don't agree with. I don't want to sit in meetings where I shouldn't be. I will not make decisions that are beneficial to investors and bad for everybody else involved. 

This doesn’t make an entrepreneur better or worse than someone who prefers the full-time job.
It’s just .. different.

This is the story of how I accidentally ended up working for one of Germany’s fastest growing startups (and how you can do it, too): 

During my studies, I was so busy with running a student org, playing Lacrosse, bartending, and sometimes studying, that I somehow didn’t see the need to do an internship throughout my first four semesters. Going into my fifth semester of Bachelor’s, I still didn’t have one. 

And it started to become problematic: a lot of applications were rejected because by that time, I should’ve already done one. 

One guy from my enactus team mentioned that the startup he’s working for always hires interns. They did like, long-distance buses. Flix or something 

I thought, man, I hate long distance buses. But out of desparation gave it a shot anyway – and got the invitation to interview. 

For the interview (it was a business development internship), I thought about what else Flix could do. At the time, I was going to a lot of festivals, and thought: man, if you don’t have a car, going to festivals sucks. Why not implement bus lines? 

Cool. Did that. Went to the interview. 

Then, the interviewer walked in. 

Wrist full of FESTIVAL BANDS. 

Oh f**k yeah, I had struck gold. She loved the idea, I got the internship, didn’t do anything for a few weeks besides moving boxes around on PPT slides, and eventually got reassigned to a new division. 

Together with Dominik Eggert, I started building out FlixCharter - a bus rental company inside Flix. Kind of in a Founder’s Associate function, learning from an experienced founder. 

That, in turn, gave me the confidence to start my own company after my studies. But had it not been for this internship, I might well have been a management consultant today. 

A seemingly random internship changed the entire trajectory of my career. 
I got lucky to find the right startup at the right time. 

So now, I want to re-engineer that luck for others like me, early in their career, not sure what they want to do. 

That’s why last week, we’ve launched the Generalyst Internship Program. Application-only, and free. 

We’re reversing the internship search process: instead of you applying to internships, hiring managers reach out to you. 

Apply today: https://lnkd.in/dVe7TGR3

PS – looking to hire a generalist intern? Email me at dominik at generalyst dot de. 
PPS – thank you, Tamara Christoph, for believing in me back then and making that offer! 🤝

Advice for anyone who wants to become a Founder’s Associate / Venture Builder: 

The best thing you can do is to show that you can build something yourself. 

A side hustle. 
A website. 
A social account. 

Entrepreneurs appreciate other entrepreneurs who don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk. 

Building something yourself is the best entrepreneurial education, no matter what business schools are trying to sell you. 

PS: Have built something, however tiny it may be, yourself? Consider applying to Generalyst. Link is in my bio.

Last October, I spent a few hours playing Lacrosse against pro players from Canada. Here's what it taught me about B2B sales: 

(like, actually)

Chatting with Owen Grant (first-team all-star in college, now field and box pro), he told me: “when I got to the pros, practice was completely different – the focus was much higher on nailing the fundamentals perfectly, instead of running complex plays or doing crazy stuff individually.”

Running a business feels very similar: it comes down to making something people want, and then telling them about it. 

This doesn’t mean that it’s easy (it’s not); just simple.

Stop using complex 17-step AI-based outreach sequences (that you have to comment, idk, “AI overlords” or something to receive in your DMs). 

Focus on nailing the fundamentals.

The Demotivational industry with pragmatic questions

Chief Marketing of Respect for Foreign Markets

UnTitled...

PTSD recovery from workplace hazard
Pivoted from "Chief executive" to "chief marketing" - Who knows the difference in job descriptions anyway? 😉

Sadly it took a long time to recover my sense of humour and process grief (WIP) while also showing my journey - transparency - shame is a complicated problem.

I try everyday to share knowledge so people don't suffer from gaslighting as I did. Building supportive communities and hopefully repurposing the status quo use cases of "social media" with no accountability of outcomes or duty of care. - Workplace

IMO we don't need more published research. We need to have the courage to tell our stories without fearing intimidation and retaliation - supportive cultures and communities - not for fame but for people to know how to recognise it and not endorse it, act.

Titles and ranking are a problem for dignity and respect. Renaming something does not imply "respect" in practice sadly. 

Shared accountability

" Chief Marketing " of recovering from being bullied (Health break)

Sprinklr

Storyteller ❤️Marketing

B2B2C 


Designed and deployed a bidirectional modern channels CRM escalation framework for Microsoft, Salesforce and Zendesk connectors by incorporating data minimization and lawful basis for processing under GDPR


Culture (People) first: Growth
Learning and Empowered teams : 
Diverse and inclusive non-negotiable personal operating principle. 

GTM leader for CRM connectors. ( Zendesk , Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce )
Blueprints designer. 

There is no point in research, if we cannot practically test our assumptions, learn and grow.

Integrity is not negotiable.
Transparency is how I build trust.
Consultative and challenger leadership style
Marketing is a competency NOT a department 
Giving people opportunity is what brings me joy and satisfaction


- Product marketing
- Service Design
- Operational Design
- Systems Thinking
- Technology/ Business Translator
- Scrum Master
- Platform Architect
- Digital Business Consultant
- Digital product management
- Contract negotiation
- Global rollout proposals and execution
- Consultancy and solutions for department cross-functional unification
- Revenue generation exploration and new business models
- Benchmarking - Competitive analysis
- Crisis management design
- Influencer marketing and UGC consultancy and design
- Distribution strategy
- Workshop and learning and development facilitation 
- Integrations and GTM track record of scaling products globally 
- User research
- Track record of discovery, designing and implementing revenue generation solutions with AI
- Track record of discovery, designing and implementing digital-first risk management programs at scale across EMEA
- Identified audit and role definition gaps across CRM connector lifecycle, contributing to information security readiness strategies.
- Developed product lifecycle and compliance workflows mapped to ISO Annex A controls (incident management, human resources security)

Technical Programme Manager

JeffreyM Consulting

Digital Marketing Services Lead Consultant - Software Implementation Services

Team Lead Digital Marketing Services

Led the service design and implementation of a high-stakes ESG compliance programme for Uber EMEA, focused on real-time escalation of safety incidents to Uber leadership to be reported to law enforcement or mitigated via company policies for consumer protection. 
Integrated operational controls aligned with Programme requirements ISO/IEC 27001 A.16 (Information Security Incident Management) and A.18.1.4 (Protection of Personally Identifiable Information), ensuring legal reporting obligations were met across multiple jurisdictions. 
Positioned the initiative as a model for global Business Continuity Management (BCM) scalability.

Digital Marketing Services Consultant - Managed Services

Spredfast

International Enablement Onboarding and Education

EMEA Senior Customer Support and Success

EMEA Customer Support and Success

Oracle

- PMK
- Supported portfolio of Marketing content/references/ PR/ Events for Taleo (Recruitment - Talent acquisition) and all Oracle Managed Services value proposition

Goal: Develop marketing assets from existing customers to drive sales

Product Marketing Specialist

Roche

Diagnostics section - Diabetes care
Preventive marketing campaigns
Diagnostics medical tech and supportive services for critical patience (children and elderly)

Marketing and Product Service Assistant

Intell Psy Group

Front desk officer

Johnson & Johnson

Operations specialist

Customer Technical Support Agent

"Style is the answer to everything
Fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without style
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art" - Charles Bukowski – Style

Holistic cross-disciplinary experience design : digital & analogue 

Accessibility advocate through engagement


All my posts, communication are:

A experimental style of conversational and engagement portfolio

Hypo: 
- support understanding of the candidate outside of the possibly gamified standard candidate user journey (signalling) 
- limited time to assess a candidate/partnership

An invitation for candidates to feel comfortable with who they are, their manner of speaking, their preferences. 

A celebration of self expression we should feel more comfortable with. 

A way to show how a candidate thinks. 

A style to have the courage to be wrong publicly.

A style showing how Linkedin engagement and conversation can be a new way to learn from a wide variety of communities: dialogue, questions, diverse creative references, essays of posts, refinement of market research with industry communities. 

Not limited to Conways Law to communicate and learn or express to colleagues/ other communities. 

Micro-learning:  test how we learn every day from people around us; should not be limited to learn only from companies we were fortunate or unfortunate  to work for. 

Emergence can happen in many contexts. We can learn from some of our favourite authors through dialogue.


 My profile :

- A reflection of my personal professional interests

- exploration of how people react or behave on social networks (especially a professional one)

- complementing practical know-how for domain expertise developed since 2015 for modern social channels and background studies on Foreign Commercial Economic affairs

Interests: 

Design Driven Development, MedTech, EdTech, Tech sector, business models, scalability, ecosystems, business development through crowdsourcing, changing the recruitment and operational design of enterprises.

Life-long learner

Use of language

Arts and sciences need each other. 

Consulted on social media strategies, internal operational design for multinationals  since 2015 in a wide variety of verticals and geographies. 

- sales growth-oriented
- sustainability
- learning and playing
- social anthropology
- behavioural economics
- policies at scale and pilots
- black markets , distributed systems
- experimental educational styles
- cross-domain integration, 
- platforms 
- philosophy
- market research




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🐈‍⬛ Ana Mariș

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