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.

Change Leadership, General Manager PFA @ Batgroup & Member of the Board @ Putzfrauenagentur

Leadership isn’t about volume.
It’s about clarity, confidence and direction when the pressure is on.

I partner with HR leaders, GMs and Executive Teams across MENA & Asia to strengthen leadership capability from the ground up. My work sits where strategy, people and day-to-day execution meet in service-driven organisations.

Most performance issues in hospitality, retail and education aren’t about effort.
They come from three gaps:

❌ Leaders promoted before they’re ready to lead
❌ Executive Teams pulling in different directions
❌ No clear pipeline or succession to stabilise performance

So my work covers both sides of the leadership equation:

Strategy & alignment for senior teams
Facilitated Strategy Days that help GMs and Executive Teams:
✅ Agree a small set of must-win priorities
✅ Translate those into a 90-day execution plan
✅ Build the clarity and focus teams need to perform
✅ Name the leadership behaviours that sustain results

Leadership development for emerging & mid-level managers
Practical, human-centred programmes that build the skills to lead through others, communicate with clarity and coach across cultures.

Coaching & capability building
1:1 and group coaching, Train-the-Trainer, and tailored L&D that strengthen the pipeline and reduce turnover.

Across 25+ years with Apple Retail, Swissôtel, St. Regis and service organisations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, one truth holds: engagement and commercial performance rise when leaders at every level know where they’re going and how to bring their people with them.

If you’re building your leadership pipeline or want stronger alignment at the top, I’m happy to explore how we can work together.

📞 Book a call: https://cal.com/jeffross

Jeff Ross

I’ve been quiet on LinkedIn for a few weeks.
Intentionally.

The end of 2025, especially early Q4, was demanding. Not just professionally, but mentally and emotionally too. So I chose to step back, spend time with family, and create some much-needed white space.

Here’s the thing we don’t talk about enough in leadership:

Growth doesn’t only happen in motion.
Sometimes it happens in pause.

Over the break, I did what I often encourage leaders to do, though many struggle to make time for:
• Reflect honestly on what worked (and what didn’t)
• Revisit priorities instead of blindly setting new goals
• Notice patterns in my own behaviour under pressure
• Ask better questions, rather than rushing to better answers

Self-awareness isn’t built in the middle of constant execution.
It’s built in moments of distance.

The leaders I see grow the most aren’t the ones who push hardest every quarter.
They’re the ones who regularly step back, recalibrate, and return with more clarity than noise.

As we step into 2026, my focus is simple:
Fewer reactions.
Clearer priorities.
More intentional leadership, starting with myself.

If you haven’t created space to reflect yet, consider this your reminder:
White space isn’t time lost.
It’s leadership work.

Here’s to a more conscious, grounded, and human year ahead.

Helping service brands align strategy, strengthen pipelines and deliver consistent performance | Strategy Days, L&D and coaching | MENA and Asia

People are not “human capital”.
And they are not “assets” either.

I keep seeing employees described this way in leadership, L&D, and wellbeing content.

I understand the origin of the term.
Historically, human capital described skills and capabilities built through investment, not the people themselves.

But the distinction has blurred.

Here is the line I think we need to redraw.

❌ People are not capital
❌ People are not assets

They are human beings who choose, every day, how much energy and judgement they bring to work.

Human capital is what grows through investment
Skills. Confidence. Capability. Leadership depth.

That growth comes from:
✅ training done properly, not tick-box
✅ coaching that changes behaviour
✅ managers who develop people, not just measure them
✅ time and safety to learn, practise, and think

That is where human capital lives.

Language shapes decisions.
Decisions shape culture.

If we want more human leadership, we should start by speaking like humans, not balance sheets.

Calling people “human capital” is already the problem.

If people are capital, then what are they?

Owned?
Optimised?
Written off when returns dip?

No serious leader believes this.
Yet the language sticks.

Here is a cleaner distinction.

People are not human capital.
People are not assets.

Human capital is the outcome of investment, not the object of it.

You build it when you:
✅ develop managers instead of promoting the best technician
✅ coach leaders instead of just reviewing them
✅ invest in learning instead of squeezing efficiency
✅ play the long game, not just the quarter

Strong organisations do not extract value from people.

They create conditions where capability compounds.

If your culture talks about people like inventory,
do not be surprised when engagement feels transactional.

Words are never “just semantics”.
They are shortcuts to how decisions get justified.

In fast growing organisations across the UAE, managers are often promoted quickly to keep pace with expansion.

What usually does not scale at the same speed is leadership capability.

New managers are suddenly expected to lead multicultural teams, absorb pressure from both sides, and deliver consistency under operational intensity.

With little preparation.

When that happens, managers compensate.

➡️ They over control.
➡️ They escalate everything.
➡️ They work longer hours instead of building capability.

❌ This is not a motivation issue.
❌ It is not a generational issue.
✅ It is a pipeline design issue.

Growth without leadership infrastructure creates silent pressure in the middle.
And silent pressure always leaks somewhere.

If you want scale without burnout, development cannot be assumed.
It has to be designed.

In the UAE and GCC, managers are expected to be decisive, inclusive, and steady, all at once.

When we don’t develop them for that reality,
pressure doesn’t disappear.

It concentrates.

Promoted for doing the job.
Stuck because you are still doing it.

The peer to manager transition is not a mindset problem.
It is a capacity design problem.

If nothing changes in how time, decisions, and responsibility are allocated, leadership never starts.

What I have seen work repeatedly is simple and structured:

✅ 30 percent doing the old tasks to stabilise
✅ 30 percent pairing and teaching to hand over
✅ 40 percent coaching, prioritising, removing blockers

For the first 60 days.

One rule makes or breaks it.
The handover must be scheduled.

If it stays informal, it does not happen.
Urgency will always win.

A promotion does not create leadership.
The moment you stop being the bottleneck does.

Question worth answering this week:
Which task will you stop doing by Friday, and who will learn it instead?

Training the peer-to-manager transition muscle

If a manager is still doing most of the work, you have not promoted a leader.
You have relabelled a high performer.

Leadership starts when decisions move down, accountability stays up, and capability is built deliberately.

Without that shift, organisations stay dependent on individuals instead of systems.

This is why middle management feels stretched in so many businesses.
The role changes, but the expectations do not.

❌ Titles do not create leverage.
✅ Design does.

✅ When leadership transitions are supported early, pressure reduces later.
❌ When they are ignored, problems surface quietly and expensively.

The question is not whether someone earned the promotion.
The question is whether the system changed enough to let them lead.

Coming up on one year since we moved back to the UAE.

So much has changed since we lived here nearly two decades ago, and a lot of that change has been really good.

I’ve seen owners of large companies walk the floor, greet employees by name, ask about their families, and mean it.

And then I’ve seen something else, in the same companies:
Middle managers who abuse power over the people under their care.

Not always loudly.
Sometimes it’s subtle:

❌ public shaming disguised as ‘standards’
❌ threats disguised as ‘performance’
❌ pressure passed down because ‘that’s how we do things here’

Here’s the part leaders don’t want to hear:

Culture doesn’t scale through the founder’s intent.
It scales through the manager’s habits.

And the numbers in MENA should make every owner pause:

Only 14% of employees are engaged, while 24% are actively disengaged.

46% are watching for or actively seeking a new job.

31% experienced anger ‘a lot of the day’ yesterday.

Only 25% are ‘thriving’ in life evaluation.

You can invest millions in brand, strategy, and service standards…

…but if a middle manager creates fear, distrust, and turnover, your business pays for it twice:

in retention + recruiting costs
in inconsistent service + customer experience

Gallup has a brutal line leaders should sit with:

Managers drive most of the variance in team engagement.

So the fix isn’t ‘hire faster’ when people resign.
The fix is slow down and build the capability that prevents the resignations in the first place:

✅ Train new managers before they ‘learn leadership’ by copying the worst examples.
✅ Coach existing managers on how to lead under pressure (without leaking it onto their teams).
✅ Make people metrics visible at leadership level (turnover, internal mobility, manager 360s, team climate).
Reward leaders who build trust, not just those who hit numbers.

Because in this region, trust is everything.

And owners should be able to trust their management teams to execute the vision, for the business and for the people.

Question for leaders in the Gulf:
Where is your culture breaking, in strategy, or in the middle layer where it gets executed?

In fast-growing organisations across the UAE and GCC, leadership gaps rarely show up at the top.
They show up in the middle.

High-performing specialists are promoted quickly to keep pace with growth.
Suddenly they’re expected to:

➡️ lead multicultural teams
➡️ balance global standards with local realities
➡️ deliver consistency under constant operational pressure

Without a leadership pipeline, this becomes improvisation.

That is not a talent issue.
It’s a development design issue.

Organisations that scale sustainably here invest early in:

✅ leadership transitions, not just promotions
✅ manager development as ongoing infrastructure
✅ clarity, coaching, and judgement, not just skills

Middle management doesn’t fail loudly in this region.

It absorbs pressure quietly, until it can’t.

Many first time managers say the same thing, quietly.
“I do not want to get this wrong.”

So they hold on longer than they should.
They delay delegation.
They avoid conversations they know are coming.

Not because they lack confidence.
Because they lack support.

Leading former peers, older colleagues, or more experienced team members carries real emotional weight.

When organisations treat new managers as finished products, people protect themselves.
When they treat them as learners, behaviour changes.

❌ Confidence does not come from the title.
✅ It comes from practising leadership with permission to learn.

If you want managers who act calmly under pressure, give them room to build judgement before you test it.

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