PIRATE.global

Our mission is to help entrepreneurs succeed.

PIRATE is a family of companies:
- PIRATEx - Event agency specialized in creating outstanding digital event experiences.
- division5 - Reliable and affordable developers to extend your team and/or build your MVP.
- Visualmakers.de - Learning platform for Low and NoCode.
- AtlasZero - Making the market of sustainability solutions transparent.
- NoCode.ONE - Building products and automating workflows (NoCode Agency)
- PIRATE.ventures - Capital for early-stage companies that want to build a business on their own terms.
- PIRATE.coach - Sparring partner for entrepreneurs.
- StartupJoblist.com - Find talent/a job.

PIRATE.coach

Become a better Leader with clarity in your vision, confidence in your actions, and calmness in your mind.

Entrepreneurs can become part of my „Inner Circle“ and I will help them grow their businesses and themselves.

Entrepreneurs get direct access to me, my know-how, and my experience of 20+ years building, running, and investing in companies, as well as the PIRATE network.

A few years ago I realized that I was slowly transitioning from an operational into a sparring partner role for the Leaders of the companies in the PIRATE family.

Right now, I spend 50% of my time with them. The other 50% I spend with ambitious Leaders that are on the journey to build and grow meaningful businesses. And themselves.

Find out more at: www.PIRATE.coach

Sparring Partner to Entrepreneurs

AtlasZero

We make it easier for companies to be more sustainable. As a first step, we do that by making the market of sustainability solutions more transparent.

Currently, we have over 700 solutions in our database including detailed data like features, prices, etc.

Partner

VisualMakers

Our mission is to democratize tech - because today anyone can build their digital applications with the right tools. 

We show you how to build websites, apps, and automated processes - without writing a line of code.

division5

Do you need to extend your development team to grow your business? Are you struggling to find engineering talent to hire?

We offer a pool of talented developers with the right skillset to join forces with you. Fast, reliable and affordable.

Find out more here: http://portfolio.division5.co/

PIRATEx

We bring our expertise as event organizer to help you create the best event for your audience, no matter the format: in-person, hybrid or digital.

PIRATEx has been producing memorable experiences for audiences everywhere since 2010. From conferences, roadshows and internal company events up to major congresses, award shows, parties as well as international trade fairs, we can do it all. Our team works with you to turn your ideas into reality and bring your event concept to life.

As an event agency, we treat your event as our own and strive to develop the right event concept to ensure you reach your goals. Whether your audience is a small or large group, aiming at start-ups or executives, we adapt the format to suit your audience. Bringing people together and creating memorable experiences is our passion. We pride ourselves on using state-of-the-art technologies to transform your event into a one-of-a-kind experience that is memorable for years to come.

What we can do for you:
✨  Event Consulting
✨  Event Design & Concept
✨  Event Production

NoCode.ONE

We build #NoCode and #LowCode products.

We automate workflows, build products/MVPs or simple websites a lot faster than with any traditional development methods.

BEEZ Games

BEEZ is a small, quality oriented game studio dedicated to converting emotions into tech. 

How we do this? We delve into 3D worlds through epic storytelling and with a fun experience.

OMClub

When the OMClub was hosted for the first time in 2008, we wanted to offer an alternative to the official trade-fair party. Instead of white collars, restricting ties and awkward exchanges, with us the only goal is to party all out! 

Over the years, we have evolved. Now, every year 4000+ online marketeers celebrate with us. Free drinks and the best entertainment of any business party included.

Producer

Startup SAFARI

Startup SAFARI is days of open doors for startup ecosystems. It means that startups, VCs, accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces and other community hotspots open their doors to network, inspire, learn and have fun.

More info at startupsafari.com

Chairman

🏴‍☠️ Serial Entrepreneur, 🖤 PIRATE at heart, 🙏 Leadership Whisperer

Topics that I read, debate, and speak about (a lot of buzzwords, I know): 

🔥 Leadership, Transformation, Change

🔥 Making Business More Human

🔥 Mindfulness, Self-Reflection, Meditation, Clarity

🔥 NoCode and LowCode

🔥 Sustainability, ESG, CSRD

🔥 Startups, Internet Business, Disruptive Innovation

🔥 Events, Community

---

How did I get here? 

My entrepreneurial journey started in earnest in the summer of 2003. I was a student and had just come back from one year studying in Barcelona. That summer, I started my first business with a friend. 

We were naive. To put it mildly. We had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into and what it meant to run a business. 

To the outside world, we could show some decent successes. After all, we had some paying clients and earned a fair amount of money. 

On the inside, we felt lost and overwhelmed. There was the constant feeling that we were way above our heads.

The journey of 20 years of entrepreneurship that followed was a constant roller coaster ride. I have hired and fired. I have acquired and exited. I have invested and lost it all. I had to accept failure and had to shut down multiple products or even close companies. 

Sometimes, when giving up wasn’t an option, I worked tirelessly to avoid bankruptcy. More than once.

That’s what factually happened. There is plenty to learn from this. Tactics, methods, how-tos. What to look for before you invest, the tax impact of selling your product unit, the best interview questions, how to structure a deal, how to fire someone, etc.

That’s useful information, but it’s not what I get excited about. Exciting are the things happening under the surface. You might call it the human factor of running a business. It’s often overlooked or hard to grasp. It’s certainly hard to manage. 

What we often forget is that businesses don’t interact with businesses. Instead, humans interact with humans. Running a business intrinsically requires human skills. 

I have always built my businesses with that perspective in mind. 

PIRATE.global, my current - and probably last - company, is built as a training ground for aspiring entrepreneurs. Great if people join and then - when they are ready - leave to start something of their own.

I share some of my observations, experiences, and learnings in "Making Business More Human" (https://www.arrr.co/) and here on LinkedIn. From my own experience running multiple businesses, but also from working with others that do. 

I hope you find it useful.

🙏

The search bar is dying. And most businesses have no idea what that means for them.

For over two decades, we've all been playing the same game: rank higher on Google. We stuffed keywords, chased backlinks, and did whatever it took to show up first. The logic was simple: be visible, get clicked.

That game is changing rapidly.

People are still asking questions. But here's what's different: AI is collapsing the consideration phase.

On Google, you'd search "vacation rentals Paris" and get ten options. You'd open tabs, compare prices, read reviews. The consideration set was wide open. Anyone who ranked could get a shot.

With AI, you ask the same question. But instead of ten blue links, you get one answer. Maybe three options if you're lucky. The AI decides what's worth surfacing based on what's embedded in its training data and what people actually ask for by name.

So when someone says "find me a good pizza place," the AI might suggest Domino's. Not because Domino's gamed an algorithm, but because Domino's is what people know.

When the list shrinks from ten to three, or three to one, if you're not in that answer, you don't exist. No one's scrolling to find option seven anymore.

This isn't just a trend. This feels like a reset.

All those years optimizing for algorithms? Still useful, but suddenly worth less than we thought. Because the new question isn't "how do I rank high enough to be seen?" It's "am I one of the three names the AI actually recommends?"

And as people get used to direct answers, they'll stop asking questions altogether. They'll skip straight to "book me at Marriott" or "order from that place I like."

Brand recognition just became tremendously important. The companies people already know will compound their advantage. The others will wonder where their traffic went.

You can't game your way into someone's mind the way you gamed search rankings. There's no hack for being memorable. No shortcut to becoming the default choice.

So how do you build that kind of recognition? The same way it's always been built: through people, not just companies. Through founders who show up, share what they know, and become synonymous with what they sell. When people remember you, they remember your business. When they trust you, they trust your brand.

That's the work now. Not SEO tricks. Not ad spend alone. But consistent presence. Clear point of view. A founder who becomes impossible to ignore.

—
That’s why, at FunnelIn, we help founders build personal brands that make their businesses unforgettable. Because when the consideration set shrinks to three, the companies with known founders are the ones that make the cut. And when customers stop asking AI to search, they start asking for the businesses led by people they already know and trust.

Manuel Koelman 🏴‍☠️

CEO PIRATE | Entrepreneur, Keynote Speaker, Sparring Partner, Experience Designer | Making Business More Human

Corporate events have a measurement problem.

Most companies treat events as theater: stages, speakers, catering, swag. They optimize for the day itself - then wonder why nothing changes afterward.

The issue isn't execution. It's that most events are built backwards.

- What gets measured reveals what actually mattered:

Ask what success looks like, and you'll hear: "engagement," "buzz," "positive feedback." These aren't metrics. They're feelings about metrics.

The real test: six months later, what's different? Which partnerships formed? What deals moved forward? Who changed their behavior?

If you can't trace a line from the event to a business outcome, you didn't host a strategic event. You hosted expensive networking.

- The gap between activity and impact:

Events fail because they're planned in isolation - disconnected from product launches, sales cycles, hiring goals, or market positioning. They become obligations rather than accelerators.

The companies that extract real value don't start with venues and agendas. They start with: What do we need to be true six months from now that isn't true today?

Then they design backwards from that.

Maybe it's shifting perception with a specific buyer segment. Maybe it's activating a partner ecosystem that's been dormant. Maybe it's pressure-testing a new positioning before a major launch.

The event is the mechanism, not the goal.

- The questions that actually matter:

👉 What would make this event worth 10x what we're spending? Not in vague brand terms - in pipeline, partnerships, talent, or strategic clarity.

👉 Who needs to leave differently than they arrived? Not inspired. Different. Different understanding, different relationships, different commitments.

👉 What's the smallest version of this that could prove the concept? Most events are too big to learn from. If it doesn't work, you can't tell which part failed.

- Why most companies skip this:

Because honest answers are uncomfortable. They reveal that the event might not be necessary. Or that the real goal is internal politics, not external impact. Or that leadership wants the visibility without the accountability.

The hard part isn't planning better events. It's admitting when an event isn't the right move at all.

—
At PIRATEx, we don't start with logistics. We start with what needs to change - and whether an event is actually the lever to change it. Our frameworks force the uncomfortable questions first, because strategy only works when it's built on honest answers. We're making our full event toolkit available - completely free. Many are already in the event toolbox on our website (in German only). More coming soon.

I've been tinkering with Antigravity - the agentic coding IDE Google just launched. The barrier to building has dropped dramatically in the last year. AI tools let you prototype faster. Code gets easier to ship.

Last week, Engjell showed me a tool he built for streamlining internal processes at division5. The kind of thing that would've taken a small team several months. He built it as a side project in days. It's not polished, but it works and it's fully customized to our internal processes.

I did something similar with billing processes at PIRATEx this month. Nothing fancy. Just automated what we used to do manually. 

This weekend I want to build a Chrome plugin. 🤞

I'll build it for myself to solve my own problem. The entrepreneur in me says: maybe it's useful for others too. Maybe a small SaaS? But the days of "build something useful and they'll come" are over - if they ever existed. So I probably won't bother turning it into a product.

Not because I can't build it. Because I don't have the time to spend the next year explaining it exists.

This brings me to a broader point (especially as the cost of development is dropping rapidly).

You can build something genuinely useful and still watch it go nowhere. Not because it's flawed. Because no one knows it exists.

The gap between you and everyone else isn't really in what you build anymore. It's in whether anyone finds out about it.

Tesla didn't invent the electric car, but they made people care about electric cars. McDonald's doesn't make exceptional food. They made themselves impossible to miss. The product mattered, sure. But so did being known.

When capability becomes cheaper and more accessible, attention becomes scarce and valuable. A functional tool that reaches 10,000 people will outperform a better tool that reaches 50. Not always - sometimes exceptional work does break through on its own - but often enough that it's worth taking seriously.

Most founders I know spend most of their time on the product and a fraction on distribution. There's logic to that early on. You need something worth talking about first. But at some point, the ratio has to shift. Maybe not 50/50, but definitely more than 5%.

Distribution doesn't mean just running ads or optimizing SEO. It's showing up consistently. Explaining what you're doing and why it matters. Connecting with the people who actually have the problem you're solving. Building trust before you need it.

That's what Daniel does at FunnelIn - helping founders build visibility on LinkedIn without sounding like they're performing. The buyers are there. He makes it easier to show up consistently and connect with them in a non-intrusive way.

The question isn't whether your product is good enough. It's whether you're making it findable by the right people. 

Are you spending time on that as deliberately as you spend time on features?

If not, you're betting on organic discovery. Sometimes that works. Often it doesn't.

A few weeks ago, I saw a product demo that reminded me how AI should feel.

No preamble about "leveraging machine learning" or "proprietary algorithms." Just: here's your problem, now it's solved.

If I have to know it's AI for it to impress me, it's probably not ready yet.

Most builders are in love with the how. They want credit for the complexity. Look at what we built. Look at the architecture. Look how clever we are.

But nobody wakes up thinking they need neural networks. They wake up annoyed that finding a document takes twelve clicks, or that the answer they need is buried somewhere in a system, mocking them.

The best tools don't "announce" themselves.

Google Photos doesn't explain computer vision when it finds your dog pictures. Grammarly doesn't lecture you about natural language processing. Spotify doesn't brag about recommendation engines. It just plays that song you didn't know you needed.

The technology is doing extraordinary things, but the experience feels ordinary in the best way. Smooth. Obvious. Sometimes forgettable.

When people remember the tool more than the result, something's off.
I think about this when I see product pitches that lead with the tech stack. "Our platform uses advanced transformer models trained on..."

I don't care about transformers. I care that I asked a question and got an answer that didn't waste my time.

The technology is supposed to be the means, not the message. When you lead with it, you're either admitting you haven't figured out what problem you're solving, or you're more excited about your solution than the person who has the problem.

There are exceptions. If you're selling to technical buyers who need to understand the infrastructure, fine. But for most products, most of the time, the goal should be: does this let me do something I couldn't before, or make something painful feel easy?

Too many startups are still selling the wiring when they should be selling the relief.

Simple doesn't mean fewer features. It means less cognitive load. Less wondering if you're doing it right. Less awareness that there's technology involved at all.

That's harder to build than it sounds. Making something complex feel simple takes more work than making something simple feel complex. But that's where the value is.

When you're building, ask what the demo proves. If it proves how smart you are, wrong focus. If it proves the customer doesn't have to think anymore, you're onto something.

The gap between intent and outcome - that's what you're trying to collapse. Everything else is just implementation.

When everything online can be generated, filtered, or faked, what actually matters?

The stuff that can't be replicated - real presence, unscripted moments, the energy of being in a room with other people.

Live events aren't disappearing. If anything, they're becoming more important. Not because they're immune to technology, but because they offer something fundamentally different. When someone tells their story on stage, when you have an unexpected conversation between sessions, there's no algorithm mediating the experience. It's messy and human in ways that matter.

This doesn't mean live events are inherently superior or that digital experiences are hollow. Both have their place. But as more of our lives move into spaces where authenticity is hard to verify, the value of physical presence shifts. People want to know what's real - and sometimes the only way to know is to be there.

At PIRATE Summit, we always asked ourselves: how do we create experiences where meaningful connections actually happen? That question drives the work we do at PIRATEx now. 

I think it's going to matter more, not less, in the years ahead.

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