At just 18 years old, Christopher Zöllner ventured into the “Lion’s Den” – and followed in the footsteps of his brother Davis. He wants to convince Maschmeyer & Co. with his AI startup admark.ai – and even gets the contract. After the show, the deal falls through. Founder Scene exclusively reveals why.
You could almost think that entrepreneurship is served at the breakfast table in the Zöllner family. At 18, Christopher Zöllner is now in the “Lion’s Den” himself – following the example of his older brother Davis, who also impressed Maschmeyer with a digital business card when he was 18.
Christopher now wants to follow up with his startup admark.ai. His goal: 200,000 euros for 20 percent of the company shares – and finally get out of the nursery office.
From Insta fan to AI founder
His entrepreneurial story began early: at 15, Christopher ran a car fan page with almost 200,000 followers, analyzed the success variables of his posts and optimized them – with the first post always at five in the morning, of course.
This experience gave rise to admark.ai, a tool designed to automatically generate, optimize and analyze social media posts for companies. A few hotels, insurance companies and other companies are already using it. The teen founder made 20,000 euros in sales last month and says he has already booked another 24,000 for the next month.
Frank Thelen wants to intervene – but is not allowed
When Christopher explains his tool in more detail, things get really busy in the cave. Frank Thelen jumps into the pitch with: “The topic is not new.” But Christopher counters – calmly and firmly: “I would like to finish.”
But Maschmeyer and Thelen want to know exactly: “What is the real AI here?” The founder doesn’t let up: “I built an AI tool with my own data,” he claims. Despite the attempted detailed explanation, Thelen and Dümmel get out – as do almost all of the remaining lions. Thelen, although enthusiastic about Christophers’ courage and appearance, sees the product as too close to existing tools. He says Christopher is selling something it isn’t, fundamental AI development. Thelen lacks reflection and honesty here; the founder has “bent the bars too far”.
Maschmeyer takes action – with a blocking minority
In the end only one remains: Carsten Maschmeyer. He already supported Christopher’s brother back then and is willing to help again out of his closeness to his brother. Also enthusiastic about the commitment of the young founder – personality over product, says Maschmeyer! He asks Christopher, “What could your brother use that you could use?” The young founder then says that he “needs a door opener, I have to be taken seriously by customers!”
Maschmeyer promises this support, offers 200,000 euros, but wants 25.1 percent in return – because of the famous blocking minority. The deal is done, then pure emotions follow. Brother Davis cheers backstage, Christopher struggles with his emotions. Start-up TV at its best.
After the handshake came the awakening
But after the show, disillusionment followed. Maschmeyer withdrew his support again – with a reason that sounds like something out of the due diligence textbook: “After an in-depth technical review, we were unfortunately unable to come to an agreement because the share of proprietary IP on admark.ai was not sufficiently recognizable. (IP = intellectual property such as specially developed AI algorithms).”
Christopher says today that the conditions were changed significantly after the show, so that cooperation no longer made economic sense. The exact reasons for this remained unclear to him. Means: No deal. “Is Christopher disappointed about that?” we asked him after the show. “Disappointment? On the contrary: the no-deal allowed us to choose an even more suitable investor. As a software expert and founder, Taner Catakli (dealerdesk) shares our vision,” he says Gründerszene. He hopes to get even more inquiries after the show and of course sticks to his sales targets.
