The OMR Festival is a place for the unexpected. From the guests and speakers to everything else, it's a series of moments that surprise and inspire. While surprising certainly qualifies for talking robots and a 1960s school bus converted into a mobile recording studio (where today's episode was in fact recorded), inspiring perfectly describes my guests in this episode of the OMR Podcast: Ammar Kandil co-founder of Yes Theory and Max Rantz-McDonald, who organized a Global Citizens Live event among other things. Most recently, Ammar and Max set up Team Ukraine Love, an initiative aimed at assisting Ukrainian refugees at the Polish border. I spoke to Ammar and Max about Team Ukraine Love, about Yes Theory, mobilizing community and how they use social media for good.

Our guest today in the OMR Podcast was not only instrumental in revolutionizing the music industry by inventing the iPod, but also helped lay the groundwork for the iPhone and founded—and sold—Nest (to Google). Simply put, Tony Fadell's decades-long career has been characterized by superlatives. In the OMR Podcast, guest host Florian Heinemann spoke to Tony about his past and current projects, as well as the role tech can play in protecting the environment.

In early 2021, Adam Ross was appointed CEO at Awin, the world's largest affiliate network. In the OMR Podcast, I spoke to Adam about his tenure at AWIN, how the industry has evolved from being perceived as supremely shady to an absolute must for advertisers and publishers, how the company has transformed from a niche service provider to a "feature-rich martech platform" and the impact of influencers on Awin—and Awin on influencers. If you've ever wanted to know what affiliate marketing is and why it's essential in today's landscape, this is one podcast episode you do not want to miss.

Christian Horner runs one of the top racing teams in all of Formula 1: Red Bull Racing. In the OMR Podcast, he speaks with Philipp Westermeyer this past season, one of the most exciting in recent memory. He explains what impact "Drive to Survive" has had

In 2013, SAP bought up CRM and cloud service provider Hybris for 1.5 billion US. At the time, the deal was the largest of its kind for a European entrepreneur, but for anyone in . It also came at a time when cloud technologies, their use case and applications, were in their absolute infancy. In this episode of the OMR Podcast, I had the chance to discuss the deal with Thoma, if he has any regrets about the timing and the price—can you regret a billion-dollar deal? We also discussed his activities as an angel investor, his investing strategy and we didn't leave any meat on the proverbial bone getting the low-down on his chain of BBQ smokehouses stateside.

Maya Leinenbach is not your typical teen. In the space of two years, she's transformed her passion for vegan food into a thriving love brand, Fitgreenmind. In this episode of the OMR Podcast International, she discussed how simplicity, vision, repetition and time management have all converged to let Fitgreenmind flourish.

Founded in 2015, Activant Capital was a relatively unknown VC fund until recently. A string of higher publicity investments saw Activant and its CEO & founder thrust into the proverbial limelight, but truth be told its bonafides were legit long before it started to make a name for itself: 4 funds since founding, assets totalling over USD 1.5B under management and 35 companies in the portfolio and several successful exits. Plus, last month it joined other US companies in establishing a presence in Europe. Then came the hefty investment in delivery and retail startup Jokr. Reason enough to sit down with Steve and talk shop about the VC scenes in the states and in Europe, why Jokr when competition seems fierce and some straight talk about what it means to be in the VC trade.

Stories worth a second look—Vinted

Last November, Lithuanian second-hand clothing app Vinted announced it would attempt to merge all 8.5 million German "Vinties" into the mother app. It was an ambitious plan with massive risk attached in a second-hand market with a total volume approaching nine figures. Much was at stake for Vinted and its CEO Thomas Plantenga, who called it "brand suicide." OMR editors Martin Gardt and Scott Peterson take a closer look at the second-hand fashion market to see if Vinted's move paid off.

If it were film, you'd think Hollywood had taken significant liberties with factual accuracy. And yet, the genesis of Gymshark, now a billion-dollar DTC fitness fashion brand, begins with all the hallmarks of a sappy Hollywood biopic. While working at a local Pizza Hut, 19-year-old Ben Francis, a dedicated weightlifter, founds his passion project Gymshark. After two years of hand-sewing clothes and barely making ends meet, he catches his big break at a local fitness trade fair, where he stumbles upon the marketing strategy that will catapult Gymshark into unicorn status. A decade after those humble beginnings, Gymshark has bulked up to heavyweight status and USD 1.45B valuation. In the OMR Podcast, Francis breaks down the marketing strategy that has helped Gymshark flex on the competition.

Today’s episode is all about one of the hottest things anywhere on the internet—Pokémon cards! Search for TCG, trading card games, and unboxing, or some combination thereof on YouTube and you will find all sorts of examples of people shelling out beaucoup bucks for boxes of Pokémon cards. The hype surrounding Pokémon plays into the larger popularity of TCGs, including Magic: the Gathering, Yo-Gi-Oh and Dragonball Z, among others and their collectability—A shadowless “Charizard” Pokémon card recently fetched over 200k in an auction, while the Black Lotus card from Magic: The Gathering typically fetches over 30k.

My guests today Marko Schädlich and Jamin Kauf from Cardmarket, know all there is to know about the Black Lotus and everything else on the TCG scene, as Cardmarket is Europe’s largest resale platform for Trading Card Games. Cardmarket has over 100m items for sale on its platform and with 500k users from 30 countries Cardmarket is a fascinating case study in community building and target group segmentation. So without further ado, here are Marko and Jamin to give you the lowdown on how Cardmarket went from nichey passion project to big-time international player.