Blue Yard Capital and Earlybird Capital join Disrupt Berlin in December

Berlin will see Disrupt Europe, our major conference, arrive this December, featuring some of the best known names from the Valley and Europe. Ciarán O’Leary of Blue Yard Capital and Christian Nagel of Earlybird Capital will be among those speaking.


Ciarán O’Leary is a co-founder of BlueYard Capital, a $120m early stage fund based in Berlin that invests in founders decentralizing markets, empowering users and liberating data. Ciarán’s investments include Wunderlist, Carto, BigchainDB, Vectary, deepstream and others from Palo Alto to Bratislava. Prior to founding BlueYard, Ciarán set-up Earlybird Venture Capital’s Berlin office as a partner and before that was at The Carlyle Group.


Dr. Christian Nagel is Co-Founder and Partner of Earlybird. Christian has more than 20 years of entrepreneurial and investment experience. He was Chairman of the Board of Tipp24 AG (Prime Standard Frankfurt Exchange: TIM) and Interhyp AG (Prime Standard Frankfurt Exchange: IYP), which returned more than 50x the original Earlybird investment. Up till the trade sale to SMSC (NASDAQ: SMSC) he also served on the board of BridgeCo AG. He is currently on the boards of CrossEngage (Berlin), Cashboard (Berlin), N26 (Berlin), Smava (Berlin) and Tradico (Munich). Prior to founding Earlybird in 1997, Christian, together with a group of investors, acquired various companies from the Treuhandanstalt (the former East-German state holding) and gained operational experience. He was a shareholder and an Executive Director of HNP Präzisionsteile GmbH & Co. KG, SMB Industrieholding GmbH, DH Industrieholding Hohenthurm GmbH and a number of other subsidiary companies of these holding companies. Previously, Christian worked as an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Co. Inc. focusing on restructuring, strategy and M & A projects within various industries. He holds a Diplom-Wirtschaftsingenieur degree (Industrial Engineering, MSc equivalent) from the Technical University of Hamburg, specializing in process engineering and a PhD degree in management from the University of St. Gallen.

Disrupt Berlin doesn’t take place until December, but if you’re looking to attend the best startup show in Europe for the lowest possible price, you can get two tickets for the price of one right now.

Disrupt attendees get to check out fireside chats with some of the most brilliant minds in the business. In the Startup Battlefield and the Startup Alley, they’ll be introduced to some pretty awesome international startups across many verticals.

Plus, if you are part of a startup, multiple members of the media will be in attendance as well, making Disrupt a perfect storm to get your budding startup in front of the eyes and ears that can help take your company to the next level.

Disrupt Berlin 2017 takes place December 4-5 at the beautiful, historical Arena Berlin in the heart of Berlin, Germany. We can’t wait to see you all there!