Isabel Poppek

Mad respect for Isabel Poppek. This girl is the real deal. She’s the founder and CEO of Alpas, a sick AI-driven procurement software startup out of Berlin. She launched it at just 27, after climbing through the startup, industry, and private equity worlds. She’s been around the block, working at places like LGT Capital Partners, Porsche, and MAN. Basically, she’s seen a lot of angles in business before jumping into her own thing.

Alpas is all about turbocharging how procurement teams find suppliers. They use machine learning to make it up to 10x faster, which is a big change for big clients like BASF, ABB, Swiss Railway, and EnBW. Think about that, she’s helping these giants cut down their sourcing time big time. That’s some serious impact.

Her background? Impressive as hell. She’s got a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Management & Technology from the Technical University of Munich, plus an Honours Degree in Tech Management from CDTM, which is a dope program. She even did MBA coursework at Columbia as a Visiting Researcher, so she’s no stranger to high-level academia and big ideas.

She jumped into YC’s Winter 2021 batch, so she’s part of that elite circle of founders pushing boundaries. Plus, she’s passed CFA Level I, so she’s got finance chops too. Her resume screams a mix of tech, finance, and hands-on startup hustle.

But what really fires her up? Building products that actually make a difference. She’s all about impact, not bullshit. Outside work, she’s into running marathons, skiing, horseback riding, stuff that shows she’s got stamina and a love for pushing limits.

To sum it up, Isabel is like this bad situation of technical smarts, business savvy, and startup grit. She saw a problem, jumped into it, and crushed it with Alpas. She’s not just building a company; she’s reshaping how huge companies do procurement. That’s why she’s so important. She’s the real deal, a startup legend in the making.