In 2007 Markus started one of Europe’s leading high-tech investment banks - i5invest (www.i5invest.com) followed by i5growth Inc (US based accelerator) and i5equity LLC (US based investment bank) based in San Francisco, which facilitates business relationships and security transactions between silicon valley based tech companies/investors and US & European high-tech ventures. 

He is on the advisory board of multiple high-tech companies with numerous glamorous success stories of successful co-operations and exits to US tech giants (such as Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Microsoft, Intel, etc). He is frequent speaker and media interview partner on “How to build strong business relations between US and European tech companies”.

Prior, he founded Xidris in 2000 and acted as the company’s managing director. Xidris soon became one of Europe’s leading providers of mobile communication services. It was subsequently merged into the 3united AG which was sold to the US company VeriSign Inc. in early 2006. As Vice-President for Product Innovations & Business Development of VeriSign Markus divided his time between New York, Mountain View (CA) and Europe and worked with US media companies such as NBC, CBS, FOX and ClearChannel to launch new interactive and content services. 

Support of the Central European Startup Ecosystem & Austrian Ties:
He holds several supervisory board positions in European venture capital funds as well as startups. Markus was awarded as the Austrian Business Angel 2010 and won the Austrian Private Equity & Venture Capital Award 2010. He was co-founder of the CEE STARTUP WEEK taking place in Vienna – which later became Pioneers Festival, back then one of the leading European startup events and is co-initiator of Europe’s biggest software developer conference & community in Berlin (www.WeAreDevelopers.com) with nearly 10.000 attendees. Markus is an early supporter and advisory board member of the Austrian Startup Association (www.austrianstartups.com), i5growth/i5invest publishes the annual European Capital and European Unicorn and Soonicorn Report. 
He was involved in Austria’s biggest startup exits (has.to.be, Kaleido.ai/remove.bg, …) and serves as advisory board member of the Austrian Industrial IoT unicorn Copa-Data (www.copadata.com).