Tale of two cities: Berlin, Manila try to break into global start-up scene

By Paolo G. Montecillo
Philippine Daily Inquirer

The six-man team that built Alando, an EBay copycat

BERLIN, GERMANY/Manila, Philippines—In his gray hoodie, blue jeans and bright yellow Nike sneakers, Ijad Madisch is a puzzle.

If someone looked at him and had to guess what he did for a living, 99 times out of a hundred the first guess would be somewhere along the lines of “struggling musician” or “Madisch,” the CEO of ResearchGate, a social network for scientists. But that’s just his day job.

Madisch says he’s a scientist by trade, and through his work at ResearchGate—giving usually-secretive and sometimes reclusive scientists the chance to work with colleagues from across the world via social media—he thinks he can win a Nobel Prize.

“These scientists are communicating and that’s leading to breakthroughs that weren’t possible before,” Madisch says in a meeting with journalists in ResearchGate’s office in an old neighborhood in the former East Berlin.

“We’re not building the next coupon company. We’re building something fundamental in the world,” he says.

Tale of two cities: Berlin, Manila try to break into global start-up scene