Axel Prettl — Economist · Founder

I did my PhD in economics at Tübingen, with research fellowships at Berkeley, Michigan, and Oxford under Alan Auerbach, Joel Slemrod, and Michael Devereux. My work focused on how tax rules shape multinational company behavior. The underlying instinct has not changed: follow the incentives, map the system, find what breaks under pressure.

I have built four companies in total. Two died: a web directory I built after my first year of university, and a luxury smartphone case brand that taught me about consumer hardware, perfection, and customization the hard way. The other two are still running. Currently, I lead Suus, a bootstrapped B2B SaaS serving >150 organizations and >35,000 users, started from zero in the middle of my PhD. It is profitable with <1% annual churn. Spool (now Yelay) is a DeFi infrastructure company I co-founded and ran as COO: €16M raised, 32 people across 12 countries, $280M AUM, board and council roles alongside Deutsche Bank, Visa, and DWS.

Most founders I talk to are not short on advice. They have investors with opinions, maybe a board that meets occasionally, and no shortage of people telling them what worked somewhere else. What they lack is someone who will sit with their actual problem, think carefully about it, and say what they honestly believe. With no agenda, no equity politics, and no posturing.

That is what I do.

The Thinking Partnership

I am not a consultant. I act as your Logic Mirror and Strategy Confidante. I do not deliver a PDF report and move on. I am also not a standard advisor who calls in once a month with opinions that cost nothing to give.

What I look for is a genuine thinking partnership. Two or max. three companies at a time, over months, at the moments where the decisions genuinely matter: a new market, a structural change, a model that does not quite add up yet, a hire that could define the next two years, deep thinking about new structures, aligning investors for consistent support ... to not lose the big picture.

I do not sell pattern-matching on past situations. I sell genuine thinking about the current one. I have built fully bootstrapped but also VC-funded. I have run distributed teams across time zones, modeled unit economics from scratch, designed legal and governance structures, structured workflows and automated tasks from A to Z, and sold B2B SaaS to organizations that do not respond to cold outreach. I have been wrong about enough things to have calibrated judgment, and I know where the edges of my competence are.

My sweet spot is companies in the 5-to-100 stretch, where founders still make the real decisions and the strategic questions are genuinely hard. But company size is not a hard filter. A C-level at a 200-person company surrounded by people who pattern-match on past experience can benefit from someone who truly thinks carefully about the actual situation in front of them. That is a different thing than what most advisors sell.

I am accessible between meetings when something real comes up. I will tell you what I actually think, including when I think you are making a mistake.

One high-leverage example where this partnership often compounds: investor relationships. Most founders underinvest here or simply do not have enough time, treating it as a reporting task. I treat it as a strategic asset. I move beyond one-to-many updates to handle the subtle 1-to-1 work, surfacing what investors actually need to see to stay aligned. The value is measurable on all sides.

What This Can Look Like

Scenario 1: The Board That Doesn't Work Yet

You closed your Series A six months ago. You have a board now, but the meetings feel performative. You are not sure what your lead investor actually thinks, and you have been avoiding a conversation about burn rate. In this phase, I act as your Strategy Confidante. We prepare the next board meeting together. I talk to your investors 1-on-1 beforehand, collect what is really on their minds, and we walk in with a plan instead of a presentation. More value and efficiency for everyone involved.

Scenario 2: Growth Stalled, Nobody Agrees Why

Growth has plateaued after strong first years. You are not sure if the problem is product, go-to-market, or team. Everyone internally has a theory, and they are all self-serving. I become the Logic Mirror to see what the team is missing. We spend time pulling apart the numbers and the org together. I will dig into it myself, you get some time to breathe. And I tell you what I see, including the uncomfortable parts.

Scenario 3: Co-Founder Roles Drifting

You and your co-founders started as equals, but your roles have drifted and evolved. There is no conflict, but there is friction. Neither of you wants to have the conversation because things are going fine. But the team feels off. I serve as the Gegenstimme to help you reach a new alignment. I sit between you, sit with the team, listen without taking sides, and help you get to a structure that works for the next phase.

Scenario 4: Searching for the Next Gear

Things are moving but they are not as exciting as they were. You search for new challenges, new ideas that can lift momentum again. For yourself but also for the project you gave so much for already. I become your Second Mind, providing the distance you can't have when you're in the trenches. We sit down at least bi-weekly in a longer session and bounce fresh ideas from someone with an outside perspective. I do the research and bring in new wind to lift things up.

This Works Best When

You are a founder or C-level who makes real decisions and wants someone to think with, not someone to delegate to.

You are past the early chaos but facing questions that your team and your board cannot answer honestly.

You value directness over diplomacy and would rather hear an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable "it depends."

You know that AI can do remarkable things but you also know that for some things smart people are still needed.

You are willing to try four weeks and then decide based on whether the thinking was worth it.

And probably not when

You need someone to build your pitch deck or optimize your pricing page. That is project work, not a thinking partnership.

You are pre-revenue and looking for free advice. I am happy to have a coffee, but this is not pro bono consulting.

You want validation, not challenge.

"Axel knows how to handle the interplay of business development, product innovation, and DevOps, not only from a subject matter perspective but also by building strong bridges between all team members. He possesses the exact skills needed to build an efficient organization in a globally distributed and decentralized setting."

Dr. Karl-Michael Henneking · CXO, Investor & Advisor

How This Starts

We talk for 30 minutes. No pitch, no deck. You tell me what you are working on, I tell you honestly whether I can help. If not, I will say so.

If there is a fit, we try four weeks. A few hours per week, fixed-fee pilot. Enough to understand your context and actually contribute something useful.

After that, we both decide. No lock-in. If the thinking was worth it, we continue. If not, we stop. I do not take on engagements where I am not adding clear value.

I work with two or three companies at a time.

Get in Touch

info@axelprettl.de

1 Slot Available

Based in Leipzig and Austin.

I am not active on LinkedIn messaging. Email is the reliable way to reach me.