Lars Hinrichs is the CEO and founder of XING AG. Lars began his career as an entrepreneur in 1998 at the age of 22, after working as a consultant for several new media firms.

In 1998, Lars co-founded politik-digital.de, an award-winning platformi n the area of politics and new media. Two years later, Lars and a partner started Boettcher Hinrichs AG, a consulting company and development house for enterprise communication.

After 2001, Lars shifted his focus towards investment and funding consulting, and successfully negotiated several rounds of financing for various enterprises. Lars has also advised portfolio companies with business development and business building strategies.

His broad spectrum of activities and high-level memberships in professional organizations such as the Entrepreneurs Organization have helped Lars establish an outstanding network of contacts worldwide. It has precisely the idea of enabling networking between these contacts that inspired Lars to found XING.

Following a comprehensive relaunch of the site, including a complete takeover of the user interface and a new name —XING— Lars led the company to IPO in December 2006, making XING AG the world’s first Web 2.0 company to go public. XING AG has floated as a Prime standard company on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange ever since, emerging as one of the most successful IPOs in Germany in 2006/2007.