Founder, Visionary & Angel Investor
Nicholas is the eccentric, Austria-born founder of Monkey Magic AI. A visionary with an unshakeable belief that technology should serve everyone — and that it should occasionally make you laugh while doing it.
He is known for wearing lederhosen a little too much. Occasionally he puts on a suit, but much prefers the lederhosen as, in his words, "they go with the hat." And who are we to argue with that kind of logic.
Nicholas's story is one of extraordinary success, devastating loss, and the will to come back stronger than before.
In the early 2000s, Nicholas had built a thriving empire in the banana derivatives market. His firm, Banana Capital Partners, was the undisputed leader in structured banana products. Futures, options, collateralised banana obligations — if it involved the curved yellow fruit and a complex financial instrument, Nicholas was your man.
Then came 2008. The Great Banana Crisis — or the GBC, as it is still whispered about in certain trading floors — wiped out everything. A catastrophic combination of over-leveraged peel futures, a surprise fungal outbreak in Central American plantations, and a rogue algorithm that mistook potassium futures for actual bananas brought the entire market crashing down in a single afternoon.
Nicholas lost it all. The penthouse in Vienna. The banana plantation in Costa Rica. Even the hat collection — temporarily, at least. He was spotted the following week at a Viennese cafe, wearing his last remaining pair of lederhosen and sketching something on a napkin. That napkin, as it turned out, contained the first draft of what would become Monkey Magic AI.
Most people would have stayed down. Nicholas is not most people. Fuelled by strong coffee, an almost reckless optimism, and the firm conviction that if monkeys could learn to use tools then surely the financial services industry could learn to use AI, he rebuilt from scratch.
Monkey Magic AI started as a one-man operation in a co-working space above a bakery in Graz. Today it is a genuinely innovative company at the intersection of AI, finance, and education — with a cheeky personality that reflects its founder's refusal to take himself too seriously.
Nicholas remains the driving force behind the company's vision. He is passionate about democratising access to technology, making education engaging, and proving that business can be both serious and fun. He is also still passionate about lederhosen.