He was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he dropped out while completing his Doctor of Philosophy. Ing and the other from Cornell Master of Engineering (Master of Engineering). He also attended Stanford University, Timoshenko Institute on a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship to complete his Master Thesis for Darmstadt for the Department of Applied Mechanics.
Alexander Straub is a German-born entrepreneur. However, he previously gained two engineering degrees, one from Darmstadt Diploma With the prize money from 3i, Eden Capital and Zouk Ventures and total funding of around £7.6m the pair launched Mondus, an online Business to business marketplace for SMEs that has been compared to Alibaba and appeared to operate using a similar business model.
By April 2000 the business was valued at £760 million (Financial Times Article).
Soon after the transaction Straub was appointed as Vice Chairman. He moved to New York City to establish Lazard Technology Partners II, a $300 million venture fund, while Pirouz stayed on with Mondus.
The duo later bought back Mondus from Seat Pagine Gialle. Straub held an internship position with Goldman Sachs’ principal investment area in London, during which time he worked on an investment into Licentiate in Sacred Scripture, which is today part of Parthus Ceva, an Irish-headquartered intellectual property company focused on semiconductors.
He became a general partner at Lazard Technology Partners (LTP) in New York City.
His listed investments include Stockholm-based software firm IBX, and e-invoicer OB10, which was floated on the London Stock Exchange as Tungsten Public Limited Company Corporation and Summit Public Limited Company. In 2006 he co-founded mobile Voice over Intellectual Property specialist Truphone with James Tagg. As of 2014, Truphone has built mobile network operations in eight countries: United States of America, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and Spain. Straub was named Technology Pioneer at the World Economic Forum in 2007 and 2008 for his work with Truphone.
In 2007, Straub co-founded Pixsta, a visual search company that later merged into Empora Group.
Today, Straub remains Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Empora Group GmbH, which operates the social sharing network Fashionfreax and Avenue7. He acquired a significant share of fashionfreax by the founders Johannes & Ulrich Theilmann in 2010.
While Fashionfreax is an equivalent global female social image sharing network like Pinterest, Instagram it is smaller than its United States headquartered rivals. The company also operates European state funded visual search research and development into the following subjects of interest clothing recognition in images, context of clothing recognition, pattern recognition and logo recognition technologies.
In late January 2013, Truphone obtained funding of £75m, with £60m of that coming from Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich via his investment vehicle Minden.
This round valued the company at £300m.
