Dirk Ahlborn

Dirk Ahlborn, Co-founder and Chairman. An experienced entrepreneur who got his professional start in Europe, Dirk Ahlborn is known for his unique approach to bringing paradigm-shifting businesses to life. His work has focused on leveraging the full power of crowd-collaboration, the Internet, and exponential technologies at the vanguard of the global sharing economy.

With a long-standing interest in alternative energy, he founded several companies in Europe concentrating on sustainable energy in the late 1990s. He entered the startup world with the Girvan Institute, assisting NASA’s Ames Research Center in the transfer of commercialized technologies and helping to start Advanced Turbine Designs, Inc. Dirk’s two decades of experience have served him well as the Founder and CEO of JumpStarter, Inc. (jumpstartfund.com), a California-based, crowd-powered online business incubator, founded in 2012 to enable communities to contribute to projects and technologies.