About the founders

Prof. Dr. Florian Feltes could be anything today – a teacher, for example, as studying to become a teacher was his first academic station. Or a Program  manager in Copenhagen. But nothing came of it; and at the same time it became: zortify – one of the most innovative HR Tech companies from Luxembourg, that aims to revolutionize the HR industry. Florian knows what makes HR tick from his own experience in HR and leadership development. This work also led him to the research project “Influence of social media on the leadership behavior of GenY” at the University of Luxembourg and he “suddenly became a professor”, as he says. In addition to his enthusiasm for research, for which he was awarded as “Leader of Tomorrow “ at the St.Gallen Symposium two years in a row, his great interest in the changing corporate world remained. For his application as a program manager for leadership development in Denmark, he used Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the similarities and differences between his personality and that of the company bosses. Florian thought it was a great idea. The bosses thought “better not”. He didn’t get the job. And wondered all the more: How much information about a person can be analyzed from written text? Together with his former neighbor and project colleague in management consulting, Marcus Heidbrink, he intensified his research and saw the potential of AI-based text analysis for HR and companies. The idea behind zortify was born. Since 2018, the 25-strong team around Florian and Marcus has been pushing the boundaries of what is technically possible in order to let companies and people thrive with the help of smart diagnostics, opening up a whole new world of employee insights. In 2022, zortify was awarded “Rising HR Tech of the Year”. The tech company is also officially accredited as a research institute. In addition to his work for zortify, Florian is a professor for Digital Leadership and HR at the XU Exponential University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam.

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From the intensive care unit to AI diagnostics for companies: Instead of becoming a doctor, as originally planned, Marcus studied psychology. He spent 19 years researching leadership, corporate culture and personality development and advised companies and investors on filling top positions. He has experienced over 10,000 managers in assessment centers, management audits, recruiting interviews and training sessions. Zortify is already his 7th company. At the age of 23, Marcus founded his first company – a wine and spirits retailer. Perhaps it was no coincidence that he got the decisive impulse to found Zortify over a glass of wine with his then project partner in management consulting and current co-CEO Prof. Dr. Florian Feltes. Florian’s unsuccessful application to a company and the following Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based investigation of the reasons for it led both of them to the question of how much information could be extracted from text responses with the help of AI. After some successful experiments with NLP technology, the founding idea for zortify was born. Since 2018, Marcus and Florian have built up a 25-strong team of experts in data science, psychology, NLP and people analytics. What drives him: The moments when, as a team, they manage to make all their expertise work together perfectly. Because then, according to Marcus, something magical happens. For example, the clustering of text data at the touch of a button, which would take months of work without the zortify technology. For this and other innovative solutions, zortify was awarded “Rising HR Tech of the Year” in 2022. The company is also officially accredited as a research institute. In addition to his role as Co-CEO, Marcus is the father of five children, works as an author and coach for self-leadership and is committed to preserving biodiversity on Earth.

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