Banking taught me the questions. Building taught me the answers.

I started a banking apprenticeship at fourteen, at Zürcher Kantonalbank. That is early enough that you learn the trade before you have an opinion about it – which is both the advantage and the problem.

What followed was a talent programme, then my own book of clients: up to 340 households, investment advice, mortgages, retirement planning. From 2023 I also worked as the regional investment specialist, which mostly meant being the person other advisors called when a case got difficult.

Not because anything went wrong. The bank was a good employer and the work was interesting. What I could not get past was the shape of the path: a clear, comfortable line running to 65, in an office, for someone else.

That is not a complaint about banking. It is a statement about what I want the next forty years to look like. I would rather build things that are mine and find out the hard way whether I am any good at it.

Three companies at once, plus a degree. innoVorsorge is advice; innoframe is automation for small businesses; Wedplan is a product. The through-line is not the industry – it is that I get to decide what good enough means, and then have to live with the answer.

The finance background is not decoration. It is why the software knows what a pillar 3a withdrawal does to a tax bill, and why an AI assistant that quotes a wrong pension figure with confidence bothers me more than one that admits it does not know.

From autumn 2026 I am starting an MSc in Banking & Finance with a major in Data Analysis & Capital Markets.