CHAIRPEOPLE
THE BOARD PARTNER BUILT BY FOUNDERS
Chairpeople has been founded to make founders stronger, companies more resilient and boards sharper. We bring lived entrepreneurial experience into boardrooms that too often lack clarity, pace or real alignment.
We work with a small number of founders at any given time — always founder-first, always deeply committed. Every mandate is a long-term partnership built on trust, clarity and real accountability. We combine Founderwork, Boardwork, Investorwork and Teamwork into one integrated approach, ensuring alignment across the entire leadership system. Quality matters more than volume, which is why we only work with founders we can stand fully behind. Our work is deeply personal: founder-to-founder, direct, honest and always focused on the decisions that matter most.
We don't “advise from the balcony”.
We step into the founder’s perspective and see Investor interest.
We act based on experience, not theory.
Chairpeople is not a consultancy.
It is a board partner!
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Helping founders stay in control — of their company, their board, their journey.
We believe that founders deserve boards that create clarity, not friction.
Boards that accelerate, not slow down.
Boards that amplify decisions, not drain energy.Our mission is simple:
To give founders the partner, the structure and the strategic altitude they need to build meaningful companies and navigate the hardest decisions with confidence.We stand on the founder’s side — always.
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Because only founders truly understand the weight.
Founders face many challenges in the course of developing their start-ups – pressure, loneliness in decision-making, extreme responsibility and much more – and they are prepared to pay a high emotional price for this. We know this because we have been through it ourselves, which makes us a valuable sparring partner not only for the start-up, but also for the founder(s) themselves.
This principle shapes everything we do:
Directness instead of vague advice.
Judgement instead of frameworks.
Clarity instead of complexity.
Support without agenda.
Truth even if it’s uncomfortable.
Experience instead of theory.
Founder-to-Founder Boardwork is not a method — it is our standard. A promise that the founder is never alone in the decisions that define the company.
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Nordic in character. Aegean in spirit. Entrepreneurial in practice.
Our values guide how we work, how we communicate and how we show up in every boardroom:
Independence We are 100% financially independent — which makes us fully unbiased in how we think, decide and act. Our loyalty is to the founder and company.
Diversity Different backgrounds. free thinking. Better decisions. Diversity at Chairpeople is lived, not declared — reflected in our partners, our perspectives and how we challenge each other.
Simplicity Complexity hides problems. Simplicity reveals them.
We reduce issues to what truly matters, so decisions become obvious.Alignment Every decision must serve the company and its mission — never personal agendas. Alignment is the foundation of strong governance and lasting trust.
100% Product-Driven Strong governance follows strong products. We believe in founder-led, product-centric thinking as the core driver of sustainable companies.
Clarity The fastest path to better decisions is removing noise.
Clarity creates focus, confidence and momentum — in boardrooms and beyond.Integrity We speak honestly — even if it is uncomfortable.
Trust is built through truth, not through harmony.Pace Momentum matters. Good boards create speed, direction and progress — not friction or delay.
Modesty We let our work speak for itself. No theatre. No ego. Just substance, judgement and impact.
Change Is Our Tradition Progress requires the courage to question what worked yesterday.
We embrace change as a constant — and treat adaptation as a discipline. -
Built after our own exits — to offer founders what we never had.
Chairpeople was founded in 2015 by Iris Dakis and Niels Dörje who experienced firsthand how unclear boardwork can be — and how much better companies perform when founders have the right partner at their side.
Our history is shaped by
building and scaling companies ourselves
navigating investors and complex board dynamics
surviving crises and turning points
and ultimately selling companies we had built from the ground up
After these journeys, one truth became clear:
Founders need boards that understand them — not boards that manage them.
Chairpeople was born to fill that gap!
A board partner built by founders, for founders.Today, we work with ambitious startups, scale-ups and founder-led companies across Europe — always deeply committed to the person at the centre: the founder.
Niels is a founder at heart. His work in the boardroom is shaped by having built companies from the very beginning through growth, pressure, crisis and ultimately, exit.
He founded and scaled HolidayInsider as CEO, leading the company to a successful exit in 2014, and later co-founded Ryte, which he helped grow into an international tech company before exiting in 2024 to Semrush Holdings Inc. These journeys define how Niels lives governance, leadership and decision-making: not from theory, but from active responsibility.
Before and alongside his founder path, Niels gained operational experience at global technology and commerce companies such as Google, Scout24 and MediaMarkt. This combination — founder reality and corporate scale — allows him to bridge worlds that often struggle to understand each other.
Beyond boardwork, Niels regularly speaks on public stages about founder decision-making, board excellence and governance at scale. His entrepreneurial work has been recognised by Google (OC Award), EY (Entrepreneur of the Year finalist), the German Startup Prize, Deloitte and High-Tech Gründerfonds.
As the founder and driving force behind Chairpeople, he has one guiding principle: founders deserve boards that understand their reality and help them stay in control as their companies grow.
Outside of work, Niels divides his time between Munich, Porto Rafti, Stade, Oslo and Cape Town. Married to a Greek “Münchner Kindl” and father of a son, he finds balance in design, architecture and the restoration of meaningful spaces — a contrast to the pace of entrepreneurship, and a source of clarity.
Niels Dörje
Founding Partner
Ronjon M. Sarcar
Partner
Ronjon is a founder at heart. He started building digital businesses long before the market was ready — first in e-commerce and media, later in agencies. What began as hands-on entrepreneurship grew into some of Germany’s earliest and most successful digital agency stories.
He co-founded several classifieds platforms which have been sold to Scout24 and was part of the initial online marketing team of Scout24. Later he founded rmsarcar.com, Germany’s first SEA agency, and admatics.com, building both from the ground up into respected, fast-growing businesses with clients such as Scout24 Group, TUI, Thomas Cook, Dr. Klein, Thomann, Telekom, Vodafone and many others. In 2008, he sold both agencies to Aegis Dentsu, where they became part of iProspect. Ronjon stayed on to lead the German business, guiding the transition from founder-led agency to international network.
Since then, Ronjon has worked with founders and leadership teams across agency and digital businesses, including REWE, DER Touristik Online, MediaMarktSaturn / redblue marketing and Vodafone. Google has drawn on its expertise through the Google Launchpad mentoring programme.
At Chairpeople, he brings founder judgement into the boardroom –supporting founders as they scale, professionalise and prepare for their next chapter.
Born in Munich and raised in the north, he is a friend of trust and clear words.
Iris is the operational backbone of Chairpeople. Bilingual in German and Greek by upbringing and deeply structured by nature, she ensures that clarity, momentum and reliability are present in every collaboration — especially when situations become complex or demanding.
With a background in project management, digital marketing and communication, Iris has built and led teams across leading agencies and corporate environments. Her experience spans senior roles at advertising agencies, digital consultancies and Scout24, as well as hands-on startup work as Marketing Manager at HolidayInsider AG.
What truly defines Iris is not her résumé, but her impact. She brings structure without rigidity, motivation without pressure, and calm leadership in moments where
founders and teams need stability most.
For entrepreneurs, founders and partners, Iris is the guarantee that cooperation works, communication stays clear, and commitments are delivered — consistently and reliably.
She is the heart of Chairpeople’s operations — and a trusted anchor for everyone we work with.
