Leadership Team

Management

Christian Köstler, Managing Director & EVP North America
Sales & Marketing, Professional Services
Christian Köstler is responsible for Sales & Marketing and Professional Services at Lixto. Most recently, Christian was Sales Director Automotive Europe with Agile Software (AGIL). Prior to Agile, Christian spent nearly 8 years at Eigner in several General Management and Sales Management Positions and helped as manager and shareholder to grow the company from a local company to a global player. Christian holds a degree in Electrical Engineering and a degree of the Vienna Business School.

Marcus Herzog, PhD, Managing Director
Research & Development, Product Management & Marketing, IT
Marcus Herzog received his PhD from the Vienna University of Technology. Marcus started his professional career working for a number of companies, including Siemens AG, in the information technology sector in engineering. After receiving his masters degree, Marcus joined the Computer Science department of the Vienna University of Technology, where he worked as project lead in a number of European research projects in the fields of multimedia and internet computing. Marcus is a co-founder of Lixto.

Elisabetta Facchini
VP Finance
Elisabetta Facchini is responsible for Finance and Administration. Before joining Lixto Ms. Facchini held positions in a number of companies including the stock listed software company update.com. Ms. Facchini joined Lixto from the Swiss-based multi-national mining group Omya, where she held the role of a Group Financial Analyst responsible for the Eastern European countries. Ms. Facchini holds a masters degree in International Economic and Business Sciences from University of Innsbruck and Aarhus University in Denmark.

Jason Houle
VP Travel Solutions
Jason Houle is responsible for the travel industry segment within Lixto. Jason holds a BS in Finance and a BA in German. After university, Jason worked as an assistant trader at Norddeutsche Landesbank. In 2000 Jason switched to the travel industry joining T.I.S.S. AG and later on hotels.com and Expedia. At Expedia, Jason held the position of Director Business Development and has been responsible for partner key accounting, sales optimisation and strategy. In 2006, Jason joined Lixto to drive the activities in the travel segment.

Robert Baumgartner, PhD
VP Research and Development
Robert Baumgartner studied at the University of Vienna and received his PhD in the area of theoretical computer science. Since 2000 he was affiliated with the University of Technology in Vienna, published papers in renowned conferences, worked in several projects and taught several courses at both TU Wien and University of Vienna. Robert has been one of the main contributors in the development of Lixto’s extraction language, heads the development team at Lixto and is responsible for the research and development strategy. He is a co-founder of Lixto.

Oliver Frölich, PhD, MBA
VP IT and Operations
Oliver Frölich holds a master degree in computer science from the HM in Munich and the USP in São Paulo,Brazil. He finished his MBA at Tennessee State/USA and the University of Munich with distinction and received his PhD in Computer Science in Business from the University of Vienna. During the time of his studies, Oliver was working as IT Consultant in Controlling, IT and Business Development and led customer projects for Siemens, Epcos and Knorr-Brake in Munich, Spain, Belgium, Brazil and the US. Oliver joined Lixto in 2004 and is responsible for IT, Operations and Business Processes.

Board

PONTIS Capital is one of the leading independent growth capital investment firms in Austria. The investment strategy focuses on strong growth and technology-oriented younger companies as well as innovative companies in the lower mid-market. The emphasis is put primarily on the following industries: information-/communication technologies, life sciences and environmental technologies.
The investment team of PONTIS possesses venture capital and private equity experience for more than one decade as well as many years of experience in the M&A business and tech-related industries. Portfolio management activities are clearly based on a straight value-creation approach. www.pontiscapital.at

Georg Gottlob, Prof.
Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board
Georg Gottlob, currently a Professor of Computer Science at Oxford University, has been a guest speaker at many international conferences. He received the Wittgenstein Award from the Austrian National Science Fund, was elected Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and is the holder of a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. He chaired the Program Committees of ACM PODS 2000 (ACM Conference on Principles of Database Systems) and of IJCAI 2003 (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence). He is a co-founder of Lixto.