Stefan Lederer

CEO & Co-founder, Bitmovin

I build video infrastructure at Bitmovin. I also put my own money into early-stage technical founders.

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Stefan Lederer
About

I co-founded Bitmovin in 2013 and run it as CEO. It grew out of our research on adaptive streaming and the work we did on MPEG-DASH, which is now how a large share of internet video gets delivered. Today we build the encoding, playback and analytics that streaming services run on.

I never fully left the research side. 25 papers and 10 patents in multimedia delivery and networking. I have guest lectured at the University of Klagenfurt over the years, and Bitmovin funds several research projects with them. The biggest is ATHENA, a Christian Doppler laboratory working on adaptive streaming and networked multimedia.

I also invest my own money in early-stage companies. Mostly pre-seed and seed, mostly technical founders, in B2B SaaS, security and defence, and energy. Three times so far I have led the round and brought other investors in through an SPV.

Research we fund: ATHENA, and several other projects with the University of Klagenfurt.

2013
Co-founded Bitmovin
MPEG-DASH
Co-created the standard
10
Patents
25+
Research papers
2,100+
Scholar citations
Company

Bitmovin

Encoding, player and analytics infrastructure for online video.

bitmovin.com
Rounds I lead

In a few companies I lead the round myself and bring other investors in through an SPV. That means a bigger cheque, more involvement, and usually a seat at the table.

HockeyStack

B2B marketing attribution and revenue analytics.

Lead investor, syndicate via SPV Analytics

GuardAero

Counter-drone protection systems for military vehicles.

Lead investor, syndicate via SPV Defence

Salvy

Business mobile connectivity and eSIM in Brazil.

Lead investor, syndicate via SPV Telecom
Portfolio
34 companies

Direct angel investments, roughly ordered by size.

SpaceX Space Orbital launch and satellite internet. Mistral AI Open-weight frontier AI models, built in Europe. crate Data Distributed SQL database for real-time machine data. Upflow Fintech Accounts-receivable automation for B2B finance teams. Oden.io Industrial Real-time analytics for manufacturing lines. Waydev Dev tools Engineering analytics for software teams.
Resquared Sales Lead generation for teams selling to local businesses.
AiSDR Sales AI sales development rep for outbound pipeline.
Invofox Fintech AI document and invoice processing for finance teams.
Kilobaser Biotech Benchtop DNA synthesiser for research labs.
Onedoclabs Health Document infrastructure for healthcare software.
Linemetrics IoT IoT sensor monitoring for buildings and industry.
Cosmic JS Dev tools Headless CMS for content-driven applications.
Reflect Dev tools No-code automated browser testing.
Onboard.io SaaS Customer onboarding for B2B software teams.
Kickscale Sales AI meeting intelligence for sales teams.
Hilos SaaS WhatsApp automation for customer conversations.
Rownd Dev tools Drop-in authentication and user onboarding.
Golpo AI video Turns documents and prompts into whiteboard animation videos.
Red Barn Robotics Robotics Robotic weeding for vegetable farms.
Splash Inc. Defence Autonomous surface vessels for maritime security. Ozeki Legal tech AI that negotiates and reviews contracts. Pally AI AI assistant over text that remembers your life and follows up.
HumanLayer AI infra Human-in-the-loop approvals for AI agents.
GlassKube Dev tools Open-source package manager for Kubernetes.
Promptless Dev tools Keeps product documentation up to date automatically.
0.email AI Open-source, AI-native email client.
Hyprnote AI Open-source AI notetaker that keeps meeting data on-device. Linq Consumer Private photo sharing where you can revoke access after sending. Earendil AI Building AI tools in the open. Rewbi Stealth Dartboard Energy Energy AI analyst that finds missed revenue for grid batteries.
Statewide
Trace AI infra Maps a company so AI agents know where they fit.
Incubator

Bitmovin AI Incubator

We give small teams ten weeks, a budget and access to real customers, then see what they can ship. We have run it twice. After the second round we made it permanent.

Summer 2025

9 people · 9 teams · First run

Nine people, nine projects. Eight of them ended up inside Bitmovin products.

  • We interviewed 350 people across Europe to fill nine places.
  • Eight of the nine projects became features in Bitmovin products.
  • Shown at IBC and other industry shows.

Summer 2026

15 people · 7 teams · Ten weeks

Fifteen interns picked from 500 applicants across Europe. Seven products in ten weeks.

  • Teams were demoing to customers inside four weeks.
  • Several signed their first test users before the ten weeks were up.
Summer 2025 6 of 9 shown
  • Model training for observability data
  • AISA Highlight Clips
  • Personal AI assistants
  • Industry Insights Report
  • TestAutomation MCP & Support Copilot
  • Analytics Anomaly Detection
Summer 2026
  • Quicly Multiview live streaming on Media over QUIC.
  • Kairos Automatic highlight clipping for live sport.
  • End-to-End Observability Per-segment quality scoring and self-healing encodings.
  • Davy Advertising observability, live in the dashboard.
  • govideo Browser-native live streaming you control by typing.
  • Talecut GPU-accelerated vertical reframing with subject detection.
  • Context Goblin AI code review with specialised agents.
Two Talecut team members presenting to the room on Demo Day. The Quicly team presenting to a seated audience at the Demo Day.
Demo Day, Summer 2026
Off the clock

Away from the desk you will usually find me on skis, on the water, or out running.

Skiing · Sailing · Running

For founders

I invest in B2B SaaS, Security & Defence and Energy.

What I look for

  • Founders who have hit the problem themselves.
  • Something already built that someone is using.
  • Problems that look boring on the surface and are hard underneath.
Stage
Pre-seed, Seed
Geography
Europe, US
stefan.lederer@bitmovin.com

Email me. Tell me what you are building, who is using it and what you need. A link to something working beats a deck.

Probably not a fit
  • Decks with nothing built yet.
  • Consumer social and marketplaces. I would be no help to you.
  • Rounds where my cheque would not move the needle.