FIRST FOREST
ADVISORS
BE BOLD - BE FIRST
We believe in the power of innovation. Sustainable growth and defendable success are rooted in bold ideas, strong believes and always a CAN DO Spirit. We are your scout on this journey. Our offerings, based on decades of entrepreneurial experience, address some of the most relevant challenges for today’s businesses.
SERVICES
Business Building & Going-To-Market
We are putting visionary ideas into action. We build new businesses on behalf of our clients, founders or investors. This might range from designing a new business to defining a functioning governance structure. We help establish legal entities and business operations functions. Based on our own entrepreneurial experience we build and execute your Going-To-Market Strategy. We ensure professional setup of stakeholder communications as well as investor documentation and manyfold equally relevant topics you might have to tackle on your route to market.
Funding & Placement
We help our clients funding their business and finding initial (venture) clients. We understand the needs and preferences of different investor types, being it private/family investors, VC/PE investors and corporates. We help define your funding needs and shape the suitable funding structure, from equity to debt or loans.
COO Services for Startups
With our COO Services we offer to take on temporary senior management roles, such as COO, to set up and build solid scalable structures from within. In later stages we help our clients to grow, scale or transform. When growth and change are fully implemented in your day to day business, we hand over and our job is done.
Business (Unit) Strategies
Combining longstanding experience in Top Management Consulting with many years in hands on business building, we work with our clients on companywide business or business unit strategies. We work with SMEs, Scaleups and Corporates across industries with a sweet spot in the financial institutions sector. In some of our most recent mandates we deep dived into Mortgage Banking and Car and Mobility Financing.
Transformation and Target Operating Models
We work with our clients to design and implement digital proof Target Operating Models in an Omni-Channel setup. Here we leverage our experience in venture building with successful digital startups over the last decade. Following M&A transactions we are by your side, Managing Post Merger transformations and setting up new operating structures for e.g. joint venture.
COO Services for Scaleups
Future proof corporate structures and processes often require substantial momentum for change. Consequently transferring a project approach into a line management function is key for success. We execute this with our COO-Services, mostly for Scaleups and SMEs.
AI Roadmaps
We are not digital natives but have been in the midst of digitization from its very beginning. We shaped innovative digital Customer Journeys, established multi-channel sales and digital processes (e.g. loans and mortgages). We have implemented AI in existing businesses and built new businesses around AI and quantitative modeling. Understanding the true AI opportunities and the interrelations along the value chain is key for success. We combine business and AI experience to spot the priority areas and drive a impact driven AI Roadmap. Identifying and pushing the right pilots and executing them with the right partners will change the game.
Human AI In Action
Text and Language AI (Human AI) is not new, many of the methods have been around for decades. And language is relevant – it is at the core of most business and client relevant AI. Using the right Large Language Models, combined with cleaned data in a smart data pipeline, brings enormous value to businesses. We have been involved in early mover solutions and seen the KPIs delivered. We work with our clients to scope and build the right modules for their businesses, with partners for execution. We bridge strategy, business and the tech firms. Use cases – so far – range from segmentation, Persona bots, Speech/Copy bots to contact center solutions. The opportunities in insight generation and AI enabled interaction for your enterprise are surely not explored yet.
EU AI Act & AI Officer aaS
Businesses operate in a regulated environment. In August 2024, the EU AI Act entered into force. For both, deployers and providers of AI solutions it is mandatory to comply with the new regulations. This is a very dynamic field, requirements are driven by the risk classification of AI modules in action. We help to identify and cluster the AI modules subject to the EU AI Act and assess the risk categories. We raise the awareness of your teams – mandatory under the regulation. With legal partners we offer service packages (“AI Officer as a Service” ) to efficiently control risks while not restricting your business. We jump in and take care of it, minimizing the time and effort on your side. Reach out to us to discover the opportunities.
Investment Strategies & Risk Management
This is to our heritage: For us Real Assets and Forestry feel like home. Since 2005 we guided large European long term investors into forestry as an asset class and are servicing owners and investors since then. We uniquely combine forestry and land management know how with asset management and value chain optimization expertise. This combination is key to generate value in the portfolio and in the local forestry asset. Operating out of Germany we have a standing network of partners for the specific geography, to ensure local execution. Our team combines European values with US timberland investment experience. Typical investment strategies range from timberland only to ESG focused (“non timber value”) approaches, reflecting the investor’s objectives.
Value Chain Optimization
We work with timberland owners (private to large corporate) evaluating the asset base and setting up value generating strategies. This may include land management strategies or optimizing the value chain downstream (e.g. sawmill / intermediaries, sourcing / partnering, pellet production, multi-modal heating).
Mortgage Banking
In Real Assets we have our second sweet spot: Real Estate Financing. We have been in the mortgage banking business for long and have created and transformed banks (greenfield, Joint Ventures). We are experts in digitization of retail mortgage and loans, and we are now entering the AI space in retail financing.
POINT OF VIEW
ABOUT US
Dr. Christian Röckemann
Founder / Managing Director
Christian has worked for leading banks and was a management consultant (e.g. Kearney) for many years. He has built and scaled ventures, including Interhyp, now a market leader in mortgage brokerage. He is a data scientist and recently working with leading Human AI scale ups. He sees forestry as a fascinating “alternative asset”: sustainable, with natural returns, internationally proven, transparent, with low-correlation. This is why First Forest had been started: combining asset management know-how with quantitative methods and deep forestry expertise.
Judith Alt
Co-Founder/ Venture Advisory
Lorenz Freiherr Klein von Wisenberg
Forestry Expert / Appraiser