The Flying
Dutchman.

By the time I reached America, I was not exactly a greenhorn. I had already developed a dangerous habit: whenever I became reasonably good at something, I wanted to do something else.

School and I had different ideas about speed. I studied computer science and landed at the Raiffeisen computing center. A respectable beginning. Then came Athesia, where I became assistant to its CEO and president, a prominent political figure. We drove from Bolzano to Verona Airport while he briefed me on the week ahead, before his trips to parliament in Rome. When he returned, we reviewed what had happened. It was an education in power, management and human nature. Some senior executives did not believe in email. I introduced it anyway.

I learned an enormous amount. I was grateful. South Tyrol was also getting too small.

So I did the obvious thing for a young man with a promising institutional career: I went to Spain, sold holiday properties by day, and worked in a nightclub at night. My career planning was not entirely conventional. But I learned Spanish, and I loved the freedom.

Eventually I returned to South Tyrol and spent a winter in Sulden working as a bartender and DJ, mostly so I could snowboard every day. I was serious about snowboarding. I rode obsessively, became involved with Nidecker boards, and even designed my own board. I made cocktails for other people; my personal indulgence was gravity.

This winter became awkward when I applied for a Swiss work permit. My qualifications and international experience were easy enough to explain. Then a very correct Swiss lady came to the unexplained winter on my CV. I told her I had needed time after years of hard work to find my direction again. It was true. I had mostly found it downhill.

The Swiss accepted me. I worked international markets, particularly Spain, where my language skills were suddenly a commercial asset. I met Sergio in Barcelona, who became a lifelong friend and later my daughter's godfather. We traveled and worked, discovered San Sebastián, Bilbao, and a place whose name I still remember: Donde el Silencio se Oye. Where you can hear the silence.

I returned to university in Innsbruck for international business and M&A. Apparently I could never decide between learning and doing, so I kept doing both.

Then came KDG, Koch Records and Koch Media, compact discs, DVDs, technology and the future. I loved technology because it made tomorrow tangible. One day I was sent to Amsterdam to give a technical talk on music licensing and royalties to an international conference of record producers. The intended speaker couldn't make it.

I was perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five. Four or five hundred people were in the room. I knew my subject and I knew how to present. But I had never looked out over so many faces. I had genuine stage fright. I spoke anyway. Eventually the room seemed smaller. Then it was over.

I knew I could do this again. I also knew these were not quite my people yet. Been there. Done that. What next?

The Flying Dutchman was condemned to sail forever without a harbor. I wasn't condemned. I occasionally had a perfectly respectable employment contract. But I understood the man.