Jan Henric Buettner

Jan Henric Buettner (born 10 September 1964)^[2][3] is a German entrepreneur. He is married to Holly Chelsea Marie Buettner.^[1]

Jan Henric Buettner
Born	(1964-09-10) September 10, 1964 (age 60) Hamburg, Germany
Occupation	Entrepreneur
Spouse	Holly Chelsea Marie Buettner[1]

Biography

Born in Hamburg, Buettner studied business management there and did an internship at a precursor of Vodafone, then started his career as a trainee at Axel Springer AG, where he worked on interactive media.^[3][4] In 1995 he developed AOL Europe with Andreas von Blottnitz. He became head of AOL Germany, then in 1997 moved to the US, where he established a venture capital firm specialising in internet companies, BV Capital, as general partner for Bertelsmann.^[3][5][6] In 2003 he and Blottnitz were awarded €203 million in damages by a California court for Bertelsmann's failure to pay them part of the proceeds from the sale of its share in AOL Europe; the amount was reduced to €160 million in an out-of-court agreement.^[3][4][5]

In 2005 he bought a historic estate by the Baltic Sea for €7 million,^[2][4][7] and converted the estate buildings and village into Grand Village Weissenhaus, a privately operated luxury resort which opened in 2014.^[5][8][9] Some of the funding for the renovation and conversion was raised on the crowdfunding site Companisto.de,^[8][9] where it drew more investment than any other for-profit European organisation to that date.^[10][11] In 2024, Buettner organized a high profile chess tournament at his resort, the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge.^[12] Buettner and five time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen announced in March 2024 that the tournament would expand into a yearly series of events with increased prize funds.^[13]

Buettner lives in Hamburg; his former wife and their children continue to live in Santa Barbara, California.^[5]