As an entrepreneurial, innovative, and consultative professional, I possess 18+ years of startup and business management experience across a breadth of sectors – from consultancy through sales to information technology with my most recent venture at adstrong. 

I am widely regarded for my propensity to locate growth opportunities as well as pioneer business development initiatives. I have paved a history of influence and impact, directly cultivating company growth throughout my career trajectory. In doing so, I have continually met market demand with innovative, value-adding, and cutting-edge products and services.

My core body of professional specialties ranges from business leadership, operations management, and strategy development to optimization & sales strategies. My accountabilities have required me to leverage an entrepreneurial mindset, partnership building and negotiation, as well as strong business & financial acumen, systematic business management, and project governance to streamline end-to-end ops and maximize returns.  

As an entrepreneur who has pioneered numerous businesses, I understand the requirements of building a successful business, and honing a client-first mentality. I am adept at translating customer insights into progressive strategies, contributing to the success of various operations within a competitive environment and ensuring products/ services reach their maximum user-end value. 

As a venture capitalist, I am competent in extending approaches, spearheading development initiatives, overseeing sales operations, and identifying opportunities for process improvement to drive effectiveness.

Peers, mentors, and clients alike commend me as a reliable, down-to-earth, and continuously innovative change agent, growth advocate, and champion of effective, pragmatic action and leadership.

I welcome contacts from potential colleagues and clients, and other professionals in my space. Feel free to contact me through this profile if you wish to connect.

Ingmar Albert

When you start a company, the first few hires are the most dangerous decisions you will ever make.

In the beginning, you aren't just hiring for a "role." You are hiring the culture. If those first 5 people aren't aligned, the next 50 never will be. 

Starting at McKinsey to the startups I have founded and exited, I have learned that the best talent on paper is often the wrong talent for a scaling business. I have stopped looking for the most impressive CV and started looking for something much harder to find: High-trust alignment.

At adstrong, we have built a team that doesn't just work well together, but actually like hanging out together. To some, that sounds like a "nice to have." To me, it is a strategic requirement.

Here is why leveraging your network and hiring people you know deeply is the ultimate scale hack:

𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁
When you hire from your network, you skip the "getting to know you" phase. You already know how they handle pressure and whether they will tell you the truth when things are going wrong. In a fast-growing company, that trust is the only thing that allows you to move at speed.

𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀
Every high-performer has weaknesses. The problem with hiring strangers is that it takes 6-12 months to find out what those weaknesses are. By then, the damage might be done. 

When you hire people you know well, you already have the full picture. You know their "blind spots" just as well as their "superpowers." This puts you in a position of strength as a CEO. You can strategically position them where they are guaranteed to succeed and build systems that cover their gaps. You aren't managing a CV; you are managing a known set of variables.

"𝗡𝗼-𝗖𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗲" 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲
We spend more time with our colleagues than almost anyone else. If you are building a company where you dread the Monday morning meeting because of the personalities in the room, you have already lost. I want to be surrounded by people who challenge me, yes... but also people I would happily grab a beer with on a Friday.

𝗧𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁
The best people want to work with two things: big problems and great people. When you hire the "best of the best" from your network, they bring their own networks with them. It creates a virtuous cycle where high-performers want to join because they see the caliber of the people already in the room.

Building a team from zero isn't about filling seats. It is about curating a group of people who are as invested in the "why" as you are.

Ingmar V. Albert

The "Google Tax" is a choice, not a requirement.

When we were involved in the legal friction that forced the creation of the CSS program, the goal wasn't just to "add a link" to the bottom of an ad. It was to introduce actual auction competition into a space that had been a monopoly.

Years later, I'm still surprised by how many sophisticated brands treat the ~20% internal margin they pay to Google as a "cost of doing business." It isn't.

In an environment where CAC is rising and margins are being squeezed by global competition, that 20% isn't just a saving. It's a reinvestment fund. If your competitor is bidding 1€ through a CSS and you are bidding 1€ through Google Shopping, they are effectively outbidding you by about 20% before the auction even starts.

At adstrong, we now manage over 20% of all CSS Centers globally. We don't do this by selling a "discount." we do it by treating the Shopping auction as what it is: a game of marginal gains.

Whether it's using a Branded CSS to reclaim agency authority or leveraging Keyword CSS to occupy more than one spot in the carousel, the goal is the same: Min/Maxing the available real estate.

What worked to get you to 1 million often becomes the very thing that prevents you from getting to 10 million. I call this the "Complexity Tax."

As you scale, your overhead doesn't just grow: it compounds. Your decision-making slows down. You start optimizing for "not losing" instead of winning. But the most dangerous part of the Complexity Tax is that it is often invisible. It hides in your default settings, your legacy contracts, and your "standard" operational procedures.

The most successful CEOs I know aren't the ones who work the hardest. They are the ones who are ruthless about identifying these invisible taxes. 

They ask questions that others find uncomfortable:
1. Is this "industry standard" actually efficient, or is it just what everyone else is doing?
2. Are we building our own infrastructure, or are we just renting someone else's?
3. If we had to start from zero today, would we choose the partners we have now?

Scaling a business isn't about doing more of the same. It is about constantly auditing the foundations you are standing on. If you aren't willing to break your own processes to find a more efficient path, the market will eventually break them for you.

Leadership isn't just about vision. It is about the discipline to keep the "Complexity Tax" from eating your future.

I am tired of hearing about the "grind."

I have been in McKinsey boardrooms and the trenches of my own startups. If there is one thing I have learned, it is this: If you are relying on your team to "push harder" just to hit your numbers, you have hit a ceiling that effort alone won't break.

"Grinding" is often just a symptom of a system that is working against you.

Most CEOs think they can outwork a bad setup. But you can't out-hustle a 20% disadvantage in a Google auction, just like you can't out-hustle a flawed strategy. You are just asking your people to work twice as hard for the same result.

At adstrong, we didn't just build another tool. We fixed the math of the game. We removed the friction so our clients could win without having to redline their teams.

I don't want to be the guy who works the most hours. I want to be the guy who builds the best machine.

Growth shouldn't be a test of endurance. It should be a result of better architecture. If you find yourself stuck, stop looking at the clock and start looking at the pipes.

Stop trying to out-hustle the auction. Start fixing the machine.

WE ARE HIRING | Established for eCommerce Growth | Cutting-Edge Growth Marketing

Most brands running Google Ads are leaving a ridiculous amount of money on the table.

Not because the channel doesn’t work—but because they’ve built it wrong. Wrong structure. Wrong strategy. Wrong expectations. Then they wonder why performance plateaus or CPAs creep up month after month.

At Adcubator, we fix that.

We’re a Google Ads agency managing over 9 figures in annual ad spend for some of the most aggressive, fast-moving DTC brands in the market—BRĒZ, Hey Shape, Calming Co, Eskiin, Pure Diffuser, FluffCo, Dore & Rose, and a few others we can’t name (yet).

We don’t “manage” accounts.
We engineer paid search systems that unlock scale—without sacrificing margin or efficiency.

Our job isn’t to make things look good in a dashboard. Our job is to make Google Ads a high-leverage, cold-traffic scaling machine that brings in incremental revenue, not vanity ROAS.

What makes us different?

✅ We treat Google like a performance channel, not a checkbox.
✅ We rebuild accounts to unlock scale—fast.
✅ We think like operators, not service providers.
✅ We give you visibility on what’s actually working—and what’s dead weight.
✅ We separate branded vs. non-branded, cold vs. warm, net new vs. recycled—because blended ROAS is a lie.
✅ We don’t report for the sake of reporting. We drive decisions based on cash, margin, and efficiency.

We also run our own eCom brands. That means we know what it’s like when your ad spend is directly tied to inventory, cash flow, and profitability. We’re not theorizing in slide decks. We’re in the trenches too.

If your Google Ads account is stagnant, bloated, or “working” but not winning—there’s a better way to run it. One that’s faster, leaner, and built to scale cold traffic profitably.

That’s what we do. Every day. If you want to unlock Google Ads as a true driver of incremental revenue and scalable growth—send me a message.

Jem Bourouh

I built a +85-person team without a single local hire.

Most CEOs hire within a 30-mile radius.

I went global from day one.

The best talent rarely lives in your city. When I found an A-player in Spain, perfect skills, perfect culture fit, he didn't want to relocate.

Does this mean I didn't hire him? No!

I hire based on talent. Location really doesn't matter.

My team now spans Indonesia, Pakistan, Germany, the US, and beyond. Sometimes 8-9 hour time differences.

Our team has completely different cultures, different work styles, and different strengths.

And honestly? That might even be our advantage.

What a global team looks like in practice:

– I wake up with work already done
– 24/7 output without burning anyone out
– No single timezone creates a bottleneck
– Customer issues get handled before I open my laptop

When you hire locally, you're not just limiting geography. You're limiting quality. You're accepting whoever happens to live nearby.

Instead of finding the person who's actually the best fit.

I need people who are obsessed with their craft, results-driven, and worth every euro they earn.

The probability of finding that in one city alone?

Significantly lower than searching globally.


P.S. How many time zones is your team spread across?

Google Ads for High-Growth DTC Brands | Trusted by BRĒZ, Hey Shape, Calming Co, Eskiin, Pure Diffuser, FluffCo, Dore & Rose | Managing 9 Figures in Annual Ad Spend | Founder @ Adcubator

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AP just invited me to their HQ in Vallée de Joux.

Only a select few get invited each year.

It isn't a public event, not a press trip, not some influencer collaboration. Only a select few get an invite.

I'm one of them because of the relationship I've built with AP over the past few years.

Most people don't understand that ultra-luxury has nothing to do with money.

I know guys who could write a 100k check tomorrow and still get turned down by AP.

Because they haven't built a relationship. They haven't earned the trust.

I've spent quite a sizable amount with AP in the last year alone.

Not because I needed another watch but because I was building a track record with people who only open doors for those they know and trust.

The invite is a higher status symbol than the watches itself.

It's a big privilege and mainly about trust because these things are very exclusive.

That's exactly how I run my agency.

We don't take every client who can afford us.

We build real relationships that are based on trust.

Hot Take: CVs are out.

They tell me nothing about qualification.

Anyone can make theirs look impressive with ChatGPT.

I've seen it all:

Media Buyer who "learned from the best (YouTubers)"
Marketing Intern who "managed $500M in ad spend"
Junior Consultant who "led 47 product launches"

It's gotten ridiculous.

That's why I never look at CVs. I don't ask where or if they studied, nor do I require them to have certificates.

I hire based on one thing: 

Can you deliver the outcome I need?

"Google Media Buyer" speaks to anyone.

When you post "looking for someone who can scale a 7-figure brand to 8-figures in 6 months", it automatically only attracts the right talents.

People who are confident enough to get these results.

Then I give them a test project.

Want to run YouTube Ads for us? Here's $5k. Show me 3x ROAS in 2 weeks. Can't do it? No hard feelings. Next one.

The result?

→ Zero bad hires in the last 18 months
→ 85+ people who actually deliver
→ No micromanagement needed

When someone proves they can deliver the outcome, I don't care where they went to school.

Your track outcomes are your CV.

P.S. How do you hire talent?

This is the bi-weekly salary I pay myself.

Most agency founders pay themselves last.

"Reinvest everything."
"The business comes first."
"I'll take more once we hit the next milestone."

I said the same things for years.

How you pay yourself is a direct signal of how you value your own work. If you underpay yourself, you'll make decisions from scarcity.

You'll keep bad clients because you need the cash.
You'll underprice your services because you're scared.
You'll never think like a real owner of your own business.

There is always two types of founders:

Type 1 – Pay last

He says he doesn't need money, he's humble and reinvests profits. Pays himself less than some employees and drives a 2012 Golf. He calls it discipline.

Type 2 – Pay all

He needs more cars than he can drive, pulls 80% out of his business' monthly profit and wonders why cash flow is always tight.

Both are wrong.

Pay yourself what the role deserves and pay yourself first - but be reasonable.


P.S. What do you actually pay yourself?

Most entrepreneurs you admire online are scammers.

The guru economy runs on fake proof.

They post screenshot testimonials. Fake ROAS numbers. Client logos they never worked with.

And for a while? It works.

They get reach, people believe what they see. But that's all borrowed authority. Not real authority.

The moment someone checks the numbers, asks for a real case study or talks to a "client"...it's over.

And it always comes out.

You have to EARN your personal brand with numbers, not just words.

The proof-first loop that builds long-term:

→ Take one client. Deliver extraordinary results.
→ Make the results observable. Not fake PDFs.
→ That client tells others. They arrive pre-sold.
→ Repeat on scale. Authority compounds.

Earned authority grows even when you are not marketing yourself. Borrowed authority needs you to keep paying.

With more and more agencies being opened everyday, trust is your biggest asset in 2026.

The scammers will get found out. They always do.

Build proof first. Let it speak for itself.


P.S. Have you caught people faking their numbers?

My overnight success took 6 years.

I struggled for many years before that.

You open LinkedIn or Instagram and see hundreds of founders crushing it, closing deals, living the life. From the outside it genuinely looks like they just got lucky.

Maybe even my posts look that way sometimes.

I openly share how much salary I pay myself.

It might sound "too much" for many. People judge the lifestyle, question the numbers, assume it came easy.

To be honest, I couldn't care less.

Because those people weren't there when I had nothing.

I grew up on welfare in Germany.

My first business failed after 3 months because I couldn't even afford the $29 Shopify fee.

My overnight success happened over YEARS.

Every interview I've ever watched asks the same question: "Did you see yourself here 5 years ago?"

And the answer is always no.

Mine is different.

I always saw myself exactly here because I knew I couldn't possibly lose if I never quit.

Most people quit too soon.

They lose their faith.

Because they see someone like me now and not the failed stores, struggles and months with no clients.

Overnight success never happens overnight.

Keep pushing!


P.S. How long did your overnight success take?

Last week I picked up a watch in Munich.

AP Japan edition. One out of 200.

Not writing this to flex about the watch (even though I'm proud to be one of the 200 owners worldwide).

The best agencies operate like AP.

They don't produce more when demand goes up. They don't make 2,000 because they could sell 2,000.

They make 200, they make them right, and if you want one you wait. Simple as that.

From the outside that looks like leaving money on the table. And in the short term, it probably is.

But that's exactly why a piece like this holds its value for decades. The restraint is part of the product.

We run Adcubator the same way.

One brand per niche. No cold outreach. No ads for ourselves. And we turn down more than we take on.

We only take on the best brands.

Because we deliver the best results.

Premium Quality > Volume.


P.S. Is your agency like AP or Casio?

Most people follow the mainstream.

I always do the opposite. On purpose.

When the mainstream media starts talking about stocks, I get nervous. Not excited.

When every agency in your space uses the same pitch deck, the same case studies, the same promises...

I build something that looks nothing like them.
No website. No cold outreach. Invitation only.

When everyone's buying, I'm selling. When everyone's selling, I'm the one picking up the phone.

And no, I don't just do it "for the sake of it".

It's a simple law of life...

To achieve extraordinary results, you have to be asymmetric.

Be where nobody else is willing to go.
Build what nobody else is willing to build.
Say no where everyone says yes.

That's how an 8-figure agency gets built without a single ad, a website, or a cold email.

Not luck. Just refusing to copy the playbook everyone else is running.


P.S. What's your law of life?

My biggest networking advice?

Never ever put people on a pedestal.

No matter how “rich” or far ahead they are.

I meet some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world on a regular basis.

Never once would I post a photo with any of them to get reach or make myself look more credible. The second you put someone on a pedestal, you've already lost.

Most walk into the room thinking "how do I impress this person" instead of "what can I do for this person".

The most successful people I know don't want admirers in their network.

They want equals. People who challenge their thinking, contribute, and don't treat them like a celebrity.

That's the only way relationships get built at this level.

Not by tagging them in a photo like a little fan.

Better show up as yourself and actually bring something to the table. That makes you stand out.

Because let me promise you something...

The founder doing $50M a year isn't fundamentally different from you. You are as valuable as him.

He's just further down the same road.

So if you really want to be part of big rooms, don't play yourself small. Think in contribution, not admiration.

P.S. What's your best networking advice?

Random Sidequest: I just spawned in Namibia😂

A lot has happened in the past two weeks, which made me change my plans accordingly within 24 hours.

Instead of going back to Dubai from Switzerland, I will now stay in Africa for the next few weeks. Namibia first, Cape Town next, without a fixed return date.

In times like these, I am grateful for the optionality and resources I have. I can work from anywhere I want.

No matter where I am, work keeps running, all clients keep scaling and the team keeps crushing it.

Most people only think of revenue, margins or team size when building their business.
It's all important.

But the real value is optionality.

The ability to move without it affecting anything. The freedom to not be tied to a specific place for your business to be able to operate.

Money is the only resource that makes you free.

Everyone who builds serious money and then pretends it doesn't buy freedom is lying to you. It does.

That's literally what it's for.

P.S. If something changed tomorrow and you had to move cities in 24 hours...could you?

We fired a client last week.

Even though the results were amazing.

The client kept going into the Shopify backend, staring at UTM data, which compared two different promos from week 8 2026 to week 8 2025.

Every day, I hear "Google is down".

So I pulled up the dashboard and walked them through every single metric.

+80% spend.
+92% conversions.
+82% revenue since we took over in February.

Best month they'd ever had on Google.
But they wouldn't look at these numbers.

That's when I knew this wasn't going anywhere. Because it clearly wasn't a performance problem.

The second your team starts spending energy on data justification instead of client growth, everyone loses.

So we fired her in the first month.

After working with 200+ ecom brands, I know for sure:

The best client relationships don't need convincing on real numbers and great results. They just trust you.

Trust is either there from day one, or it never comes.

Only keep clients who let you do your best work.

Do yourself a favor and cut bad clients early.


P.S. Have you ever kept a bad-fit client too long?

No ecom founder has ever told me:

"Jem, I need 5 campaigns."

They tell me their growth is stuck.

They tell me they're spending $100k/month on ads and somehow not scaling past $5M.

They tell me they've been through 3 agencies and nothing changed.
5 campaigns won't fix such problems.

And yet 99% of agencies show up to sales calls with slide decks full of deliverables.

"We'll manage your account."
"We'll optimize your NCROAS."
"We'll run A/B tests every month."

Things that sound professional but mean absolutely nothing if revenue isn't scaled.

Deliverables are easy to sell because they're easy to measure.

At Adcubator, we don't sell campaigns.

The sell the removal of a bottleneck.
The sell the absence of a problem.

We sell the removal of whatever is stopping brands from scaling. That's why we charge what we charge.

Because we sell outcomes, not hours.

P.S. Does your agency sell deliverables or outcomes?

"Dubai was built by slaves."

Is it though?

Because someone who makes triple the amount of money they did back home and sends two thirds of that salary back to their family every month...

Is that person really a slave?

Think about what actually makes someone a slave.

If you work your entire life and your salary barely covers your food and your rent, you are a glorified slave.

That's exactly what the middle class is.

Slavery in golden handcuffs.

Most people can't send two thirds of their monthly paycheck back home to their parents. Their family's life is not three times better because of it.

So before anyone sits there in Europe and says Dubai was built by slaves, it's important to understand what slavery actually means.

The European media propagates against Dubai because they don't want people to find out the truth.

The truth is that people actually build a better future here.

Anyone who works and barely survives, is not free.

Most agency founders are obsessed with new clients.

I'm obsessed with keeping the ones I have.

There's a massive difference.

New clients cost money. Current clients are free to upsell. Yet, most agencies ignore this.

We've had clients work with us for 2+ years. Because we never stop improving what we deliver. Without ever raising the price.

Right now, we are massively investing in our service delivery and customer success.

We're building an entire in-house team for:

– Static creatives designed for performance
– AI-generated 16:9 assets built specifically for YouTube
– n8n experts to automate and optimize the backend
– 5-10 specialist integrated directly into client accounts

All of this will be part of the existing service.

Zero price increase.

Our goal? Increase CLTV and retention to the max.

A client staying 3 years is worth 3x a client who stays 1.
A client staying 5 years? They refer you to 2-3 more.

Most agencies add features to justify charging more. We add features to make leaving feel stupid.

Every time a client thinks "should I look elsewhere?", we want the answer to be an obvious No.

Most people think too short-term.

When in reality, the money is in long-term retention, not short-term upsells.

Stay innovative.

Make leaving harder every month.


P.S. Is your main focus on acquisition or retention?

Most agencies lose clients because of one thing.

Bad communication.

We've never had a client say "you update us too much." Not once. And I think that's why our retention is insane.

Here's how we actually do it:

We run separate channels for internal and external communication.

Internal = we align on strategy, discuss performance metrics, and solve problems before presenting to clients.

External = For direct updates, questions, and formal reporting.

Every client gets structured touchpoints:

– 15-minute daily briefs
– Monday/Friday calls to review priorities
– Tuesday/Thursday calls with account managers

But the real game changer? I personally check accounts (on top of my team's daily tracking).

"This campaign is performing well. Why aren't we scaling it?"

That's the question I'm asking, almost never just waiting for the next scheduled call.

And when something breaks on the client's end, tracking issues, shipping delays, backend changes → we catch it before they do.

Reporting is also custom for everyone.

Some want Triple Whale screenshots. Others want full PDFs. Some just want to talk it through. We adapt.

The result?

Our clients feel safe. And when clients feel safe, they trust you more, give you more budget, and refer you to other brands.

Communication is our No.1 priority.

P.S. Do you communicate with your clients daily?

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