We are
Technology Business Architects
Silicon Castles is a Tech Company Builder and Strategic Business Accelerator for technology intellectual property (IP) licensing businesses.
We focus on European Diamonds: Technology startups with a unique business idea, scalable technology and outstanding intellectual property – the key to global success.
We support talents and their ideas, early-stage startups with a great team, a promising idea, and innovative technology – we like pain killers, not vitamins.
We help Diamonds to create a strong IP portfolio – protect ideas and file the right
patents with the support of experienced patent lawyers..
We support global business development with our own global sales team – identify the target market and get the first deal.
We assist with the creation of a legal framework for licensing businesses – from the NDA to the licensing agreement.
We coach Diamonds during their scale-up phase in various areas, such as marketing, strategic teaming and executive coaching.
Acceleration
We accelerate startups by transforming ideas, leading growth, mentoring, and educating talents & teams.
Our Global Acceleration Program (GAP) encompasses all mission-critical elements to develop an idea into a solid investment proposal. Among others, this includes product definition, storytelling, brand-building, sales development, legal matters, and talent management.
Telling Your Story & Building Your Brand
Developing a clear marketing and brand strategy is as essential as the financial forecasts and product roadmaps and provides clarity, context and a powerful message.
By using basic building blocks such as a company mission, vision, and positioning statement and combining it with a strong company story, clarity and context are provided and a powerful message is created.
Selling Globally Through Our Network
A network including major technology players can be the key to successful sales for startups. Silicon Castles offers access to its global network in the US and Asian markets and immediately introduces its startups to relevant partners and customers. We support startups in building a skilled sales team to land the first big deal, which is crucial to find investors. Our strategic relationships include investment Silicon Valley VC firms, family offices, and corporate venture organizations worldwide.
Completing Your Team
A compact analysis helps founders understand the management approaches from the organizational- and the people-perspective to find the right team members with the necessary skills and experiences. The focus lies on the individual implementation of organizational learning to steer sustainable growth, harvest success, retain key people, and attract new talents.
Closing Successful Deals
Licensing agreements represent the bedrock of a successful startup but fail to realize their potential without the right structure and scheme in place.
Silicon Castles helps startups in deploying an international licensing scheme that is in accordance with accepted licensing practices and a strong negotiation strategy. This allows startups to fine-tune their engine, gather momentum, and secure successive deals.
Diamond Lab
The Diamond Lab is an innovation format designed to identify and develop new business ideas. Since 2023, Silicon Castles has successfully delivered annual Diamond Labs at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg and the University of Split.
Through an intensive two-day Design Thinking workshop with up to 70 participants, the Diamond Lab creates an environment that fosters creativity, encourages constructive discussions, and enables effective team collaboration. By the end of the programe, each team produces and presents a compelling two-minute video pitch based on a structured storytelling framework.
Day 1 – Understanding the Problem
The first day focuses on team formation and identifying the right problem to solve. Participants work with our Problem Analysis Canvas to analyse challenges from different perspectives and are encouraged to think beyond conventional solutions.
They leverage AI tools to refine their thinking, validate assumptions, and gather relevant market and competitive insights. Based on these findings, each team defines an initial value proposition and develops a first prototype to visualise and test its concept.
Day 2 – Developing the Solution
On the second day, teams further refine their ideas and receive early feedback from their peers. Throughout the process, our experts provide practical guidance on product definition, MVP development, go-to-market strategy, business modelling, and storytelling. To assess the commercial potential of their concepts, each team develops a high- level business case that estimates the size and viability of the opportunity.
The workshop concludes with each team presenting its two-minute video pitch to an expert jury, who provide valuable feedback and recognize the most promising ideas.
Our Diamonds
Selected Silicon Castles Diamonds
Diamonds are technology startups with a unique business idea, scalable technology and outstanding IP.
Their products are not incremental innovations but represent real stand-alone solutions that solve problems and create value worldwide.
Diamonds are global players.
Our Team
Andreas Spechtler
Founder & CEO
Mahesh Sundaram
Senior Strategic Advisor
for Global Growth
Roland Vlaicu
Senior Strategic Advisor
Catherine Ogilvie
Senior Marketing Advisor
David Kinsella
General Counsel
Dr. Eva Weigt
Acceleration Manager
James Perkins
Program Director for Startup Executive Academy
Associate Director for Executive Education Programs at Stanford Graduate School of Business
Thomas Weiss
Senior Technology Advisor
Yelyzaveta Lytvyn
Marketing Advisor
About
Silicon Castles believes in the innovation power of European regions and smaller cities. Often, such regions are the home of hidden global champions, very innovative tech companies and get great support from regional governments and economic organizations.
Silicon Castles was founded in Salzburg which is a city and prosperous European region with an attractive high-tech ecosystem. Salzburg developed its business culture centuries ago through its flourishing salt, gold and silver mines that was then traded across the Alps.
The city is known all over the world being for being Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birthplace, the setting of Sound of Music, home to the world famous Salzburg Festival for classical music as well as the Karajan Institute.
Today, the Salzburg region has developed into an internationally known hub for both for global players like Red Bull, Porsche, Spar Austria Group, Sony DADC, Skidata, Palfinger, KTM, Atomic, Kaindl, Kiska, Sirona, Vale, RealNetworks, Carbo Tech as well as unique start-ups like Authentic Vision, Findologic, Wikitude (now Qualcomm) or Viabirds Technologies. Salzburg’s educational and research infrastructure is impressive for a city with a population of some 150.000 people as it is home to five universities and two research organizations.
Since 2017 Silicon Castles have been engaged and invested in technology startups from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland or Ukraine in the area of brand protection, media, music, education, e-commerce, defense of voice communication . All companies have the same business model: Technology licensing or SaaS.
From 2017 until 2022 Silicon Castles performed the Startup Executive Academy which was an international Go-to-Market program for early-stage technology startup executives and founders. The program was aimed to enable startups to accelerate their business by providing highly relevant and practical input that is delivered by a world-class faculty from academy and business, including Stanford professors and highly recognized executives of global players like Google, SAP, Meta, Dolby, Sony, Electronic Arts, Qualcomm, McKinsey, Deutsche Telekom or Spencer Stuart. More than 150 startups successfully participated.
The founder of Silicon Castles Andreas Spechtler and other team members like Mahesh Sundaram or David Kinsella have been supporting tech startups in part-time or full-time management roles.
Recently in 2026 Andreas stepped in as CEO of the Dutch deep-tech scale-up AI company Whispp. Whispp with a strong assistive technology history has created a unique, patented AI technology for “Voice Reconstruction AI” enabling smartphone or PC manufacturers to offer a totally new communication capability on their devices.
Whispp is pioneering a new way of voice communication with its on-device, real- time, language-agnostic AI technology that transforms whispered speech into a clear, natural-sounding voice. The solution enables users to whisper in virtually any communication scenario while being heard clearly by the person on the other end of the call or by participants in a video conference. This creates entirely new possibilities for private and discreet communication in environments where speaking aloud is inconvenient or inappropriate.
Typical use cases include making calls in airport lounges, on trains and buses, in waiting areas, or interacting with AI assistants in open-plan offices without disturbing others. In all of these situations, Whispp delivers a significantly more comfortable and natural communication experience.
Learn more at www.whispp.com
