Jan Henric Buettner (10 September 1964) is a German entrepreneur.
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.[1] [2] 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.[1] [3] [4] 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.[1] [2] [3]
In 2005 he bought a historic estate by the Baltic Sea for €7 million,[5] [2] [6] and converted the estate buildings and village into Grand Village Weissenhaus, a privately operated luxury resort which opened in 2014.[3] [7] [8] Some of the funding for the renovation and conversion was raised on the crowdfunding site Companisto.de,[7] [8] where it drew more investment than any other for-profit European organisation to that date.[9] [10] In 2024, Buettner organized a high profile chess tournament at his resort, the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge.[11] 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.[12]
Buettner lives in Hamburg; his former wife and their children continue to live in Santa Barbara, California.[3]