Nicolai Nielsen has received his JD in 1989 from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and his MBA from the American Graduate School for International Management, Phoenix, AZ. He was a member of the tax audit team by Arthur Anderson, provided consulting services to Mercedes Benz in strategic planning for targets in Latin America and was responsible as Corporate Counsel for privatization of East German Real estate He is admitted to the bar in Germany and California and after having worked as in-house counsel for a Silicon Valley start-up, he has focused his practice on start-ups and intellectual property. He lectures at the University of Phoenix and the Berkeley extension on business law, international law and intellectual property law, all topics on which he publishes frequently. He is fluent in English, German, French and Spanish.