# Oliver Thylmann

> German serial entrepreneur based in Cologne and co-founder of Giant Swarm, a Kubernetes platform company. Previously co-founded Ormigo and adcloud (acquired by Deutsche Post DHL in 2011).

Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Giant Swarm (https://giantswarm.io/), based in Cologne, Germany. Writes about building companies, technology, books and the ideas behind them.

## Pages

- [Home](https://thylmann.net/): Overview, links to profiles and latest writing
- [About](https://thylmann.net/about/): Biography, companies founded, press coverage
- [Reading List](https://thylmann.net/books/): Books read, with ratings and reviews (via Goodreads)
- [Vinyl Collection](https://thylmann.net/vinyl/): Record collection (via Discogs)

## Writing

- [Blog: Oliver Thylmann's Musings](https://blog.thylmann.net/): Main blog on Substack. Full archive at https://blog.thylmann.net/archive
- [Blog RSS feed](https://blog.thylmann.net/feed): Full text of recent posts
- [How the World Really Works](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/how-the-world-really-works): 2026-08-18, A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future
- [The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-fck): 2026-08-15, A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
- [Book Review: The New Climate War](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/book-review-the-new-climate-war): 2026-08-13, The evened out climate book.
- [What the Swarm was reading — week of May 22, 2026](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/what-the-swarm-was-reading-week-of-211): 2026-05-22, Seventeen posts this week, and an unusually high share of them snowballed into real arguments in the thread.
- [Beyond #swarmalicious Weekly](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/beyond-swarmalicious-weekly): 2026-05-15, This time, I thought I’d add a few points beyond what we covered in our Giant Swarm internal chat because there is a lot going on.
- [What the Swarm was reading — week of May 7, 2026](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/what-the-swarm-was-reading-week-of-0ed): 2026-05-07, A quieter week in #swarmalicious — the May 1 long weekend ate most of the early days, and the channel only really woke up mid-week.
- [What the Swarm was reading — week of April 30, 2026](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/what-the-swarm-was-reading-week-of): 2026-04-30, Another week, another scroll through #swarmalicious — our internal link-dump channel that has been quietly compounding signal since 2014.
- [Weekly Dose of #swarmalicious](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/weekly-dose-of-swarmalicious): 2026-04-23, What the Swarm was reading — week of April 23, 2026
- [The Best AI Agent Is the One That Disappears](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/the-best-ai-agent-is-the-one-that): 2026-03-05, Here’s something most AI vendors won’t tell you: the goal shouldn’t be to run more AI.
- [AI Agents That Run Where Your Data Lives](https://blog.thylmann.net/p/ai-agents-that-run-where-your-data): 2026-03-04, There’s a pattern I keep seeing in enterprise AI conversations.

## Podcast

- [Die Nerd Show](https://dienerdshow.de/): German-language tech podcast (AI, crypto, chips, markets), co-hosted with Carlo Matic, Manuel Koelman and Sebastian Deutsch

## Press

- [51. beCommerce with Oliver Thylmann](https://www.catchthetornado.com/podcast/51-becommerce-with-oliver-thylmann): Catch the Tornado (podcast), 2025-05-12
- [Videotipp: So unterstützt Giant Swarm Adidas bei der Umstellung auf Kubernetes](https://www.digitale-leute.de/interview/giant-swarm-adidas-kubernetes/): Digitale Leute, 2018-05-22
- [Microservice-Infrastruktur: Giant Swarm lässt mehr Entwickler ran](https://www.computerwoche.de/article/2704250/giant-swarm-laesst-mehr-entwickler-ran.html): Computerwoche, 2014-12-04
- [Wir ermöglichen es Entwicklern, sich auf ihr Produkt zu konzentrieren](https://www.deutsche-startups.de/2014/12/03/entwickler-produkt-konzentrieren/): deutsche-startups.de, 2014-12-03
- [Oliver Thylmann über die Kölner Gründerszene](https://www.deutsche-startups.de/2014/04/20/oliver-thylmann-ueber-die-koelner-gruenderszene/): deutsche-startups.de, 2014-04-20
- [Performance Marketing: Deutsche Post schluckt Adcloud](https://www.horizont.net/medien/nachrichten/-Performance-Marketing-Deutsche-Post-schluckt-Adcloud-99219): Horizont, 2011-04-04

## Optional

- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/othylmann)
- [X / Twitter](https://x.com/othylmann)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/othylmann)
- [Giant Swarm blog posts](https://giantswarm.io/blog/author/oliver-thylmann)