Fun Friday: Meet the iOS guys

We would like you to meet the iOS team helping SoundCloud out. The team is compiled of: Gernot Poetsch, Thomas (Toto) Kollbach and Ullrich Schäfer. Learn all about them below!

From left to right: Toto, Gernot and Ullrich. Enjoying a nice day.

How’s it going these days down in the basement?

Ullrich: The basement has become a quiet place recently. It’s like the outback of the SoundCloud office. People come here to find silence and inspiration. Also the view is quite nice. The only basement on the 4th floor :)

Gernot: We still have some Dresdner Christstollen left too, and we have windows that aren’t obstructed by snow as well.

Where are you guys from?

Gernot: Originally I’m from Würzburg, then I moved to Dresden for studying (where I met Ullrich), and after a brief time in Cologne I finally arrived in Berlin.

Toto: As a small child, I lived with my grandparents close to Frankfurt am Main. The family moved to Bonn, the former capital of Germany, where I spent most of my childhood before moving to Berlin.

Ullrich: I grew up in a small village near a town called Erfurt in former East Germany. I did spend my youth on the farm of my parents. We had pigs, chickens and some fields.

What do you guys do at SoundCloud? How did it start?

Gernot: Ullrich and I joined forces and started working from the SoundCloud Office two years ago. We’ve been working on SoundCloud stuff ever since, and together with Toto, we have our own company, nxtbgthng, as well. For SoundCloud, we do the iOS App, the API wrapper and streaming Frameworks that work on both iOS and Mac OS X. The Frameworks are open source and are used by bazillions of apps out there :-)

Have any fave tracks on SoundCloud right now?

Gernot: This changes all the time. But I still like Röyksopp’s “The Alcoholic”, although I used that as my test track for the app, which probably accounts for half the listens of this track ;-)

And then of course Alex’s Geek Funk thing.

Toto: Ever since Gernot posted this, I can’t get enough of this track (and of course her SoundCloud Session too):

Also, Madeleine Bloom rocks :-)

Ullrich: I recently enjoyed the Chiptune Christmas songs:

If you could pick one (two or three) reason(s) why someone should join the SoundCloud team, what would it/they be?

Gernot: It’s a very unique experience to see a company with this momentum grow from the early days. Everyone here writes about the awesome team, and they’re right. It’s probably the most gifted bunch of people outside of some US startups.

Toto: The Soundcloud team is amazing and enjoyable to work with in every aspect. No matter who you talk to, they are all very smart, friendly and dedicated people. Also, being a young and quickly growing company the work everyone does counts a lot, so one can really make a difference. And last but not least, Berlin is probably one of the most exciting places to live and work at the moment.

Ullrich: Interesting challenges, great people and everybody should spend some time in Berlin!

Gimme some fun facts about yourselves!

Gernot: I once operated a nuclear reactor. It was at our university and at that time, it still ran without any computers but with a lot of blinking lights and those tubes with number-shaped glowing wires. It’s completely harmless except for the (hopefully) well-shielded radiation. It really looked and felt like the desk Homer Simpson sits in front of. But now it’s all fancy computer screens and not manual buttons anymore :-(

Toto: Everyone calls me Toto but my real name is (obviously) not Toto, but Thomas. My father sometimes used to call me Toto when I was a little boy, but after I started high school and my friends found out, it spiraled a bit out of control and today, even my brother calls me Toto.

Ullrich: In GDR times, we were watching western Television. On Mondays, all the kids gathered to play A-Team. I, of course, always wanted to be Murdock, the crazy helicopter pilot. After all the dreaming, I recently bought an IR-controlled chopper for the office. Now all I need is a new cap :)

Those are the wonderful guys working on the iOS stuff here at SoundCloud. Feel free to follow them on Twitter: Gernot (@gernot), Toto (@mrtoto), and Ullrich (@stigi)!