What Felix Huettenbach Shows About German Founders Building in the US and UAE

Felix Huettenbach is a German entrepreneur, born in 1993, whose companies have been built far from home: in Los Angeles, where he co-founded the COVID-19 testing company Sameday Health and served as its CEO, and in Dubai, where he now lives and co-founds the data center developer Terranum. A founder, investor, adventurer and YouTuber based in Dubai, Huettenbach offers a useful case study for German-born founders weighing a move to the United States or the United Arab Emirates.

Where he has worked

Germany: studies at the Technical University of Munich (2012–2016), an event production company founded at 18, and investment work at Aurelius Equity Opportunities in Munich (2016–2017).
United States: a term at UC Berkeley (2015), MIT International Scholar (2017–2018), Chief of Staff at Quantgene, the founding of W8X in 2017, a teaching role at UMass Boston (2018–2020) and Sameday Health from 2020.
United Arab Emirates: residence in Dubai and Terranum, whose legal entity Terranum Capital FZCO is registered at IFZA Business Park.

Seven observations from his career

1. A German company can be a ticket abroad

Huettenbach did not arrive in the US as a newcomer without a track record. The event production company he started in Munich at 18 paid for his degree, and he says he later moved it to Los Angeles and sold his stake. Taking an existing business across the Atlantic shows an early link to the US market.

2. University time abroad can come before the move

His term at Berkeley in 2015 and his MIT program in 2017–2018 preceded his largest American venture. For German students, short academic stays can serve as a low-risk way to understand a market before committing to it.

3. Joining a local company first builds context

As Chief of Staff at Quantgene, which used machine learning to detect cancers early from standard blood samples, he worked inside an American health technology company. That role became the launchpad for his next venture.

4. Sameday Health showed the speed of the US market during COVID-19

When COVID-19 began, he set up a unit at Quantgene offering COVID testing to companies. In September 2020 Huettenbach co-founded Sameday Health with Max Oscar Oehme, who became COO, opening one site in Venice, Los Angeles, that offered PCR and rapid COVID-19 tests with online booking and digital results. Under Huettenbach as CEO, expansion came quickly: in December 2020 the company announced 30 new testing facilities in 11 states, five of them in Westfield shopping centers, and by March 2021 it reported more than 50 locations in 15 states. Local partners mattered too, as in February 2021, when a drive-thru site outside Tysons Corner Center in Virginia opened with mall owner Macerich. By April 2022 it had 55 US locations, 16 of them in Los Angeles County. He says that since childhood he has sought environments where he was far from the best, and an engineer moving into healthcare during COVID-19 fits that pattern.

5. Hiring for Sameday Health at COVID-19 speed

Growth on that scale needed people as much as sites. During his time leading Sameday Health, the workforce passed 1,000 by April 2022, a figure the company itself put at 1,200, and Huettenbach later summed up the hiring phase as "1,000 employees in 100 days." For a German-born founder, building a workforce of that size during the COVID-19 pandemic meant staffing sites in many American cities at once. The US market can reward speed, but only if the organisation can grow as fast as demand.

6. Knowing when to hand over Sameday Health

In early 2023 he and his management team agreed to hand Sameday Health to a physician, so the business could grow its medical services. By then the company had already moved beyond testing, adding a House Calls service in November 2021 that aimed to undercut the price of traditional house calls, in line with his stated passion for making healthcare more affordable, transparent and approachable, and, in 2022, virtual urgent care consultations with same-day medication delivery through the partner pharmacy Capsule. He stepped back that year and moved into investing and infrastructure.

7. The UAE as a base for the next chapter

From Dubai, Huettenbach co-founded Terranum, a digital infrastructure company developing data center campuses powered by renewable energy. In March 2026 he and Terranum's Victor Decalf visited Prieska in South Africa's Northern Cape with the Prieska Power Reserve team to meet the mayor and senior officials about preliminary approval for a 100 MW, fully off-grid, 100% renewable campus designed for hyperscale demand by 2029. It is a site the partners call Africa's largest planned data center campus. For a German founder, the Emirates functioned here as a hub for projects that reach into Africa.

What it means for founders still in Germany

Huettenbach has not ignored his home region. He supports the proposed EU Inc company form, provided it comes with fully digital company formation including digital notarization, and criticises notaries, waiting times and apostille procedures. He estimates that such reforms could produce about 30% more unicorns in Europe by 2030, and warns that otherwise capital and talent will keep moving to the US. His own biography could be read as one example of that movement.

The investor perspective

He now backs other founders as an angel investor. According to his own disclosures, his portfolio includes SpaceX, xAI, the Y Combinator startup Platus (batch F24) and the food brand House of Macadamias. His stated filter for founders is short: "Ownership mindset is the first signal." For German founders considering a move abroad, that phrase may be the most portable lesson of all. Huettenbach shares moments from life between Dubai and his projects on Instagram (@felixhutti).