About me

Hi, I'm Puja. I'm Vice President of Product at Giant Swarm, where we build a managed Cloud Native Developer Platform based on Kubernetes. I'm also a CNCF Ambassador and regularly speak at technology and startup events around the globe. In the past I have worked in various startups and software projects; first as a developer later in product management roles. Next to that I used to be an external expert advisor to the European Commission and a Network Science researcher working on projects in the fields of IT security, technology startups, and venture capital. In my spare time I coach technology startups at international accelerator programs and dabble in various topics around technology innovation.

Research

Publications

• Tim A. Majchrzak, Stephanie Wolf, and Puja Abbassi, “Comparing the Capabilities of Mobile Platforms for Business App Development” (29th November 2015). Information Systems: Development, Applications, Education
• Olav Spiegel, Puja Abbassi, Matthäus Zylka, Daniel Schlagwein, Kai Fischbach, and Detlef Schoder, “Business model development, founders’ social capital and the success of early stage internet start-ups: a mixed-method study” (26th May 2015). Information Systems Journal.
• Olav Spiegel, Puja Abbassi, Matthäus Zylka, Oliver Posegga, Kai Fischbach, Daniel Schlagwein, and Detlef Schoder, “Getting Boundary Conditions Right: Towards a Classification of the Information Economy Sectors”. 2014 Academy of Management Annual Meeting (no proceedings).
• Olav Spiegel, Puja Abbassi, Matthäus Zylka, Daniel Schlagwein, Kai Fischbach, and Detlef Schoder, “The Impact of Structural Embeddedness on Funding Success of Early Stage Web Startups”. DiBME 2013 (no proceedings).
• Puja Abbassi, Martin Kaul, Vivek Mohan, Yi Shen, and Zev Winkelman, “Securing the Net: Global Governance in the Digital Domain” (September 2013).
• Puja Abbassi, “A Chain is Just as Strong as its Weakest Link – A Call for Better Education in Cyber Security” (12th June 2013). Global Policy.
• Olav Spiegel, Puja Abbassi, Daniel Schlagwein, and Kai Fischbach, “Going It All Alone In Web Entrepreneurship? A Comparison of Single Founders vs. Co-Founders“. Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Conference on Computers and People Research.
• Olav Spiegel, Puja Abbassi, Kai Fischbach, Johannes Putzke, and Detlef Schoder, “Social Capital in the ICT Sector – A Network Perspective on Executive Turnover and Startup Performance” (December 6, 2011). ICIS 2011 Proceedings. Paper 6.

Teaching

• 2013 – 2014: TA for “Selected Issues in Information Systems” at University of Cologne
  • The two sides of Social Media in practice – Social Media Management and Social Media Monitoring & Analytics
• 2012 – 2014 : TA for “Electronic Business” at University of Cologne
  • Flipped classroom approach to “Entrepreneurship in Practice” in the style of Steve Blank‘s Lean Launchpad.
• 2011 – 2012 : TA for “Information System Management” at University of Cologne
  • 2012: Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Electronic Commerce
  • 2011: HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and modern frontend technologies & frameworks