Growing up in a small rural city in Germany, Dominic Obermaier was not exposed too much when it comes to computers. After studying computer science in college, he was hooked. A frequent reader of ancient philosophy, he likes to hang out with friends and play board games, specifically long-lasting games such as Arkham horror. Obermaier started a company with his college friends with the goal to broker data from connected devices, and not just a few, but millions following his very own standardized IoT protocol MQTT. This solution is now known as HiveMQ.