Payman Supervizer leaves KPMG to launch startup

With Votebase, the hacker wants to digitize the Bundestag elections.

Payman Supervizer is leaving KPMG Consulting to focus entirely on his 2021 startup Votebase. He says his goal is to increase the transparency of democracy for citizens by digitizing the Bundestag election using a blockchain-based technology he invented called "The Election App."

Before working for the consulting firm, the now 30-year-old worked as a freelancer in hacking teams for listed IT companies in the U.S. and was responsible for penetration testing and vulnerability management. With his Bergisch Gladbach-based start-up, the cybersecurity expert has big goals.

According to the two founders, an important step in promoting democracy is the digitization of elections. Their specially developed technology, the "Die Wahl App," is intended to make it easier for everyone to access elections and to reduce the error-proneness of analog processes during counting. Digital voting, on the other hand, preserves complete anonymity. Blockchain technology makes it difficult to forge documents or manipulate data.

"Democracy is such a precious commodity. We are convinced that digitizing elections would increase voter turnout, as it is easier and more efficient to conduct. The transparency of processes and absolute data security will increase the credibility of elections and citizens will be able to better identify with the outcome," Supervizer explains.