Sometimes it starts with a friendship, a shared idea, and a willingness to rethink what’s possible!
How often do you meet someone from another country and realize you’ve somehow lived the same life?
For Maximilian Schuh and Thomas Auld, that happened while studying at the International University of Monaco.
They came from different countries, Germany and England, but quickly discovered the similarities: entrepreneurial families, shared interests, similar paths, even siblings around the same age.
They stayed friends after university. Years later, when Thomas began taking over the EV charging business his father had built in the UK, he asked Maximilian to take a closer look at it from a business development and M&A perspective.
The business was working. But together they started asking a bigger question: Could this become more than a one-time hardware sales business? That thinking became LADE.DA.
What is LADE.DA?
We build and operate EV charging infrastructure for companies, hotels, offices, and property owners. The site owner invests nothing: we plan, finance, install, and operate the charge points; handle billing and service; and share the charging revenue. It turns a complicated infrastructure project into a decision someone can say yes to in a single meeting. Longer term, we see every charge point as owned infrastructure in a city, not just a socket.
WHY THE NAME LADE.DA?
“Laden” is German for charging, and “da” means there. Lade.Da, charge there. The idea behind it is that charging should happen where people already are, not as a detour. It also works in both German and English, which matters when you build a company between Germany and the UK.
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO BECOME ENTREPRENEURS?
We both grew up in entrepreneurial families, so building something was never an exotic idea to us. One of us came from M&A and business development; the other from the technical and sales side, and throughout our (short) work lives we analyzed and improved other people’s businesses. At some point, the interesting question stopped being what a business is worth and became what we would build ourselves.
Energy appealed to us because it is infrastructure rather than software. Someone has to own the hardware in the ground physically, and whoever does that early holds that position for a long time. And can actually impact sustainability goals.
WHO HAS HAD THE GREATEST INFLUENCE ON YOUR JOURNEY?
Our parents, first of all. We both saw early on what building something costs and what it gives back. Beyond that, the entrepreneurs we had the chance to meet in Monaco, and several of our professors at IUM.
What impressed us less than any single piece of advice was an attitude: yes, we can do that; let us get active. In many environments, the first response to an idea is a list of reasons it will not work. In Monaco, the first response was usually a question about how to start. That is rarer than it sounds, and it stays with you.
HOW DID YOUR EXPERIENCE AT IUM HELP YOU BUILD THE BUSINESS?
The finance training is real. We both did the BBA in International Finance, and today we build our own financial models and run our own numbers rather than outsourcing them. Classes were small enough that you present constantly, so pitching became normal for us before it became necessary.
IUM also gave us the space to work out who we are and what we actually want to do. That sounds soft, but it’s why we recognized the opportunity when it came, and why we were willing to take it.
Most importantly, we met each other there. Everything else is teachable somewhere. A co-founder you trust completely is not.
YOUR FAVOURITE MEMORY FROM IUM
Not one single memory, honestly. It was the whole period: living on our own for the first time, finding friends for life, studying, working and enjoying the south of France together.
Some of the people we met in our first weeks in Monaco are the people we now build a company with. At the time, it simply felt like a good stretch of life. Looking back, it was the foundation.
THE GREATEST STRENGTHS OF THE BACHELOR’S PROGRAM
The academic side holds up in practice, and we can say that now with some evidence behind it. The greater strength is cultural. IUM is set up so that young adults can figure out who they are and what they want to do, rather than only absorbing material. A lot of education is repetition until information turns into knowledge; Monaco was structured differently.
Small international cohorts where you cannot hide, faculty who have actually operated businesses rather than only studied them, and real proximity to people doing real things. You leave with a genuine network, not a line on a website. At eighteen, we had no idea how much that would be worth.
THE ACHIEVEMENT YOU ARE MOST PROUD OF
That LADE.DA is a real operating business, not just a plan. We have paying customers, live sites, strong momentum, and several recent client wins, and we have built a strong ecosystem of partners we can turn to when something sits outside our expertise.
But the first signature was the hardest and still means the most. Everything before it is conviction. The first customer is the moment someone else decides you are right.
ARE ENTREPRENEURS BORN OR MADE?
Made, but not everyone stays. Almost all of it is learnable: sales, finance, hiring, regulation, how to read a contract, how to lose a deal without losing the week.
The one thing we have never seen anyone teach is tolerance for not knowing. Working productively for months without certainty that it will work is genuinely uncomfortable, and that trait isn’t evenly distributed. Our honest answer to students would be: you can learn the job. The question is whether you enjoy the uncertainty enough to stay long enough to learn it.
For more information about our bachelor’s program, check our website
If you have any questions, contact the admissions team at admissions@monaco.edu
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