Three Austrian Entrepreneurs on Their Media Diets

In the latest instalment of Forbes Austria's "Read/Watch/Listen" series, the publication asked Martin Eichenhofer, Sebastian Stricker and Marco Voigt what fills their leisure hours. The answers paint a picture of voracious curiosity that bridges high finance, technology and the arts.

Martin Eichenhofer leans on a compact but focused reading list. He recently finished Jake Bernstein's "Secrecy World" and Scott Kupor's "Secrets of Sand Hill Road" – both deep dives into the inner workings of the financial world, a subject he finds endlessly compelling. To stay current he scans LinkedIn, Business Insider, TechCrunch and Germany's FAZ. For entertainment, he switches to Netflix for science-fiction, crime series and documentaries, sometimes punctuated by football in a local pub.

Sebastian Stricker describes a more chaotic consumption pattern. He typically reads several books at once, leaving stacks of newspapers and magazines that make his bedroom resemble a messy professor's office – but he enjoys the serendipitous discoveries that emerge. He follows news and documentaries, watches chess games on YouTube (mentioning "Carlini!") and US Democratic presidential debates. Recently, ballet has caught his attention. For audio, he relies on podcasts such as NPR's "Wait Wait … Don't Tell Me!", music from Queen and the Rolling Stones, and Austria's Ö1-Journale in the morning or at lunch at the weekend.

Marco Voigt selects books by titles that speak to him. A recent purchase in London was Marc Randolph's "That Will Never Work", a sentence that has followed him throughout his life. He keeps up with the news and last watched "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" from start to finish – a feat he says he rarely manages. Living in Potsdam made watching the series "Jerks" a must, but he admits he would rather be in the Brandenburg countryside, watching meadows, lakes and forests from a hunting stand.

The Common Threads Behind Their Picks

Though the three men work in different corners of business and technology, their choices reveal a shared underlying curiosity. Finance and tech dominate the reading lists, but the media intake stretches far beyond – into American politics, classical music and even ballet. This blend of professional edge and broad culture is typical of the Austrian innovation scene, where leaders often speak of drawing inspiration from outside their immediate industries.

The heavy podcast and documentary consumption also reflects a generation of executives that prizes continuous learning in bite-sized formats. Meanwhile, references to local touchstones – a pub football match, Ö1 radio, the Brandenburg outdoors – ground their otherwise global interests in a distinctly central European lifestyle. The selection offers no strategic breakthrough for a reader, but it does illustrate how some of Austria’s sharper business minds recharge and stay informed.