In the last few weeks, German start-up idol Fridtjof Detzner had his palm examined, his head covered and his Chinese herbs mixed across Asia. He has experimented with organic cosmetics in Mongolia, hung out with service teams in Bangladesh, and explored abandoned futuristic vacation homes from the 1960s in Taiwan asking, “Do you think that we’re controlling technology or is technology controlling us?”.

All this is in the name of a new TV series, Founders’ Valley, created to showcase entrepreneurs in Asia and their bids to change their worlds, one visionary startup at a time.

The 10-episode show premieres on German broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s English-language SD/HD feeds across Asia on 23 October.

Detzner’s role in front of the camera rides on his entrepreneurial success, including DIY website builder, Jimdo. He co-founded his first company at 16 (“my co-founders moved into my family home and my mother cooked for us”), and now, at 34 years old and having recently stepped back from his hands-on role at Jimdo, he’s scouting around for his next adventures. These include, unsurprisingly, another startup and 100 days spent filming Founders’ Valley.

The TV series pairs the 10 most urgent global challenges identified by the United Nations with ventures in Mongolia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Singapore, Indonesia, India and Kashmir.

“It’s all about which countries allow us to explore the issues best,” Detzner said during the Singapore filming this month.

The Mongolia episode highlights globalisation, the Bangladesh programme looks at employment, and the Singapore episode explores health. Hong Kong is all about urbanisation, Malaysia is about energy, and Taiwan centres around tech. Food and water are tracked in Indonesia, while the India episode is about waste, and Kashmir is about climate change.

What Detzner found is that entrepreneurs, no matter where they come from, have much in common. “It’s the one thing that really astonished me,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter which country they come from, the entrepreneurs we spoke to face the same challenges, they read the same books, and they reach the same conclusions, even though they build their businesses in different environments,” Detzner adds.

That includes himself. His new startup, currently in “stealth mode”, involves automating the growth of food indoors.

“I am curious and I like to build things,” he says. “To me the issue of a growing population is one of the biggest problems we face. I was curious about the topic of food and I believe that technology can help us,” he adds. The new venture puts Detzner squarely back in the camp of Founders’ Valley entrepreneurs, albeit with a lot more confidence.

“This journey is not to tell the stories of the people who have already made it. It’s much more interesting to talk to them about the period of struggle, with the doubts and the hurdles”.

On or off camera, it’s a space in which he seems to revel.

Published on ContentAsia's eNewsletter, 25 September-8 October 2017