The Inner Circle
Four extraordinary professionals who left stable careers, comfortable lives, and in one case a perfectly good sofa to follow the vision of a child. They would do it again in a heartbeat.
Dr. Henrik Weiss
PhD Biochemistry, Humboldt University of Berlin | HMI Score: 14
Before Jonathan, Henrik Weiss was a man in decline. Not metaphorically. Literally. He held a doctorate in biochemistry from one of Germany's most prestigious universities, had published seventeen papers on molecular synthesis, and was living in a 38-square-meter apartment in Berlin-Neukölln with a sofa that had, by his own admission, "given up structurally sometime around 2019."
Henrik spent his days conducting freelance pharmaceutical consulting from that sofa. His most significant client was a pet supplement company that needed someone to explain why their fish oil capsules kept turning brown. He ate microwave dinners. He watched German reality television. He described this period, during his Small Ball onboarding interview, as "the sofa years."
Then Jonathan Thompson called. Henrik assumed it was a prank. A twelve-year-old boy was asking him to reformulate a topical cream that would reduce testicular volume through controlled vasoconstriction and localized tissue remodeling. Henrik laughed. Then Jonathan sent him a 74-page theoretical framework with footnotes. Henrik stopped laughing.
Within six weeks, Henrik had developed the first prototype of BallRedux Cream in his kitchen. Within three months, Jonathan had moved him into a proper laboratory. Within a year, Henrik had a corner office, a wardrobe that did not consist entirely of items from a 2016 university lost-and-found bin, and a new sofa. A very nice sofa. Danish. Leather. He talks about the sofa often.
"I credit my entire life transformation to a twelve-year-old. I know how that sounds. I've been told how that sounds. I don't care how that sounds. Before Jonathan, I was a man who ate cold ravioli from the can. Now I own a Le Creuset Dutch oven. That's not a metaphor. It's a 5.3-liter cast iron cooking vessel and it changed my life almost as much as Jonathan did."
— Dr. Henrik Weiss, Small Ball Technologies All-Hands Meeting, March 2025
Emma Schneider
MSc Mechanical Engineering, TU Munich | HMI Score: N/A (See FAQ)
Emma Schneider was, by all conventional metrics, already successful when she met Jonathan. She held a master's degree in mechanical engineering from TU Munich, had spent four years at Siemens designing precision components for industrial turbines, and was widely regarded by colleagues as "someone who would definitely become a director by forty."
Then she attended a biotech conference in Hamburg where a twelve-year-old boy stood at a podium and calmly explained that the underwear industry had fundamentally failed humanity. He presented schematics. He had calculations. He had a slide titled "The Compression Imperative" that made three audience members visibly uncomfortable and one audience member cry. Emma was the one who cried. She describes this as "a professional response to unprecedented innovation."
She approached Jonathan after the talk, expecting to meet a child. Instead, she met what she now describes as "a very short adult with an alarming command of thermodynamics." Within the first conversation, Jonathan identified a flaw in her turbine blade cooling methodology that her team at Siemens had overlooked for two years. She resigned from Siemens the following Monday.
At Small Ball, Emma designed both the CompressCore underwear system — a graduated compression garment that applies precisely calibrated pressure to reduce resting testicular volume — and the VacuBall, a vacuum-assisted suction device that she insists is "not as alarming as it sounds, though I acknowledge the name doesn't help." She has filed eleven patents in three years, more than she filed in her entire career at Siemens.
Emma is the only team member who has beaten Jonathan at chess. She has done it once, in October 2024. She has a framed screenshot of the final board position on her desk. Jonathan has not offered a rematch.
"He's the smartest person in every room. The fact that he's twelve is honestly the least interesting thing about him. The most interesting thing is that he designed a suction-based testicular optimization device on a napkin during lunch and it worked on the first prototype. I've been engineering for a decade and I've never had a first prototype work. He did it between bites of a sandwich."
— Emma Schneider, Interview with WIRED Germany, January 2025
Dr. Lucas Fischer
MD Endocrinology, Charité Berlin | 20 Years Clinical Experience | HMI Score: 22
Dr. Lucas Fischer was, for two decades, one of Germany's most respected endocrinologists. He ran a thriving private practice in Charlottenburg. He sat on the editorial board of the European Journal of Endocrinology. He had a reputation for being "the man you see when your hormones have gone terribly wrong," which, in Berlin, meant he was never short of patients.
Lucas was also, by his own account, "profoundly skeptical of everything." He was the doctor other doctors called when they wanted someone to debunk a new supplement trend or discredit a wellness influencer's hormone protocol. He had a framed poster in his office that read "CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION" in Helvetica Bold. He was not, in any conceivable way, the target demographic for a twelve-year-old's testicular reduction startup.
Jonathan reached out via email. Lucas deleted it. Jonathan sent a follow-up with attached clinical data. Lucas read it reluctantly, found three methodological errors, and sent back a condescending reply. Jonathan responded with a revised analysis that addressed all three errors and identified two additional variables Lucas had missed in his own published research. Lucas stared at his computer for forty-five minutes.
They met at a café in Mitte. Lucas expected to spend twenty minutes gently explaining to a child that the endocrine system was more complicated than he thought. Instead, Jonathan spent twenty minutes explaining to Lucas that the endocrine system was more complicated than he thought. Lucas has since described this meeting as "the most intellectually humiliating afternoon of my life, and I once presented at a conference where I had my slides upside down."
He accepted the CMO position four days later. His former colleagues at Charité remain confused. His wife says he has "never been happier or more unsettling to be around." The "CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION" poster is still in his office. Below it, someone — widely suspected to be Jonathan — has taped a Post-it note that reads: "Unless it is."
"I've been in endocrinology for 20 years. Jonathan taught me more in 20 minutes. I realize how that sounds coming from a licensed medical professional. I would like to clarify that I am not in a cult. Although I acknowledge that's exactly what someone in a cult would say."
— Dr. Lucas Fischer, Board Meeting Minutes, Q3 2024
Mia Lang
MBA, WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management | Former Goldman Sachs | HMI Score: N/A (See FAQ)
Mia Lang was a rising star at Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt. At thirty-one, she was the youngest vice president in her division, managed a portfolio of healthcare investments worth over €400 million, and had been described by a senior partner as "the only person in this building who genuinely scares me." She took this as a compliment. It was meant as one.
Mia first encountered Small Ball Technologies as a line item in a due diligence report. A client was considering investing in "a Berlin-based biotech startup focused on testicular size reduction, founded by a twelve-year-old." Mia flagged it as a likely fraud. She was assigned to investigate.
She flew to Berlin expecting to spend two hours exposing a scam and return to Frankfurt in time for dinner. Instead, she spent nine hours in a conference room while Jonathan walked her through five-year financial projections, market analysis, competitive landscape mapping, and a customer acquisition model that she later described as "the single most elegant financial architecture I have ever encountered, and I include in that assessment every deal I have ever worked on at Goldman Sachs."
She missed dinner. She missed her flight home. She called Goldman the next morning and submitted her resignation by email. Her managing director assumed she was having a breakdown. She was not having a breakdown. She was having what she now refers to, without any apparent irony, as "an awakening."
As CFO, Mia has secured €47 million in venture funding across three rounds, negotiated distribution partnerships in fourteen countries, and built a financial infrastructure that industry analysts have called "genuinely impressive and deeply confusing." She runs the company's finances with a precision that employees describe as "Swiss," which is ironic because she is German and finds the Swiss "too relaxed about decimal places."
"His business instincts are terrifying. In a good way. Mostly. There was one board meeting where he projected our market cap would exceed a billion euros by 2028 and when someone laughed, he just stared at them until they stopped. He didn't blink. He didn't say anything. He just stared. The man — the child — the... Jonathan — he closed that meeting by saying 'I don't make projections. I make statements about the future.' I've worked with Fortune 500 CEOs. None of them have ever frightened me. Jonathan frightens me. That's why I'm here."
— Mia Lang, Interview with Handelsblatt, February 2025
