Founder & CEO

Sahar Azghandi

As the Executive Managing Director of SMAL and her sister companies SMAL Innovation and SMAL Code, Sahar exercises her skill set as a seasoned leader with more than 14 years of design and leading experience. She provides guidance in a multitude of business segments with her deep understanding and expertise, when it comes to specific business needs of clients. From expanding the SMAL offices in Munich and San Francisco as well as scouting of talented people, to strategizing futures of start-up clients, Sahar takes pleasure in selling and celebrating the often under-rated business advantage that design represents. A born networker, Sahar stimulates synergies between the right people.

In 2011 Sahar founded Ziba’s European branch Ziba Munich GmbH, which was renamed to SMAL GmbH on March 1st 2016. Prior to that, Sahar studied Electrical Engineering and information technology at the Technical University in Munich and worked during that time at Infineon Technologies, responsible for all the Design Link publishings and as a consultant at HypoVereinsbank. After receiving her double master in International Business Administration & Management and Mathematics from Ludwig Maximilian University, she joined SIGNCE as the Executive Managing Director where she build up the User Interface/User Experience and Development team.

Sahar has thrivingly worked with clients such as Vodafone, Wacom, P&G, Grundig, WMF and Leica reaping awards from iF, Red Dot, IDSA Gold, the Good Design Award to name a few.

Founder & CDO

Oliver Lang

As the Executive Creative Director of SMAL and her sister companies SMAL Innovation and SMAL Code, Oliver supervises the designers and leads multidisciplinary teams to produce authentic and meaningful experiences in the field of Product Design, Interaction Design, Innovation, Communication Design and Environment Design. With a strong background in ID and UX Oliver is able to execute in the physical and digital space and help brands create products that matter.
 

In 2011 Oliver founded Ziba’s European branch Ziba Munich GmbH, which was renamed to SMAL GmbH on March 1st 2016. Before he worked for the design consultancy IDEO in Munich and for SIGNCE Design, where he led design programs from first idea to final market implementation in the fields of consumer electronics, healthcare and home appliance and helped to establish the User Interface department inside the company.

His work has been honored with prizes like the iF, RedDot, German Design Award or the Good Design Award including clients like Vodafone, Grundig, Huawei, Procter & Gamble, Logitech or WMF. Oliver studied Product Design at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Kiel, Germany, and holds a Diploma in Industrial Design.

Founder & CTO

Andreas Daoutis

Andreas Daoutis is the CTO of SMAL. He has fundamental knowledge of web technologies with years of industry experience. His career started in 2004 with developing single static pages and led to leading a constantly growing team of passionate web specialists. His constant impulse from new ideas combined with best practices leads to success bringing products.
 

From WordPress, Drupal, Magento, Shopify, and other content and e-commerce systems, Andreas works relentlessly with high-complex custom web applications using common technologies like PHP, Python, and JavaScript. Together with his team, he has created award-winning web experiences for well-known brands such as Vodafone, SunEdison, and BMW. Andreas' outstanding work is confirmed by the high level of customer satisfaction.