Stephan Stubner was born in 1974 in Munich. After the Abitur he trained at Siemens Nixdorf and studied business administration, finishing at HHL Leipzig in early 2000. He earned a doctorate in 2004.
He co-founded the review portal ciao.com and then Trivago, founded in Düsseldorf in 2005 with Rolf Schrömgens, Peter Vinnemeier and Malte Siewert. Stubner resigned as managing director shortly after the launch.
He worked as a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group. In 2007 he became an assistant professor at HHL and ran its entrepreneurship program. He completed his habilitation in 2012 and took the Porsche Chair of Strategic Management and Family Enterprises in 2013.
On 1 July 2017 he became rector of HHL. He resigned from that post on 7 February 2023. Trivago went public on Nasdaq on 16 December 2016.