Displaying items by tag: Mannheim StartUp

PR and communication play an increasingly important role for start-ups – especially on platforms like LinkedIn. But is there a right way for founders to communicate on LinkedIn?
A group of students from the master´s program “Communication Management” at the University of Leipzig are working on a research project to answer this question and to provide empirically based insights for the positioning of start-ups on LinkedIn.
As the study is in German, the students are looking for German speaking participants – especially students and young professionals not older than 35.
The survey takes 10 minutes and your support is highly appreciated.

https://www.soscisurvey.de/Methoden_CM/

“We wanted to be different!” Naoufel’s energy and enthusiasm about his startup was evident from our extensive interview with the men behind Top Graduate. We, from the MCEI team, recently conducted an interview with Christopher Jean and Naoufel Bouali, the Cofounders of the Paris-based startup, Top Graduate. The insightful conversation about how the cofounders met and started their entrepreneurial journey in the summer of 2017, and how the startup has evolved since its early days was filled with a lot of positive energy and passion. It was easy to see the kind of zeal and endeavor necessary to ensure a startup reaches a place where its creators would feel it is going in the right direction.

Christopher and Naoufel met here at the University of Mannheim after they came to Germany as exchange students for their ERASMUS semester while they were pursuing a Master’s degree in Management at Kedge Business School, France. Thanks to the startup-friendly ambience of the city and the university, the inspiration for Top Graduate came quite naturally to the young students as they got to know each other here on campus. They decided to take a plunge and started to further develop on the idea behind Top Graduate keeping in mind the benefits the startup could have on recent graduates and the overall freelance industry. After they developed the first blueprints of the business model for Top Graduate and shared it on campus, they realized the idea was well received among peers and startup enthusiasts within the university as well as the MCEI team. This helped them get started on implementing their ideas and finally kick off the business in the German market.

The business model of Top Graduate today has greatly evolved from the initial ideas of its creators at its inception. Originally their plan was to connect graduating students with different kinds of graduate trainee programs at different companies. However, they soon realized from feedback received from students that it would be difficult to turn this into a profitable business because students would not be interested in paying for information they are usually already following closely. They soon assessed different kinds of ideas all surrounding the vision of supporting graduating students to find their dream job. One of their other ideas was to connect students with managers from companies in different industries with hiring capabilities so that students could network with them and get tips on how they could find a suitable position or groom themselves in a way that they could increase their chances of finding their desired role there. Eventually they settled on the idea of pushing employability of graduating students in various freelancing positions in companies in a way that matches specific skills to specific roles in different companies, such as sales, marketing, web design, operational functional support, etc.

With a self-funded website they began their entrepreneurial journey and turned their work into a project at the University of Mannheim in one of the courses organized by MCEI. The young entrepreneurs looked back on those days and highlighted how the role of MCEI was instrumental in inspiring them to get on this journey and in shaping their business model later on.

The Paris based startup found some support from the French government and was incubated by Business Nursery (Kedge Marseille), Pépite France and Station F. With 7 members now in their team, they are continuously looking for talent to join their company, also especially because they are looking to use the same business model in other markets in the near future. With a vision to benefit recent graduates and graduating students and to help them connect their skills with potential employers, the Top Graduate team is very optimistic about the strategies they have undertaken and has an excellent team to back up their ongoing projects.

As we started wrapping up our insightful interview with the cofounders, they leave behind an important message for young students interested on an entrepreneurial pursuit, that of being open-minded about embracing changes to an initially planned business model. A business is progressive and can change in fundamental ways without compromising the overall vision it started with, and that is what the cofounders of Top Graduate, Christopher and Naoufel, show us with their dynamic entrepreneurial journey.

If you are interested in subscribing as a freelancer on the Top Graduate portal, use this link to register yourself https://app.topgraduate.co/inscription-freelance. At the moment, the roles are specific to the French market, but roles from the German market will soon be added here.

Dear Mannheim founders, The German Startup Association needs your voice!

The survey for the 7th German Startup Monitor (DSM) has been launched. The DSM provides a comprehensive picture of our startup ecosystem and has been the central source of information for media and politics on the startup ecosystem for more than six years. Make sure to be represented in this central piece of research with your startup and take part in the our survey now!
Click here for the survey: http://umfrage.deutscherstartupmonitor.de/dsm408  

The current federal government has been in office for more than a year: Many improvements for startups have been promised, but so far only a few have been implemented. This year's Startup Monitor is intended to show the needs of founders and make sure that important measures are implemented quickly. Thus, the Startup Association needs your support!

As a thank you for your commitment you can win various prizes: Among other things, you have the chance to win a wildcard to the German Valley Week – the Startup Association's delegation trip to Silicon Valley – as well as a total of ten tickets for matches played by the German national soccer team.

Participate now: http://umfrage.deutscherstartupmonitor.de/dsm408  

As part of the MAN 633 Inside the Venture (Track 1) course in Fall 2018,  Yarui Guo and Jorge Villalobos supported Studybees, an education startup, in determining their launch plans and their customer acquisition process. The project supported Studybees throughout one semester with analyses for launch plans across universities and cities along with strategies to implement them. This included market analyses and formulating strategies for customer acquisition, activation and retention. Further focus was set on brand building, usability of the website and pricing including recommendations on areas of improvement. 

Studybees GmbH is a Mannheim-based startup founded in 2014 by Julia Hetzel, Alexandra Slabskaia, Fabian Klein and Johannes Saal. Co-founders Julia Hetzel and Alexandra Slabskaia are University of Mannheim alumna. They received consulting from MCEI and have also been Startup of the Month. Their aim is to provide high quality crash courses to help students with their exam preparation (offline and online).

To know more about Studybees, visit their website: www.studybees.de

As part of the MAN 633 Inside the Venture (Track 1) course in Fall 2018, Benedetta Casciato, Elisa di Marco, Edoardo Petroni and Mustafa Ünlü supported LUB in many aspects, including the preparations and execution of their promotion at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the Mannheimer Gründerpreis MEXI and recommendations to improve the business plan, the pricing strategy, pricing tools and revamping the internal knowledge management strategy and system including employee trainings.  The implementation of an effective communication system to manage their knowledge effectively internally, a structured marketing strategy in order to help them build their brand and the reevaluate and reformulation of their pricing strategies during the following expansion phase also helped LUB substantially in becoming a GmbH in January 2019. 

LUB is a Mannheim-based startup founded in 2015 by Dr. Simone Burel out of her dissertation at the University of Heidelberg. They are a business consultants which use linguistic insights based on text mining for their projects. Its costumers are big corporations, cities or universities that want to understand their organization’s identity or culture under the surface. Dr. Simone Burel is also a University of Mannheim alumna.

To learn more about the startup LUB, visit their website: www.linguistische-unternehmenskommunikation.com

As part of the MAN 633 Inside the Venture (Track 1) course during Fall 2018, Manuel Hammerschmidt and Christian Kunze supported AUCTEQ Biosystems in preparing their market entry. The team delivered deep insights and fundamental due diligence. They conducted customer development and gained insights into required product features and also included several perspectives on potential pricing schemes. What is more, the team looked into how a sales process should be designed in this very specific market and who are the actual buyers in biopharmaceutical labs. 

AUCTEQ Biosystems is a biotechnology startup based in Mannheim and was founded in 2018 by Valentin Kramer at the Hochschule Mannheim. Their aim is to offer bioreactors that combine the safety of the cells with user-friendliness and cost-efficiency to create a modern and sustainable cell culture process, effectively solving the problem of outdated and inefficient procedures and tools.

To know learn more about AUCTEQ Biosystems, visit their website: www.aucteq.com

As part of the MAN 633 Inside the Venture (Track 1) course during the Fall of 2018, Simon Nysten and Oriol Vila supported RoadAds Interactive GmbH, a vehicle advertising company, in order to help them scale and standardize their business. Poject focus was set on pricing strategy, inbound sales processes, customer service processes and the overall CRM structure including recommendations on how to implement the suggested changes in a timely fashion.

RoadAds Interactive GmbH interactive is a pioneer in offering location-based, real-time and context-dependent vehicle advertising. Through giant ePaper screens mounted at the back of trailers, they are able to adapt the content shown on these screens not only based on the current location, but also based on time of the day, weather or even traffic. Their intuitive online platform enable advertisers to create and manage their campaigns with a few clicks. They can also get real-time statistics as to not only when and where their campaign had been shown, but also how many people saw it — thanks to their innovative visual contact measurement technique. Founded in 2015 by Andreas Widmann, this innovative startup is based in Mannheim. Next to being known from the German Shark Tank "Höhle der Löwen", RoadAds Interactive GmbH has been active in various MCEI and partner formats such as  the Startup Lounge, Q-Summit, the University of Mannheim Career Fair,  and has previously been supported by another Inside the Venture project in spring 2018.

To learn more about the RoadAds Interactive GmbH, visit their website: www.roadads.de

As part of the MAN 633 Inside the Venture (Track 1) course during the Fall of 2018, four students, Phares Akari, Maurice Bürkle, Nahor Gebretensae and Maximilian Heimerl supported Evid UG, an early-stage technology startup, with their Inside the Venture project. The project focus was set on supporting the startup in their pitch deck development and underlying due diligence (pricing, financials, market and competitors) to improve the business model and reach investor readiness. 

Evid UG (founded in Eberbach, Baden-Württemberg in 2017) by Johann Rink, Michael Neugebauer, Henry Müssemann and Felix Franz is now located in the Mannheim-based MedTech incubator CUBEX 41. Felix Franz is an alumnus of the University of Mannheim, and the startup also features in the MCEI Success Stories. It was also a finalist of the 2018 MCEI Seed Award.

evid.one is a web-based software product targeted especially for doctors in their medical practice. To learn more about the startup, visit their website: www.evid.one.

As part of his “Inside the Venture” Master Thesis, Lorenz Genen helped MIAMED GmbH internationalizing to the U.S. market and became part of the MIAMED team. The focus of his project centers on decision support and business planning in the formal visa application process. The successful completion of this project would allow MIAMED to apply for visas through the U.S. subsidiary for their staff from abroad. The difficulty of the project was to consolidate existing information (including marketing strategy) and to prepare an independent analytical work in compliance with the requirements of U.S. authorities (for example, a 5-year profit / loss calculation). Lorenz led the communication with the respective departments and conducted analyses to enhance the quality of the business plan. He had also worked toward the application and the inclusion of MIAMED in the German Accelerator program. Next to the applied startup project, Lorenz conducted research on the motivation of employees to leave their job and become entrepreneurs from an exploratory research perspective. The thesis was finalized in January 2018.

Find more information on MIAMED GmbH in our MCEI Success Stories. 

As part of his “Inside the Venture” Master Thesis, Felix Brombacher, co-founder of Crashtest Security GmbH, advanced his startup. More specifically, he developed a go-to-market strategy for the new tech venture. Crashtest Security GmbH has developed the Crashtest Security Suite, which is a fully automated testing tool. It checks web applications regarding potential vulnerabilities. The solution is unique in its way, as it integrates seamlessly into agile development workflows (providing usable security to developers) and allows the real-time detection of vulnerabilities due to automated security scanning on the test system after every deployment. In his research project next to the practical part, In the context of Felix's "Inside the Venture" project, Crashtest Security GmbH reached a significant seed financing round. The thesis was finalized in March 2018.

Find more information on Crashtest Security GmbH in our MCEI Success Stories.