Displaying items by tag: Mannheim StartUp

As part of her “Inside the Venture” Master Thesis, Xueliu Chen became part of the ku.bus team. ku.bus is a hyperlocal personalized business news platform. Xueliu has addressed challenges that ku.bus is facing and performed substantial reseach on the relevant market and competition. Her project also includes customer development interviews that provide deep insights on how ku.bus can improve its offerings and the underlying business model. Xueliu provides deep insights into how other players on the market overcome challenges and backs her findings with quantitative market insights. Her research on entrepreneurial motives in German hyperlocal media startups based on the Entrepreneuring as Emancipation Framework also revelas important insights into best practices. Next to her work for ku.bus, Xueliu was also involved in the preparation and execution of TEDx Mannheim 2018. She finalized her project with ku.bus in June 2018.

Find more information on ku.bus in our MCEI Success Stories. 

As part of his “Inside the Venture” Master Thesis, Niklas Stadler became Entrepreneur in Residence at the Mannheim-based startup PediQuick. Niklas has helped PediQuick develop their webshop and optimize their visibility on the web. His project included helping PediQuick gain traction by search engine optimization, search engine advertising and developing social media campaigns and channels. Next to the project work, Niklas also researched the importance of online marketing for startups in a qaulitative empirical study and included these insights in helping PediQuick advance. Niklas has revealed a very high level of commitment and achieved great results for PediQuick - also way beyond the scale and scope of his project. The thesis was finalized in November 2017.

Pediquick is an innovative pedicure shoe whose visual appearance resembles a flip-flop. The shape of his sole and the soft toe toe spreader, which are firmly attached to the sole but still provide enough flexibility to conform to the various five toes, revolutionize the use of nail polish in the foot area. In addition, the special sole provides comfort and warmth, so that the wearer feels comfortable with it. Pediquick has also been supported by INTEGRA Inside the Venture projects previously and an MAN 633 Student Inside the Venture Project. Find more information on Pediquick in our MCEI Success Story.

Are you stressed out by the current exam pressure but still want to show your friends or family you think of them during the festive period? With www.gluecksgruss.de, you can now send handwritten cards with your personal note along with quality chocolates and Christmas decorations. For students of the University of Mannheim, they currently offer an exclusive 10% discount when using the discount code “UNIMA”. Check out their website for a more detailed description of their products.

Gluecksgruss.de was started in Oktober 2018 by two business graduates, Giulia and Jonas. Through the course of their work experiences they noticed a tendency of today’s workforce to be under constant pressure focusing on work alone and often occupied with their own worries — often to the extent that people tend to compromise personal connections due to a perceived lack of time. And that is how Gluecksgruss came into being. With Gluecksgruss, they wanted to provide a solution that people can easily use to show their beloved ones that they do care about them and think of them, by sending personalised gift cards with little chocolatey and sweet surprises.

Same place (Café L3), same time (starting 19:30), and always new (early stage) startup pitches with lots of learnings and feedback opportunities! We have enjoyed 4 highly inspiring Startup Lounges this fall and there are 3 more to come. Time to share some inights and pictures with you!

Kicking off the new Startup Lounge season in Startup Lounge #53 with Covexo pitching in a co-feature with Getsafe was quite a blast. Our opening attracted about 150 guests (as far as we can see, a new Startup Lounge all time record). The Café L3 was so packed with guests that we moved to the adjacent beer garden outside. "covexo shifts the development of software from the local computer to the cloud. By providing an innovative synchronization technology, users of a covexo DevSpace can develop with their local desktop tools and still get all the benefits of the cloud, such as more computing resources and no installations and config issues on the local laptop. The locally written code is therefore transferred to the cloud in real-time, making a hot reload of the developed application in the cloud possible." We thank Lukas Gentele, Fabian Kramm and Daniel Thiry of  covexo for their great tech pitch and Getsafe for supporting this Startup Lounge. 

In Startup Lounge #54 (co-feature with Leafsystems), TreyTech presented their Startup. "Treye Tech is an IT startup company that develops user-oriented solutions for hand-free speechless interaction. Thereby, we are focused on enabling the use of smart devices, including ordinary tablets and smartphone, based on gaze or face gestures. Our main goal is to facilitate accessibility and enhance the convenience of using smart technology." We thank Anton Wachner and Kiril Kotev of Treye Tech for their fantastic pitch and Leafsystems for supporting us with the drinks. 

In Startup Lounge #55  Niklas Schäfer presented laptop lockWare. "Laptop lockWare is a theft-protection software specifically designed for the library, office or a public workstation. The application does not require any additional hardware, as after activation laptop lockWare continuously monitors your power cable connection, hence nobody can remove your laptop from the workspace without triggering various customizable alarms and notifications." We thank Niklas for the inspiring pitch. 

In Startup Lounge #56 (co-feature with Startup Mannheim) Albert Haag presented PMH.  "PMH is radically simplifying Mass Customization by empowering the use of large tables. While the number of product variants increases exponentially with the offered choices, the underlying product complexity does not. PMH can handle the combinatorial explosion in the number of variants, so that a product model can be expressed and processed mainly as tables." The Startup Lounge has been co-hosted by our partner Startup Mannheim that provided the drinks. We thank  Startup Mannheim for their continuous support and Albert of PMH for the awesome pitch!

In the context of the past  Startup Lounges #55 and #56, Good Cha tested their products. Meet them live on stage in the final pitches on December 4! 

We at MCEI are proud to have such great startups, a fanstastic audience and awesome partners! We are also grateful to Café L3 for their continuous support and hosting us. We are looking forward to the final 3 Startup Lounges this year: 

Startup Lounge #57 with Pacific Straws: November 6 (Café L3, 19:30)

Startup Lounge #58: November 20 (Café L3, 19:30)

Startup Lounge #58 Entrepreneurial Spirit Final Pitch Competition on December 4 (7.30pm): 4 Teams from our accelerator course will deliver their final pitches in Startup Lounge #59. The winning team will obtain a 1500 EUR seed prize money for their further startup development sponsored by Startup Mannheim. The startups will be facing an expert jury that will challenge their business models. 

Some impressions attached! Looking forward to seeing you at the upcoming Startup Lounges!!

After winning the MCEI Seed Award in February MIRABESQUE incorporated as a GmbH in May and is now located in GIG7 – one of the Startup Mannheim founding centers. They created a whole new online store (www.mirabesque.de) and have broadened their portfolio intensely to all relevant dance styles. In cooperation with the MCEI course MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit MIRABESQUE has also created its first image video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf67HxWLflg

One more time on September 4, four teams from our Creativity and Entrepreneurship in Practice course set out to identify still unmet customer needs in the market, subsequently developing business ideas with concrete business models and prototypes. After having worked on their ideas for weeks and months, their journey in the course finally ended with a Pitch Battle on November 30, where MakeZme, MaRoom, Robbie and Travel U presented their business ideas in front of an expert jury that included startup founders, startup consultants and industry professionals.

The Pitch Battle jury was overwhelmed by the high level of professionalism displayed by the teams during the pitches. In what was a head-to-head battle, MakeZme was awarded the first prize in a lively award-giving ceremony in Café L3, where the winning team performed their winning pitch once more. Having won the Pitch Battle, the team was awarded with seed money in form of a 500 EUR check by Startup Mannheim to advance their next steps. We are very grateful to Startup Mannheim for their support and would also thank MAFINEX-Technologiezentrum for providing our teams with an inspiring atmosphere by hosting the Design Thinking, Business Model Development and Pitch Preparation Sessions for our students.  

How did the teams' entrepreneurial journey evolve over the past 3 months? 

The startups all started from scratch with Day 1 being all about team building. Creativity and Entrepreneurship in Practice (MAN631) is not a conventional course with lectures, cases or simulations; it is rather about creating real new ventures in order to solve real customer needs. This requires a lot of dedication and team work; while sometimes the experience is fun, it can also bring a fair share of frustration along the way of developing an early stage startup that will withstand the expert jury during the final pitches. Classwork is only a minor component of the entire work — most of which is happening outside of the classroom. Finding out how to create value by solving a problem, customer development, endless field-testings and eventually the validation of their business models are all challenging tasks that are checked for progress in bi-weekly status reports. Continuous coaching on demand supports the startup development in this accelerator-style format. 

The Startups: 

• Started their entrepreneurial journey with team building: the "Egg Challenge". From the MAN 631 Kickoff onwards they started with ideation and shortlisted the most promising startup ideas. 
• Went from a long list of problems to solve to a short list of three ideas that they then pivoted with customer exploration and prototyping methodologies. 
• Constantly ran and re-ran the Customer Validation processes to pivot and carve out the most promising concept.
• Have undergone several cycles of Business Model Development.
• Have performed really well on their mid-term pitches on October 30.
• Have really rocked the Final Pitches on November 30! 
• Are still continuously testing and improving their business models :-)

Participating Teams that created their new ventures from scratch:

MakeZme	makezme.com is the new world of adult entertainment that puts an end to fake orgasms and brings real and natural pleasure back into the game. We give inspiration by combining sex education with ethical pornography in one platform and encourage our customers to open up their minds and enjoy themselves. With a clean image and high quality content we will create a new lifestyle and make sure that she will come again.
MARoom	MaRoom is a student-centric residence that aims to support students finding accommodation by creating a transparent, easy, and fast booking process and host confirmation, providing support before students arrive in Mannheim, and offering a modern and pleasant place with a sense of community for the students.
Robbie	In today’s complex world there is an infinite choice of laptops available. Robbie helps you to cut through the jungle of offers and guides you to the laptop that you need with absolutely no knowledge of technology. Robbie wants to become the No.1 source for trusted, independent, and comprehensive advice for a wide array of technical products.
Travel U	Travel U is a young startup founded in Mannheim focusing on revolutionizing the travel industry. Their unique combination of perfectly automated travel plans as well as full customization to the individuals’ needs helps users to save time and plan trips more efficiently. Travel U – Your next generation travel experience.

Jury Members on Pitch Finals

• Sonja Wilkens (Startup Consulting & Economic Development, City of Mannheim)
• Romana Oehmig (Manager Design Thinking, SAP)
  
• Jonas Johé (Founder & CEO of SurveyCircle)
• Prof. Dr. Michael Woywode (Director of the institute for SME Reserach & Chairholder for SME Research and Entrepreneurship, University of Mannheim) 
• Alexander Ernst (Mannheim Business Angels)
• Marius Schreiber (Co-Founder, Pitch Guru)

We thank the jury for their fantastic support!

We also thank our Supporting Startups that supported us with their insights and advice: Covexo, V|O Coffee, Orderpoints and Laptop LockWare!

Check out the gallery below to have a look at their entrepreneurial journey from ideation up to their final pitches on November 30!

„fun onAllPlatforms() : Kotlin“ at Stocard

GDG Mannheim / Rhein-Neckar Dev Meetup is for fellow hackers, developers and geeks who are into software development and modern tech. Our next Meetup on August 22nd is about Kotlin multi-platform projects for iOS, Android and Backend: "fun onAllPlatforms() : Kotlin" by Andreas Wenger.

https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/Rhein-Neckar-Dev-Meetup/events/253058302/

Getsafe is making insurance to go.
To give you some insights behind the startup we are running our third meetup session. This time it’s all about UX.

Lean management is an approach to running an organization that supports the concept of continuous improvement. In terms of UX, setting objectives and a brief might be a good start anyway. Now it’s time for a customer journey strategy. Form the design hypothesis that comes along with user research and testing. Do insight analysis and refine the design hypothesis. David, our speaker, will tell you about all of this.

David, UX designer at Getsafe, is responsible for fulfilling user needs, and tries his best to constantly empathize with users. His goal is to make sure users can have fun interacting with software while also fulfilling their requirements. All of this and more will be discussed in our next meet-up. About David: bit.ly/2LXxqj0

Location:
Getsafe GmbH
Bergheimer Straße 147, Aufgang C, 4th floor,
69115 Heidelberg

Registration:
Register now for free at: https://bit.ly/getsafeuxmeetup

We're looking forward to an exciting evening with plenty of interesting discussion. Drop by for a beer and some snacks, and get a glimpse behind the scenes at Getsafe.

We’re running our second meetup session!
This time, it’ll be tech-focussed.

Topic:
Igor, software developer at Getsafe, will provide an insight into cross-platform app development with React Native. You’ll also get an insight into the Getsafe tech stack, and the testing workflows of React Native apps.

Location:
Getsafe GmbH
Bergheimer Straße 147, Aufgang C, 4th floor,
69115 Heidelberg.

Registration:
Register now for free at: https://bit.ly/getsafemeetup

Join the facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/2077981609110128/

We’re looking forward to hosting an exciting evening with plenty of interesting discussions. Come along and learn more about working at a start-up - snacks and beer provided.

P.S:
Since we received some great constructive feedback from you at our first meetup, we’ll be doing things a little differently this time.

HV Holtzbrinck Ventures invested a seven-digit amount in local the influencer marketplace startup Freachly. We're very excited about the development. Keep it up!

You can read the original press statement and the coverage at Gründerszene. 

About Freachly:

• Freachly connects local businesses with local social media influencers as a marketplace and enables local marketing for retailers, restaurants and hotels
• Over 5,000 influencers are already registered on the platform
• More than 600 local partners already rely on the fully automated marketing solution