Displaying items by tag: inside the venture

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and cost-efficiency to create a modern and sustainable cell culture process, effectively solving the problem of outdated and inefficient procedures and tools.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, David Tham, Lucia Várquez, Matthew Cheng, Rachel Kok and Wong Zhuo Ting supported Leaf Systems GmbH in their project to improve their current positioning in the international market. The aim of Leaf Systems is to provide restaurants with high quality ordering systems which enable customers to have an extraordinary dining experience. In order to support them in the project, the students first re-analyzed the major competitors, conducted an in-depth SWOT-analysis, as well as an in-depth research with regards to the marketing matrix. They also obtained profound first-hand insights into the existing clients’ perceptions about the company. Combining all their findings, they deducted highly relevant and effective recommendations for the Leaf Systems.

Leaf Systems GmbH is a Mannheim-based startup founded in 2013 by Shenwei Ye, Patrick Neulinger and Patrick Marksteiner, all of whom are alumni from the University of Mannheim. They have been active on the Startup Lounges (#3 and #54), received consulting from MCEI as well as a temporary office in our previous DesignLAB. They have also been awarded Startup of the Month in May 2015 and are featured in the MCEI Success Stories with more information on the startup and its development. 

To learn more about the startup, visit their website: www.leaf-systems.eu

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 her “Inside the Venture” Master Thesis, Daria Krauzowicz became a part of Anyon Holding GmbH, a Berlin-based  company builder with focus on property technology and MCEI alumni startup. In the context of her project, she developed the startup idea Tixflow within Anyon. Tixflow is the ultimate digital guest management service. It replaces all the papers with
a simple, efficient solution that allows the event manager to focus on what really matters: providing guests with a unique, branded experience. Next to the startup project, Daria wrote a research paper titled “Artificial Intelligence: Curse or Blessing? The Impact of Dynamic Capabilities in the Venture Capital Industry”. 

Prior to her thesis, Daria has also attended the course MAN 631 Creativity and Entrepreneurship in which students learn valuable knowledge and relevant skills to develop business models. The thesis was finalized in November 2017.

Find more information on Anyon in our MCEI Success Stories. 

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. 

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, Massimo Zanesco further developed his startup idea Fido. Have you ever experienced anxiety about bad breath? Fido is a portable, compact device in the shape of an e-cigarette (vape) which one can use to check the breath quality anytime and anywhere. Fido grants immediate, unbiased feedback on halitosis. 

As part of the study, Massimo conducts sound customer development and validation for Fido. His work also provides a wealth of fundamental due diligence from pilot customer interviews to a large-scale survey on potential buying behavior and customer willingness to pay. He was also able to gain key contacts in the chemical industry who provided detailed insights on the feasibility of the project. In his research part, Massimo has conducted an in-depth qualitative empirical study on Entrepreneurial Orientation within a large high-tech firm. 

Prior to his thesis, Massimo attended the MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit course in which students learn all the tools and knowledge to advance business models and their startup. The thesis was finalized in November 2018.