You need financial advice? Then participate in the next Elevator Pitching of Rhein-Neckar Technology Ventures on June 12, 2015 at the MAFINEX in Mannheim! Take the chance to convince 20 potential investors of your business idea by shortly presenting them your business concept (3-10 minutes). The investors include business angels, venture capitalists and opportunities for crowd funding. 

The aim of the Rhein-Neckar Technology Ventures Day is matching investors and start-ups. Key element of the event is bringing together investors and founders and facilitating interaction. Hence, innovative start-ups and young companies get the opportunity to meet well-known venture capitalists and private investors through speed-dating activities. The young entrepreneurs then have the chance to personally talk investors through their business idea and convince the enterprise’s potential success.

Please apply with a brief but compelling motivational statement using this Standardized Onepager.doc. Then send the completed document to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. until May 30, 2015. The event's experienced jury will evaluate your application and inform you in case of success.

Even people who have not founded their own business yet, but have a viable business concept and an innovative idea, are highly encouraged to join the event.

For questions regarding the event or the application, please visit www.technologyventures.de or contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (MAFINEX Gründerverbund Entrepreneur Rhein-Neckar e.V.).

Afterwards there will be a get-together at the Entrepreneurship Lounge from 6 p.m.. 

Please also sign up for our next Venture Capital Speed Dating with a convincing Onepager!

CyberOne is the central hightech competition of the country of Baden-Württemberg. It awards prizes to the most innovative and competitive business models from founders who have set up their business in Baden-Württemberg (or are planning to do it)! Right now, the 17th submission round has started and will be running until March 23 2015 (Deadline for submissions).

Register now and submit your business plan to attain many benefits like qualified feedback for your idea, professional coaching and mentoring for finalists and prizes of a total worth of more than a 100.000 €!

Please submit your registrations to https://trip-app.com/webform/eANnUDj5WiwNrdK3/.

To find our more about the contest, please visit https://www.cyberone.de/cms/ or contact:

The Hult Prize Foundation is a start-up accelerator for budding young social entrepreneurs emerging from the world’s universities. Once a year, they organize a global competition for student teams to create start-ups aimed at solving an issue faced by billions in need.The challenge for this year is to build sustainable and scalable social enterprises to address the early childhood (age 0-6) education gap in urban slums.

The competition will feature two rounds. All teams that make it through the regional finals will be awarded a one-year membership in the Clinton Global Initiative and an opportunity to spend the summer at the Hult Prize Accelerator. The best team at the global finals will win the Hult Prize, which features US$1,000,000 in start-up funding that will be awarded by Mohammad Yunus and President Clinton.

Do you feel ready for competing with thousands of global students? Then team up and register at https://hultglobalcasechallenge.wufoo.com/forms/2015-hult-prize-application/ (no idea needed yet!) until December 25.

For more information, check out http://www.hultprize.org/en/compete/2015-prize/2015-challenge/.

(copyright: city of Mannheim)

The Mannheimer Existenzgründungspreis is an award for great start-up companies in the Rhein-Neckar area, which is being granted once a year by the Mannheim department for the promotion of economic development. At its the 10th jubilee, the main prize in the technology category was acquired by contagt. We're really happy that a start-up which was consulted by MCEI won the prize and wish them good luck for the future!

contagt offers a smart indoor guide which works without GPS support. Their system works with small room shields, which contain scanable QR codes and NFC chips. Because it does not use external map services, it also offers solid data security. The company, which was founded by Johannes Britsch and Stephan Brandt has already won several other prizes like the people's choice award of the SAP startup Forum and the Prinz von Hohenzollern Innovationspreis.

Social entrepreneurs, listen up! You now have the chance to prove the value of your project by competing with entrepreneurs from all over the world. The Global Social Venture Competition is the world’s preeminent social venture competition providing aspiring entrepreneurs with mentoring, exposure, and cash prizes up to 25.000$ to transform their business ideas into positive real-world impact. It is focused on social ventures (less than 3 years old) from graduate students and recent graduate students that are striving to change this world for the better with their products. Apply now if your venture can be scalable and profitable in the long term and has a quantifiable social and/or environmental impact!

To learn more, please visit http://gsvc.org/compete/overview/.

Please note that submission deadline is Friday, December 5, 2014.

This year, the country Baden-Württemberg is tendering its innovation competition for the 30st time! The prize is meant to honour outstanding achievements concerning the development or use of new technologies. Its target group are small and medium-sized businesses. Apply now and win prizes with a total value of 50.00 Euros!

For more information and the application documents, please visit http://www.patente-stuttgart.de/index_ipbw.php. Please note that the deadline for entries is the 31st of May 2014!

High-Tech-Founders and Entrepreneurs, the game is on! Send in your application now to join one of the most important business plan contests in Baden-Wuerttemberg and compete for great prizes with a total value of 100.000 €!

CyberOne is a business plan competition that is powered by Baden Wuerttemberg: Connected and has been running for 16 years now. It is open for businesses from all technological branches like for example software/hardware, online and mobile businesses, multimedia or ehealth. The participants can win cash prizes up to 10.000€ and material prizes like the production of an image movie, not to forget the contacts and know-how every attendant receives!

The competition has two categories: the “startup”-category can be joined by founding teams, university project groups and businesses that are less than three years old and make a sales amount of less than 1 mio. € per annum. The “growth”-category is for businesses that are more than 3 years old, make a sales amount of more than 1 mio. € per annum and are planning a business expansion that is fraught with risk. The application is only open for businesses in BW or adjacent federal states.

To find more information or join the competition, visit http://www.cyberone.de/cms/.

Please note that the deadline for entrances is the 7^th of February 2014!

Since innovations drive the economy like no other subject, companies urgently need to focus on developing viable innovations in order to establish sustainable success. Due to this important economic dependency, the German Ministry for Economy and Technology will award the German Innovation Prize on April 4, 2014.

The jury is looking for forward-thinking and outstanding innovations of german companies, which change the business and market paradigm with their innovational power. The prize will be awarded in the categories of large-scale enterprises, small- and medium-sized enterprises and Startups.

Application will be open until October 31, 2013 via http://www.der-deutsche-innovationspreis.de. It is free to apply and an independent jury will choose up to three finalists in each category. Please also see the following website for more information.

Students, research assistants and professors are encouraged to join the start2grow entrepreneurship competition 2014 -  a contest for people with an exciting business idea. Application is now open!

Start2 grow offers the following benefits:

• Free participation
• High prize money, appealing material prizes and a special prize for technology innovations
• Support from over 600 coaches from the fields of economy and science
• A large network which supplies participants with useful contacts from economy and science
• Events like workshops and coaching
• Support in setting up a business plan, which is able to win over investors and decision makers

Start2grow is a competition which helps german founders to implement their business idea. More than 600 voluntary coaches will support participants with their expert knowledge and potential business contacts. Over 4000 teams have participated in the last 31 competitions and have presented their individual ideas and concepts. From these 4000 teams, 900 actually launched their venture and have been able to create more than 5200 jobs - a very promising ratio. Start2grow is the only german entrepreneurship competition which is certified by ISO 9001 for its quality management. It is an initiative by dortmund-project, belonging to the department for economic advancement of the City of Dortmund.

For more information regarding the application please visit www.start2grow.de.

On Thursday, September 19, seven companies were honored at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year awards gala in Frankfurt for their entrepreneurial achievements. The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards are held in more than 140 cities and in more than 50 countries worldwide and recognize outstanding high-growth entrepreneurs who demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in areas as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. Annually, each of the overall country winners gather in Monte Carlo, Monaco, for the annual Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year Award.  Finalists and winners were selected by an independent panel of judges.

The Winners are:

• Kategorie Investitionsgüterindustrie: Michael Marhofer, ifm electronic gmbh
• Kategorie Konsumgüterindustrie: Dr. Andreas Kaufmann und Alfred Schopf, Leica Camera AG
• Kategorie Dienstleistung: Alfred Keschtges und Kai F. Wißler, invenio Group
• Kategorie Handel: Ulrich Walter, Ulrich Walter GmbH
• Kategorie Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie/Medien: Peter Samuelsen, Thomas Köhler und Stefan Grieben, novomind AG
• Kategorie Start-up: Dr. Dr. Saskia Biskup und Dr. Dirk Biskup, CeGaT GmbH
• Ehrenpreis für Familienunternehmen: Anton-Wolfgang Graf von Faber-Castell, Faber-Castell Aktiengesellschaft