Education, entrepreneurship, Events, pitching, startup

Eastern-European Startups FTW!

Recently I had the honor and pleasure to win the international bid to tender with +ANDERSEN & ASSOCIATES to help EU4Innovation East & Expertise France help their selected batch of startups for VIVATECH 2026 in Paris prep for the conference, including investor pitching, competition pitching, and startup conference planning & strategy for reaching their goals and maximising the ROI of attending.

EU4Innovation East is a regional project enhancing the competitiveness of the startup ecosystems in five Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine. At its core is a comprehensive strategy to foster high-performance incubators, expand funding and market opportunities, strengthen community ties and amplify the visibility of EaP startups.

Expertise France is the French public agency for international development cooperation. It is a subsidiary of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Group and the second-largest agency of its kind in Europe.

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Little Known Fact, pitching, startup

Hello Alaska!

Awww… Look what the mail brought all the way from Alaska today! Proud to play a small part in helping entrepreneurs in underserved areas of the world. Shout-out to Linda Janes, Kristen Gibbs & the team running gBeta Alaska!

Did you know my Pitching Masterclass has been sponsoring startup events, startup support programs, and entrepreneurship education in underserved areas around the world for a couple of years now?

Feel free to reach out if you’re running a startup event or a startup support program way outside of the usual startup hotspots; My DMs are open. 📭

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Events, pitching, speaking, startup

Pitching Masterclass @ StartupDorf DUS

Recently I was invited to StartupDorf’s regular meetup in Düsseldorf to share a little about what startup founders need to know about pitching.

TL;DR

  • You have to master the high-concept-pitch, the elevator pitch, and the investor pitch (the pitch deck pitch).
  • If you want to massively improve your pitch, like +80% better than the rest out there, you have to be able to tell “which problem or need you’re solving, for whom you’re solving it, and how you are solving it” – using words and concepts that even a six year old child will understand.

That’s it! Well, not quite – but you’ll have to take my “Pitching Masterclass” for the rest… ;)

BTW: If you’re a StartupDorf member, you can get my Pitching Masterclass online course at a whopping 50% discount – just talk to them about how – valid until end of 2026!

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defence, Education, innovation, pitching, space

Pitching Masterclass in SPACE @ ESA!

Well, almost…

Recently I had the honor and pleasure to be contracted by the European Space Agency ESA in Noordwijk, NL to help their internal accelerator called “Gravity Assist” with improving the pitching skills of their participants.

The aim was to help them better overcome resistance and secure the needed buy-in from internal stakeholders through the edition for GOs & NGOs of my Pitching Masterclass.

This highly specialised edition focuses on how GOs/NGOs are not startups pitching investors for funding in the open market, but employees in an entirely different context, having to navigate politics and red tape, often only getting one single shot at getting it right. It teaches a process and a framework for how to overcome resistance and get the buy-in using the tried and proven method taught at Harvard Business School for decades – as well as how to pitch successfully in this context.

Afterwards I was treated to a tour of the facilities – which felt like a trip to heaven for a space nerd like myself… Who said business and pleasure have to be two separate worlds?

Fooling around on the ISS twin module @ ESA
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AI, Events, innovation, management

AI with Bertelsmann, Siemens, and KPMG @ The Drift and the Shift in Münster

Recently I had the honor and pleasure to be invited to discuss the future of AI with e.g. top innovation managers at Bertelsmann, Siemens, KPMG, Steinbeis University, and others at the “The Drift and the Shift” in Münster.

BTW: As an “AI slop” apropos, I noticed and pointed out the official AI forecast report created by KPMG (that they presented at the event) contained an image showing Taiwan as Chinese – and I had to ask if that was also an official (ominous) forecast… or just slop.

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