Honored and excited to be invited by the Center for Entrepreneurship Düsseldorf (CEDUS) to teach my “Pitching Masterclass” for their “Startup Werkstatt” program at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU)!
Author Archives: Vidar Andersen
Impact Germany 2023 is a wrap!
Honored to be a part of Business France‘s yearly accelerator program “Impact Germany” for startups, scale-ups, and SMBs looking to expand into the German market for almost five years now with my company +ANDERSEN & ASSOCIATES.
WHU Accelerator Mentor Mayhem Again
Excited and honored to be back yet again as a mentor for the WHU Accelerator program!
“The WHU Accelerator is an equity-free intensive program for WHU students, alumni, and staff designed to provide rocket fuel for your new ventures.”
From the WHU web page
“WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management is a leading German business school with an exceptional national and international reputation. WHU offers academic programs and continuing education for executives throughout their career.”
Rheinland Pitch turns 10 years old!
Who would have thought… From very humble beginnings of the Rheinland Pitch – to becoming Germany’s largest startup pitching event!
Over ten years ago, in early 2013 Matthias & Lorenz Gräf and me where sitting at what would soon open as STARTPLATZ in Cologne, DE discussing how we could help the founders in the region be more competitive when pitching startup investors.
And keeping with the unpretentious “no frills” spirit of the Rheinland Pitch, we thought it didn’t feel right to be celebrating ourselves – but someone had acquired some festive balloons. ;)
We were (and still are) convinced that the region is a great place to found a startup and that we were (and still are) encountering many competent founders with great ideas here.
However, back then there were two pressing issues of concern:
- Every time we listened to their pitches, we didn’t understand what they were about
- The general public was not well informed about what a startup is and how it is different from other types of more traditional new businesses.
So we came up with the idea to create an event that would be open to everyone and:
- Curate and highlight the most interesting startups in the region
- Provide training to the applying startups so they will be more competitive and on their own terms
- Bring more mainstream acceptance and understanding of startup entrepreneurship
- A regular event as a platform to catch up with and network all sides of the community
I think we’ve succeeded beyond anybody’s expectations. In fact, we didn’t have any particular expectations back at the start. We just said, ok – let’s do it. And a month later the first Rheinland Pitch event was held to a standing-room only full house.
And the rest is history.
Lean Innovation Masterclass @ “Innovation Valley Garzweiler” Kickoff
Honored to be invited to hold my “Lean Innovation Masterclass” teaser workshop at the “Innovation Valley Garzweiler“ kick-off event in the amazing Hugo Junkers Hangar in Mönchengladbach last week.
As you might know, Germany has decided to end using brown coal as an energy source – and that even faster than initially planned: 2030 instead of 2038 – and this will obviously have an effect, especially in the regions where they are depending on the coal, for cheap electricity to industry, a major source of employment, stability, and prosperity.
To help alleviate the transitional pain, public funds have been made available and regional projects have been formed to support the affected regions in many different ways.
One way is to support and stimulate innovation, to enable an environment that can facilitate the creation of new exciting opportunities for the industries of the future – a second industrial revolution if you will — for when the coal that powered the first industrial revolution and has been generating unprecedented prosperity (and unprecedented damage to the planet) comes to an end.
That’s where I and my company +ANDERSEN & ASSOCIATES come in; I was there to give a teaser overview of some of the methodologies anyone can use (startups as well as established industry) to create disruptive innovation at 50 (!) times faster (and with less resources) than previous methods – to inspire and also to showcase what is indeed possible today; what is actually actionable and teachable.
Special thanks to WFMG – Wirtschaftsförderung Mönchengladbach, Zenit GmbH, and Zweckverband LANDFOLGE Garzweiler for inviting me and to all of the very enthusiastic and motivated participants that came to my fully-booked workshops.
Looking forward to be of further service to the region going forwards!
(And yes, that is an actual original Junkers Ju 52 airplane inside the event location – Hugo Junkers was born in Rheydt in today’s Mönchengladbach.)
