It’s that time of year again! I’m back to support the Digitalhub Aachen‘s incubation program with an adapted version of the “Lean Launchpad” program from Stanford for the eight year in a row.
This year we’re running 12 early-stage startups through the Lean Launchpad (LLP) model from Stanford by the father of the Lean Startup movement Steve Blank, for 4 months, meeting weekly to report progress and receive peer review and mentoring in 1 to 1 sessions with me.
Recently I was back in Berlin working with Bertelsmann and their “Creativity Bootcamp” program that I have been supporting with my Pitching Masterclass and mentoring of the teams for the last eight years in a row now.
Bertelsmann’s “Creativity Bootcamp” is an educational innovation program where all employees of the Bertelsmann organisation from around the world are invited to apply with their ideas for new businesses. All employees then vote which ones will be invited to a three-day intense bootcamp program to work on their idea and pitch the results to stakeholders.
My “Pitching Masterclass Corporate Edition” teaches employees how to get internal buy-in from the necessary stakeholders for their innovative ideas to generate additional or new business for their company.
It also teaches how to better understand their stakeholders, how and why pitching inside a company is very different from pitching investors as a startup – and provides a framework (taught at Harvard Business School) for navigating and overcoming potential internal resistance.
The “Corporate Edition” also provides an additional alternative framework and pitching format (used successfully in a very large and infamous company) to the classic pitch deck.
If your company or organisation would be interested in improving communication between your decision makers and idea people to massively improve innovation outcomes and increase employee job satisfaction – please feel free to get in touch to talk about how I can help you too.
If you’re at an educational institution like a college or university, a startup support program like an incubator or accelerator, or an event featuring startup pitches – get in touch to talk about how I can help you too with the “Startup Edition” of the Pitching Masterclass to help manage the quality of output and massively improve the fundability of your participants.
The Pitching Masterclass was initially created to serve the needs of the Rheinland Pitch back in 2013 to help educate our regional founders – and has been constantly evolving ever since, and today it contains accumulated knowledge and feedback from over 3.000 startups served – and counting.
Until now, the Pitching Masterclass Startup Edition and Corporate Edition was only available to applicants to the Rheinland Pitch or startups lucky enough to be in an incubator or accelerator or corporate innovation program who decided to book me for my in-person, on-location Masterclass.
Today, the Pitching Masterclass is also additionally available, both the Startup and Corporate Edition, to all startups and corporate innovators everywhere as on-demand eLearning at https://pitchingmasterclass.com, featuring +2 hours of video and all the hundreds of slides as a booklet download – also bookable in packages which additionally includes online mentoring & support vouchers for your teams.
Recently I was humbled and excited to be invited to mentor the startups at the kick-off event “Greentech Pitch ‘n’ Answer!” for the Greentech Meets NRW initiative at Digitalhub Aachen’s Digital Church.
Check out the following startups that participated in the event:
BaaS Energy – Battery as a Service, replacing diesel generators.
CHARGEUNITY – Charging stations for electric automotive that private individuals can invest in.
EAS – Recycling synthetic materials by pyrolysis reactors for industry.
ivilion – A new way of building batteries, saving costs, adding capacity, better thermal management.
Over the past year, AI has become an essential tool in my daily work, simplifying tasks, and saving me time and headaches. Whether it’s copy editing, translating, programming, or video production, AI enables me to work more efficiently, having to do much less boring tasks myself. In this article, I’d like to share how I’ve been using different AI tools and platforms. (If you haven’t been sleeping for the last year, this may contain no surprises).
Continue readingRecently, I was invited to mentor startups in the Ignition+ accelerator program by DigiHub Düsseldorf Rheinland, DE.
Currently, I’m helping Osphim, a startup in the recent batch for the next five months. Osphim is helping the injection moulding industry to achieve +70% more efficiency – so if you’re in the industry or know someone in this industry, get in touch; We’d love to hear from you and learn more about your current challenges and future goals!
