Category Archives: Events

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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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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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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Events, innovation

Innovation Prize 2025 / 2026

Recently, I was honored and excited to be invited to the ZENIT “Innovationspreis 2025 / 2026” awards ceremony at ZENIT in Mülheim, NRW. It was an interesting opportunity to check out what else is going on when it comes to innovation outside that of startups in our state.

And the winners were…

1. Studio 47 Stadtfernsehen Duisburg GmbH & Co KG, for their product(s) BotCast & ClipSense for AI supported media production.

2. IANUS Simulation GmbH, for their product ECOTWIN (Dortmund et al)

3. Petanux GmbH, for their product Retail AI System (Bonn)

And the event was graced by the presence and introductory speech of the current minister of innovation and a partridge in a pear tree in NRW – Mona Neubaur.

Innovationspreis 2025 / 2026

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