As you probably know, I’m passionate about pitching – because we SUCK at pitching here in Europe! So when the new Cologne-based incubator STARTPLATZ asked me if I would be interested in getting involved in a new program to help our regional startup entrepreneurs becoming better at pitching, I wasn’t hard to convince.
The Rhineland-Pitch is a pitch competition event held at STARTPLATZ every last Monday of each month that aims to heighten the quality of our regional startup pitches by providing intensive training to the applicant entrepreneurs and letting the winners pitch to a select and exclusive audience of entrepreneurs, press and investors.
A week in advance, all applicants get a one hour intensive crash course on pitching and after a rapid-fire elevator pitching session, the winners get an additional and immediate four hours of individual pitch training from yours truly.
At the end of the individual training sessions there’s immediately another selection process where the entrepreneurs present the pitch they’ve prepared and the best get invited to the Rheinland-Pitch event the following Monday.
So what do you win except for the glory? Well, a chance to pitch in front of and meet with investors, get critical feedback – AND a video of your final pitch to boot! (So you better make your performance count!)
And it’s all for free! So apply now for the next Rheinland-Pitch May 27th!
Recently a band of merry men, also known as some of the key figures of the Cologne startup scene (and hangers-ons), boarded a plane and flew over to London to visit the scene there and advocate for our ecosystem there.
Above, Oliver Thylmann, Thomas Bömoser, Sebastian Wiehe, Thomas Bachem, Fabian Jager, Manuel Koelman, Thomas Grota, Jan Kus ,Julian Hansmann, Alexander Peiniger, Till Ohrmann, Ali Mokhtari, Lukas Strinste, Marion Reichel, Carlo Matic, Vidar Andersen (missing: Malte Delbrück)
We want to kick-off this blog with a brief summary of our recent trip to London, where we found out that not only Cologne, but the whole of NRW needs more attention.
Last week (Jan. 30-31) we went on a little trip to London with some startup pirates. The idea started in November last year, when Phil Moehring (yes, he’s from Cologne, NRW!) fromSeedcamp visited us in the Clusterhaus for a little presentation & invited us to their main Seedcamp event in January, so we hacked together a schedule for a two day visit and went from an initial five committed tech people from Cologne to a stunning 17 entrepreneurs, a few investors & corporates – and thus Pirates on a Plane (#poap) was born.
So we got on a plane, flew over to London and, with the help of a lot of intros from Phil, sat down to talk to a few startups, investors & corporates.
We learned about the local regulations, the UK VC situation and Tech City, thanks to Mathias Loertscher & Ray Coyle from OC and Andrew Humphries from TechCity UK.
Take-Away:
Lawyers & government employees can have an entrepreneurial background!
Seedcamp / Websummit Party
We met some of the newly funded Seedcamp participants and some of the brightest lights of the UK startup scene. #nophotos, or maybe one #explainsitall
A little tired, but highly motivated crowd arrived just in time at Moo HQ to have a short tour through their production facility and got a great presentation about the up & downs of moo.com by Lisa Rodwell, moo’s Chief Revenue Officer.
Last stop before flying back to Cologne. We met Sean Seton-Rogers and learned more about the ProFounders “micro VC” investment approach and how the UK & London startup ecosystems works.
We had an amazing time, represented Cologne, hopefully raised some awareness about the region and connected with a lot of great people. But most importantly, we became more closely knit as a group and came back with a bag full of ideas and highly motivated to accelerate the regional tech ecosystem. It’s true that we were there for a purely educational and business-related trip, but I wanted to see if we could have a bit of non-work-related fun too. So, a few days before we left, I was suggested this article to read for things to do around London, especially Shoreditch. I was thinking we could’ve maybe seen some places if we had had the time. But maybe next time!
That said, we would love to get in touch with you. We want to know about your story, your startup.
This blog is not a one-man show, currently we are a group of >15 people and we’re open for you to help get this ball rolling. Come join us!
The very first Startup Weekend Cologne was held January 25 – 27 2013. And what a spectacular event it was. Sold out in advance, the event was a complete storming success which saw 125 participants and over 220 people coming by over the weekend.
We even had the founder of Startup Weekend himself, US American Andrew Hyde attending!
See for yourself:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
An interview with Andrew Hyde, founder of Startup Weekend
I recently was asked to help Startupbus out with arranging their local stop in Cologne on their way from Berlin to LeWeb in Paris. And as I couldn’t say no to a free ride to LeWeb, I somehow ended up on the bus as a participant too.
“StartupBus is an annual technological startup competition, described as a Hackathon, created by Elias Bizannes in February 2010. The competition is held across a 3-day bus ride where contestants or “buspreneurs” compete to conceive the best technology startup. The competition seeks to attract young top talents to compete, to search for the most innovative startup conceived by the groups, where the winners are determined by a panel of judges. Starting from February 2011, it has gone through many iterations in various continents from 2011 to 2015, with the first in Austin,Texas and subsequently in North America, Europe and Africa.” – Wikipedia
As I was in the Netherlands holding a talk, I couldn’t be in Berlin for the kick-off, but I skyped a pitch in for my idea, basically a rehash of what I’d previously won with at Startup Weekend Amsterdam.
W00t! The startup news of Cologne just keeps on rolling. Only recently Startup Weekend Cologne was announced and it seems we (Lukas Strniste (@yeromee), Puja Abbassi (@puja108), Till Ohrmann (@tohrmann) and me (@blacktar) together with Startplatz (@StartPlatz) were stupid crazy enough to bring Startup Weekend NEXT to Cologne too. And that already NEXT WEEK!
Startup Weekend NEXT is a non-profit, but there’s tickets you’ll have to book to help cover the costs of this 3 week intensive educational program. We do however hope to be able to join up with some of the local startup patrons to subsidize your tickets.
Startup Weekend NEXT is only open for teams of 2 or more people and is a 3 week intensive educational programme involving a lot of hard work for the participants. This is a program for dedicated startup entrepreneurs.
So what the heck is Startup Weekend NEXT?
tl;dr – Something freaking awesome for startup entrepreneurs!
