This January 30 to February 1 saw the third Startup Weekend Cologne in equally many years. And what a startup weekend it was! Completely sold out in advance with over 125 participants and a total of over 200 people visiting the same perfect venue as last year, STARTPLATZ.
Teams presenting their progress
Great things take time. A year from when I was invited to Stanford to be trained by Steve Blank, we finally made it! This week, I started to teach the Lean Launchpad curriculum at the University of Cologne, more specifically at the recently launched university incubator named “Gateway” – the perfect place for it.
There is a discussion going on in Germany at the moment on startups vs the Samwer brothers’ incubator or company builder “Rocket Internet”.
And I have only two things to add to that.
UPDATE: You can now book your free in-person office hours with me here: ohours.youcanbook.me.
This article was originally posted at STARTPLATZ by Inga Höglund in German. Reposted here for my English speaking friends. TL;DR – I’m now available for free advice every Wednesday
10am – 1pm1100 hrs – 1400 hrs (BER time) at STARTPLATZ inCologneDusseldorf (check availability and book up front).
The Norwegian entrepreneur and startup founder Vidar Andersen has since over a year become one of the important members of the STARTPLATZ family.
Vidar supports the regional startup scene coaching applicants to the monthly Rheinland-Pitch event how to pitch their startup and moderating also the event itself. He organizes the Startup Weekend Cologne, Startup Next Cologne and he also lectures and holds seminars around the topics lean startup and corporate innovation here, and now every week he’ll be here for his open office hours.
Whatever startups need help with, he is able to advise and assist. Sometimes, they need help securing more funding to set up their operations and he is able to show them different ways to secure the money they need.
This is an interview with Vidar about his open office hours and why he’s so actively supporting the Cologne startup scene. Many thanks to Vidar for taking the time to speak with us. We hope you enjoy the interview.
I was recently honored and delighted to be invited as a speaker at #UXCGN, the regular UX meetup in Cologne. It’s a little know fact that I started out in this tech business doing UX before it was even called UX, but HCI (also known under the more derogatory term, Web Designer in the 90s) and I’m still a product guy at heart.
I thought the brilliant Cindy Alvarez‘ presentation about how to do UX the lean way could use some more love in the German speaking world, so I decided to just blatantly steal and recycle it. I know I learned so many actionable things from it that helped me when I was building my last startup.