Recently I was invited by students at the prestigious (often ranked as #1 for business degree universities in Germany) private university of WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management in Vallendar, Germany to mentor at their 3Day- Startup (sorf of a Startup Weekend clone) event.
I’ve also been working with WHU in Düsseldorf for some years now, mentoring at their accelerator program, but I had not been to WHU Vallendar since I was invited to Idealab in 2013, so it was nice to be back again.
Recently I had the honor to be invited back as a juror at the Demo Night for Ignition+ support program for early-stage startups in Düsseldorf. At the Demo Night, the jury decides who will get the next funding.
And the winner was… OSPHIM! The team I just happened to be coaching in the same batch. (I swear I didn’t have to bribe the other jurors much… Just kidding – they would have won with or without my vote, it was that solid).
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.
Recently, 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!
