Category Archives: pitching

entrepreneurship, pitching, startup

Migrant Momentum

Recently I was honored to be invited to “Migrant Momentum“, an event focusing on immigrants and entrepreneurship during the Startup Week DUS to speak a bit on a panel about fundraising for early-stage startups and moderate one of the break-out sessions on fundraising hurdles and success metrics for fundraising for founders.

I had really no idea of what to expect, but it turned out to be one of those rare “lightning in a bottle” event where the atmosphere and the attitude of everybody participating was contagiously positive in the extreme.

Many thanks to the event organisers Avela Gronemeyer and Archita Fritz for creating such a pleasant and productive atmosphere!

And I wasn’t at all prepared for the feedback I received… Made me blush.

“[…] thank you so much for the passion, energy, expertise, and heart you brought to yesterday’s “Migrant Momentum”. We received unbelievable feedback from the “Investor Circles” – your authenticity, openness to honest talks, passion for your work, and your humanity was clearly felt.”
– A. Gronemeyer, Event Organiser

On the panel I spoke a bit about what investors are looking for and how to attract investor attention.
From my break-out session on fundraising hurdles and next steps to funding (turned out to be popular as it was 100% oversubscribed – which made it a time-management catastrophe… LOL!)
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pitching, startup

Summer time is Rheinland Pitch Summer Finals Time!

Germany’s largest pitching event rolls on: Recently, the Rheinland Pitch‘s regular “Summer Finals” edition took place at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf (HSD) in co-operation with Gründungszeit HSD!

And the winner was… an app to help people with diabetes!
The Rheinland Pitch Summer Finals 2025 team!
That guy – co-founder, moderator on stage, and pitch trainer behind the scenes since 2013.

Photos by Manor Lux.

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Education, pitching, startup

Pitching Masterclass @ C3 Competition by Gateway Excellence Startup Center, University of Cologne

Recently I had a blast prepping the startup finalist for the C3 pitching competition, back again at the Gateway Excellence Startup Center at the University of Cologne with my Pitching Masterclass, Startup Edition.

Image by Gateway

Interested in my Pitching Masterclass for your students, startups, or employees too? Get in touch!

It was initially created to serve the Rheinland Pitch back in 2013 to help educate our regional founders and prepare them for raising money – and has been constantly evolving and updated ever since, and today it contains accumulated knowledge and feedback from over 3.000 startups served – and counting.

The Pitching Masterclass Startup, Student, and Corporate Edition used to only be available to applicants to the Rheinland Pitch or people lucky enough to be in an educational institution, incubator, accelerator, or corporate innovation program who had booked me for my in-person, on-location Masterclass.

Some of my happy Pitching Masterclass customers…

Today, in addition to the on-premise editions, my Pitching Masterclass is available to anyone everywhere as on-demand eLearning, featuring +2 hours of video and all the hundreds of slides as a booklet download.

Also available in bundles, especially popular with companies and organisations, including prepaid online mentoring & support vouchers for employees, booked and managed by the teams themselves on demand.

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mentoring, pitching, startup

Ignition+ Demo Night, Batch 19 – another team-win!

Recently I had the pleasure to be back at the Igniton+ Demo Night, this time experiencing the startup that I’ve been (b2b SaaS for early stage sales & pitch) coaching in the 19th batch of the Ignition+ program from Digihub Düsseldorf & Rheinland winning “best pitch” of the batch.

UPDATE: Following the tradition set by the startup I coached in the previous batch, OSPHIM – Layer Performance went on to be awarded “Digital Start-up of the Year 2025” by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, BMWE) for their outstanding digital innovation! FTW!

Congratulations Laura and Lukas of Layer Performance! Perfectly delivered pitch, very well deserved!

(BTW, if you too want to improve your pitch, you can enroll in my Pitching Masterclass online – available anytime, anywhere.)

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mentoring, pitching, startup

Startup Sprint Düsseldorf celebrating 10 years!

Recently, I was invited to mentor the teams participating at the 10th anniversary Startup Sprint Düsseldorf (think Startup Weekend, sans a global network).

I was also asked to do a little impromptu TL;DR on pitching, prepping the teams for what they could expect; If you can tell me which problem or need you are solving, for whom you’re solving it, and how – like a 6 year old child can understand – you’re already 80% on your way, 100% better than most! (want to learn how to pitch your startup successfully to investors? There’s my pitchingmasterclass.com for that! :)

Mad props to Ingo, Georgis, Peter, & team for keeping the volunteering up all these years! (And thanks for the shout-out, Peter – nice gesture to an OG! )

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