The recent 126th edition of the Rheinland Pitch took place in partnership with the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences (HSD) and their Gründungszeit program.
Cellgo GmbH, TenderFlow, Oberheim Speakers, and wemote mad it all the way from the application process and through pre-pitch filter to contend on stage at HSD.
And the winner was… CELLGO!
Go team!
Recently I had the honor and pleasure to be invited to the infamous RWTH Aachen University of great engineering and innovation fame, to hold one of my on-site Pitching Masterclass workshops for startups in their Materials Lab Incubator prepping for investor day.
I think it went down ok, as their innovation manager bursted out “It was marvelous! We’re doing this again!” ;)
In what is becoming a yearly tradition, I was recently invited back as a mentor to the student-run event “3-Day Startup” (think of it as a clone of Startup Weekend) at WHU in Vallendar.
And the winners were… Quanta Labs (think EU version of Mercor).
Have you heard that our Rheinland region got our very own accelerator for AI-based startups in Cologne? Check it out.
Continuing the tradition of mentoring startups at STARTPLATZ over the years, recently I had the pleasure to mentor the next batch of participants in the new KI Accelerator in Cologne.
I was quite impressed by the diversity of the types of founders and markets addressed. This could be a very exciting batch.
If there was a recurring theme in my feedback, it would be “More money, more problems – Taking investors’ money to hire more people to do the work is usually not the efficiency boost you think wish it is (at this early, pre-PMF, stage). You, the founders, have to do the work.”
Full disclosure: I’m not affiliated with STARTPLATZ other than that we’ve been working together on strengthening the Rhineland startup ecosystem on various different projects, like the Rheinland Pitch, since it opened its doors back in 2013. A lot of people who only know me from one ore more of these projects assume I’m either a STARTPLATZ employee or co-founder – which I am not. Lulz. (I’m the founder-boss-man of my own little thing called +ANDERSEN & ASSOCIATES, also founded in 2013.)
