Today, I’ve chatting with HeyGen founder Joshua (I dig startup founders who do Customer Development!) – about one of the best AI tools yet for your videos (the one you’ve seen me use recently).
Sign up and try it now (with free credits): https://app.heygen.com/
Guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back… at the digitalHUB Aachen e.V. for the seventh year in a row now, again supporting the 2023 batch of 12 incubated startups with a custom version of the Lean Launchpad (LLP) program.
Together over the years we have been able to achieve an incredible 87% survival rate of their incubated startups.
So what is the Lean Launchpad (LLP)? It’s the world’s premier early-start support program that originated at Stanford and Berkeley over 10 years ago and has since spread to top universities, GOs, NGOs, startup support programs, and corporate innovation programs world wide. It applies an evidence-based process, going from beliefs to facts. It lets the idea evolve by exposing it to unbiased feedback from the market at incredible speed instead of applying a top-down linear creationism approach (that rarely – if ever – works out) at a snail’s pace. It’s 20% theory, 80% hands on experience, and 100% peer dynamics, 100% reality-based, 100% engaging.
The LLP has been tested by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) – a 7 BILLION USD public fund that finances commercialisation of publicly funded research in the US – and found so radically effective for increasing the fundability of early-stage ventures that the LLP has been mandated into US law: If you want funding from the NSF, you first have to attend an LLP program – it’s the law.
The good thing about the Lean Launchpad is that it has no lock-in, no licensing model, or other such nonsense. And you can send your own faculty, staff, and employees to be trained and certified as an LLP Educator at great universities around the world once you’re comfortable with the program and would decide to move it in-house.
Let me know if you want to know more about the Lean Launchpad (LLP) and how it can help radically improve the outcomes of your students, startup support program, or corporate innovation program – Phone: +4915140133149 Mail: [email protected] Zoom: https://ohours.youcanbook.me/
Yesterday I was back with FI Cameroon, helping their next batch of startups with pitching investors and giving feedback on their pitches.
Thank you to Bertrand Fotsing and FI Cameroon for inviting me again. It was an exciting mix of different markets in this batch – from DTC health products to fintech!
“It’s better to burn out
Neil Young
than it is to rust.
The king is gone,
but he’s not forgotten.”
Last week I attended (and finally it was the time to bring our oldest pirate in training too) the Last Burn of the PIRATE Summit, the startup event in Cologne, DE with the most special place in my – and many others’ – heart.
And thus it will be no more.
All sorts of emotions going through my mind about this having been the very last Pirate Summit. So amazing to finally catch up again – and especially awesome to finally see startup people from Tehran, Iran again here in Europe! And also so weird it was for the last time in this setting. It’s the end of an era for sure.
It was here, at the very first one in 2011 we introduced the world to Gauss – The People Magnet, the very first Social Discovery app for the iPhone:
Also this time, doing my miniscule part to help out by moderating the very last “Walk the Plank” pitch competition, being on stage again felt kinda full circle 2011 – 2023:
(The final “ARRR!” – Image by Dustin Preick – see more pictures from the event).
It was here in 2011 I got my German and European network of entrepreneurs and investors kick-started. Still some of my most cherished connections to date.
As one of my favourite songs goes; “Maybe it’s better to burn out, than fade away”… so let’s celebrate – and be happy and grateful that it happened (and kept it happening for so long!), not lament that it’s over – ARRR!
Forever grateful for the safe harbour Manuel Koelman, Till Ohrmann and the rest of the band of pirates managed to create (and maintain) for us over these many, many years.
This is going to leave a big hole in the region.
But that’s OK:
It’s the testament to what the Pirate Summit was, is, and forever will be;
Irreplaceable!
“My my, hey hey.
Neil Young
Rock and roll is here to stay.
It’s better to burn out than to fade away.
My my, hey hey.
Out of the blue and into the black.
They give you this, but you pay for that.
And once you’re gone you can never come back.
When you’re out of the blue and into the black.”
Honored to be a part of Business France‘s yearly accelerator program “Impact Germany” for startups, scale-ups, and SMBs looking to expand into the German market for almost five years now with my company +ANDERSEN & ASSOCIATES.