Category Archives: startup

Customer Development, Education, mentoring, startup

Alumniportal Challenge Workshops & Mentoring

Recently I was honored and excited to be invited to teach and mentor the startups participating in the Alumniportal Challenge online. I first held an interactive online workshop on why most startups fail and what to do about it (customer development, lean startup, and all that), and then mentored the international teams over Zoom later in the month.

Alumniportal Deutschland is a non-profit online social network of “Germany Alumni” that is designed internationally for people who have studied, researched, worked or completed further training or a language course in Germany or at a German institution abroad.

The primary non-profit and non-governmental organizations responsible for creating, maintaining and promoting Alumniportal Deutschland are the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD – the world’s largest funding organisation for the international exchange of students and researchers), and the Goethe-Institut. Since 2019, the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) is responsible for funding the portal.

Standard
Customer Development, mentoring, startup

Teaching & Mentoring for Founders Institute (FI) MENA

Recently I was asked to teach the current cohort of FI MENA startups about idea validation (aka Customer Developmen), business models and revenue sources and mentor them through later sessions.

Full disclosure: I am NOT a member of FI and I am not participating in the FI participation scheme. I’m not a big FI fan and I chose to remain completely independent, but I’m a big believer in helping grow more founders and financial independence in underserved regions – so when the call comes, I tend to answer regardless.

Standard
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.

Standard
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.

Standard
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.)

Standard