Category Archives: startup

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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mentoring, startup

It’s that WHU Mentor Madness time again!

This week, I was back mentoring the new batch of teams in the WHU Accelerator again – for the fourth or fifth year in a row!

“The WHU Accelerator is an equity-free intensive program for WHU students, alumni, and staff designed to provide rocket fuel for your new ventures.”

“WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management is a leading German business school with an exceptional national and international reputation. WHU offers academic programs and continuing education for executives throughout their career.”

– From the WHU web page

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Education, entrepreneurship, speaking, startup

Keynote @ Deutscher Akademischer Austausch-dienst (DAAD)

Recently I had the honor and pleasure to be invited to hold a keynote speech for Alumniportal by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).

I spoke a bit about five things I wished that I had known before starting out as a startup founder.

Here they are – in no particular order.

ChatGPT’d screenshot from the online event

About the DAAD:

The DAAD is the world’s largest funding organisation for the international exchange of students and researchers.

Since it was founded in 1925, around 3 million scholars in Germany and abroad have received DAAD funding. It is a registered association and its members are German institutions of higher education and student bodies. Its activities go far beyond simply awarding grants and scholarships. The DAAD supports the internationalisation of German universities, promotes German studies and the German language abroad, supports countries in the Global South in building and improving their higher education systems and advises decision makers on education, foreign science and development policy.

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