Today, I was honored to be back helping the startups walking the plank at this year’s (and also the final one – RIP 2011 – 2023) Pirate Summit prepare giving feedback on their pitches – one week out before they walk the plank!
I’m also moderating the Walk The Plank pitch competition, so see you there!
And if you haven’t gotten a ticket yet, have a look at the ticket page – there should be tickets available for most kinds of budgets (if they are not sold out yet!).
Honored and excited to be invited by the Center for Entrepreneurship Düsseldorf (CEDUS) to teach my “Pitching Masterclass” for their “Startup Werkstatt” program at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU)!
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.
Excited and honored to be back yet again as a mentor for the WHU Accelerator program!
“The WHU Accelerator is an equity-free intensive program for WHU students, alumni, and staff designed to provide rocket fuel for your new ventures.”
From the WHU web page
“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.”
Who would have thought… From very humble beginnings of the Rheinland Pitch – to becoming Germany’s largest startup pitching event!
Over ten years ago, in early 2013 Matthias & Lorenz Gräf and me where sitting at what would soon open as STARTPLATZ in Cologne, DE discussing how we could help the founders in the region be more competitive when pitching startup investors.
And keeping with the unpretentious “no frills” spirit of the Rheinland Pitch, we thought it didn’t feel right to be celebrating ourselves – but someone had acquired some festive balloons. ;)
We were (and still are) convinced that the region is a great place to found a startup and that we were (and still are) encountering many competent founders with great ideas here.
However, back then there were two pressing issues of concern:
So we came up with the idea to create an event that would be open to everyone and:
I think we’ve succeeded beyond anybody’s expectations. In fact, we didn’t have any particular expectations back at the start. We just said, ok – let’s do it. And a month later the first Rheinland Pitch event was held to a standing-room only full house.
And the rest is history.