UPDATE: WE MADE IT!

And in less than 12 hours! WOW! This means Cologne will now get the Lean Launchpad curriculum! The Cologne (and German and BeNeLux) startup scene ROCKS! (And remember, you can still contribute: Every extra cent goes to sponsor the Cologne Startup Weekend 2014, not into my pocket, and there are still tickets left for my exclusive one-time-only evening seminar (with free beers!) that I’ll hold when I get back!)

Thank you SO MUCH for contributing and for helping sharing this campaign with the world! Sharing is caring! <3 — I have news. Awesome, epic news.

I’ve been invited to receive the official Lean Launchpad Instructor training and certification at Stanford, California from professor Steve Blank, one of the godfathers of Silicon Valley, the father of Customer Development and the grandfather of the Lean Startup movement!

And I have also been asked to also hold a talk at Stanford about our startup ecosystem in Cologne, what we’re doing over here and what makes us unique!

So I’m taking decisive action to help build us one of the important pillars of a successful startup ecosystem – outstanding entrepreneurial education – by going to Silicon Valley and Stanford to bring home the official Lean Launchpad curriculum from Steve Blank himself to us in Cologne and to build an official bridge from us to the Valley and Steve Blank. I have taken canadian online casino sites it upon me to teach the best available startup education taught at Stanford and Berkeley to our students here in Cologne.

And I’m asking you to be a stakeholder with me in this endeavor as this is a much bigger thing than just one single person going over the Atlantic and back. I believe this should be a community effort and I hereby invited you to claim your active role in making it happen!

Hanging out with Steve Blank at SxSW in Austin last year.