Startup Class 2019 Updates

This was Startup Class 2019

2019-09-24T08:11:00.001Z

4 weeks, 40 participants, 4 locations, 25 guest speakers, mentors and experts - this was Startup Class 2019!

Thanks again to our partners and sponsors for making this happen:
DB Smart City, Hungry Ventures, Siemens, Deutsche Wohnen, Startup Night, Startup Incubator Berlin, CityLAB Berlin, CODE University, Digitales Lernzentrum from facebook, neXenio, be Berlin, ESF Europäischer Sozialfonds für Deutschland.

Startup Class 2019 was organized by a team from Berlin School of Economics and Law and Institute of Electronic Business e.V.

Here’s the video of our four weeks journey:

https://youtu.be/dFTfVuoH5aM

Heading towards the final week: Impressions and insights

2019-09-17T11:50:00.001Z

Have a look and see what we did so far!

#Week1 was all about team building, meeting the challenge owners and starting with Design Thinking to get to know the user:

#Week2 brought our participants into the field of prototyping and testing:

#Week 3 was all about Lean Startup methods. On top we met some Startups during our networking event at Food Tech Campus:

Prototyping, testing, networking and more!

2019-09-07T08:10:00.001Z

What can you build out of a bunch of cardboard, tape, paper and pens? The answer: a lot!

This week our teams learned how to build prototypes with simple materials to visualize their ideas. Thereby they found out how to reduce the costs of failing by putting the most critical assumptions into the prototype and see if they were true or false. On top of that, prototyping helps to build a common understanding of the idea within the team.
For the participants this is a very important step of the journey because many startups struggle at this point. Sometimes it even takes them months. That’s why at Startup Class they’re building a prototype in just a few days and go straight into the market for testing.

To get some more insights into the world of entrepreneurship we also had some amazing speakers coming over: Dr. Jessica Di Bella visited us on Thursday (5th September) and shared some inspiring thoughts about entrepreneurship and self-leadership with the participants. On Friday Christoph Sollich aka "The Pitch Doctor" came by. He’s helped 1.200+ startups pitch better and is a mentor for dozens of accelerators, incubators and startup competitions.

A major highlight this week was also Startupnight Berlin: The participants got exclusive free tickets from Deutsche Telekom to attend this important event - what a great opportunity to collect some business cards and dive deep into the Berlin startup ecosystem.

Thanks a lot to CityLAB Berlin for hosting us! It was great to stay in a historic place like this.

The first amazing week

2019-09-02T13:15:00.001Z

The first week of Startup Class 2019 was AMAZING!

Thank you to everyone who made this possible and thank you to this week’s hosts, for offering some great locations: SIEMENS, Startup Incubator Berlin, CODE University and DBmindbox!

To recap the last days we prepared a little video for you - enjoy!

https://youtu.be/TQpw88UvJXo

#Day1- getting started

2019-08-31T10:03:00.001Z

Time flies - the first days of this year’s Startup Class are already over! It was pretty intense but amazing so far. Luckily we have 3 more weeks ahead of us.

The first day (August 29th) started with the official opening: One of the initiators of the program, Prof. Dr. Sven Ripsas, who is a Professor in Entrepreneurship at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, and Carlos Ruiz from our host Siemens welcomed the participants. An introduction to Startup Incubator Berlin and some quick information about the mission and goals of Startup Class ended the formal welcoming. Because what is the most important part of the program aren’t formal speeches but the participants!

43 potential young entrepreneurs from 19 different countries found their way to the summer school with various backrounds, cultural habits, skills and full of excitement! That’s why the head coaches, Mario and Mara, directly jumped into the team building: Telling personal stories, building an object to represent yourself out of tinfoil and making an egg fly (have a look at the pictures and you’ll understand ;) ) helped the groups to bond and grow as a team very fast.

An important step followed in the afternoon: The freshly formatted teams had to choose one of three challenges to work on throughout the whole class. Thanks to our amazing partners the decision was hard to make:

Hungry Ventures: How can we rethink small retail stores in Berlin (“Spät of the future”)?
Bosch Software Innovations: In a world where construction skills are becoming rare, rethink the education of those skills for Berlin workers.
DB Smart City: Redesign transfer stations for urban areas in Berlin in a world where space is limited.

Luckily the interests of the teams are as diverse as the participants themselves so every group was able to get their first choice - best conditions for a meeting with the challenge owners in the afternoon to get more insights and inspiration.

Above the rooftops of Berlin: Pre-event at nexenio

2019-08-29T14:56:00.001Z

Can you believe it? Startup Class has finally arrived!

Not yet official but very casual and in a relaxed atmosphere we started our four weeks journey yesterday, August 28th, with an informal get-to-know-each-other. Our host nexenio, a start up developing user friendly and highly secure IT solutions, welcomed us on their rooftop terrace in the middle of Berlin near "Gendarmenmarkt".

As an icebreaker, the nexenio team prepared a nice group activity: Talking about the personal "super power", similarities and differences helped the participants to unbend, connect and interact real quick.

While watching the sunset the participants had the time to network and socialize over some cool drinks. Thanks a lot to our partner nexenio for the hospitality and the chance to get first insights into the work of a successful start up - that was the perfect inspiration for the official start the next day.

Welcome to our Startup Class Diary 📣

2019-08-07T16:00:00.001Z

Today we’re are thrilled to introduce our Startup Class Diary. The purpose of this timeline is to keep you informed about what is happening at Startup Class 2019. This way, as a participant, you’ll have a nice memory of our journey. And if you’re not that lucky to join us this year, you’ll get some impressions of what we’re currently doing.

You’ll notice updates while browsing our website http://startupclass.de through a widget that appears at the top. And we’ll also share new articles in our Facebook group and on our twitter page. We have planned a lot - so stay tuned :)

As a starting point we’d like to share the video of last year’s summer school Startup Class 2018 with you:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/XBf-ZKzuv50