Soft-Landing Mission to Berlin

[Article by GERMANTECH]

 

 

Herzlich Willkommen to the 5th Soft-Landing mission to Berlin! We are very happy to welcome you, startups and scaleups from all over Europe to the great ecosystem of Berlin (and Leipzig!): Aichom, BestelBewuster, embiots, eProInn S.r.l., GEEV, VSight and F6S. This amazing delegation joined us for an intensive, inspiring and exciting 5-days program led by GERMANTECH Head of Global Programs - Mor Eini.

 

 

We at GERMANTECH had the pleasure to host an international delegation exploring the Berlin Startup Ecosystem.
We had an inspiring a full week! From visiting local accelerators, big players and VC’s to 1on1 Workshops with industry leaders and attending one of a kind future-centric events in Berlin.

 

The first day of the Soft-Landing mission to Berlin started with a warm welcome from the team and followed by a workshop by Robin Weninger about the Entrepreneurial Skill Set you will require in Germany. The delegation got insights about the german business mentality and how Germans like to deal with business issues. Putting in focus the delegation’s interest in expanding their business to Germany, they learned how to get things going in Germany and Robin explained, that it would be hard to build something without having somebody in their team speaking german or is capable to understand german. German is full of different accents, and “Language is definitely an ugly thing, even for Germans.” But in conclusion, Robin thinks “Europe is a great ecosystem itself” and you have a fantastic quality of life in Germany. From the perspective of building a business Robin knows that:

 

 |“If you fail, it’s fluffy.”

 

In the “I Solve your challenge” Workshop GERMANTECH’s Managing Director Maria Gross challenges the Soft-Landing delegation to find a problem that businesses face nowadays and subsequently find solutions according to the challenges’ goals.

For that Workshop the delegation gets divided into two groups to discuss business problems that they had or still have to face, following that they decide for an ambassador, who will represent their problem in the other groups for an open discussion. The participants learn how to see problems and how to focus on one important topic and try to solve them in a short time. The international delegation, all with different backgrounds and country of origin and all with different problems and ways of finding a solution came together in this workshop and connected with one another.

 

 

The second day of the Soft-Landing Delegation in Berlin started with Kaythlin Das, Business Development Manager for HubSpot for Startups, who hosted the session “Aligning Sales & Marketing to Supercharge Growth” sharing her knowledge.

Thank you for sharing your time and experience with us!

For the second part of the day, the Soft-Landing delegation went to visit Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie GmbH.

Julia Krüger led a session about the Berlin ecosystem and how innovation can foster the development of the economy.

 

 

 

A big welcome to the Soft-Landing delegation visiting the Leipzig ecosystem!

 

 

The first stop for the Soft-Landing delegation in Leipzig is the office of Invest Region Leipzig.

The delegation got introduced to the Leipzig ecosystem with facts about the region and had an amazing session on how to build businesses in the area by Helen Stoehr, the Manager Business Development of Invest Region Leipzig.

Big thanks to Helen Stoehr for organizing everything!

Markus Börner von TGFS Technologiegründerfonds Sachsen and the CFA Bjoern Bauermeister, CFA of Smart Infrastructure Ventures had a Panel Discussion about their offers to startups, what they did in the past and how it worked out. Also, the delegation learned about the benefits Leipzig’s ecosystem offers in comparison to Berlin, as new startups have a better chance to connect to other businesses and have an easier start overall.

 

 

Right after the Panel Discussion, the Soft-Landing delegation met Andre Hofmann, the CEO of biosaxony who spoke about biosaxony’s business model, their mission, portfolio and their outlook on the future.

The delegation also learned about the upcoming Medtech Accelerator and the Bio City Campus Leipzig.

The delegation got introduced to the Gesundheitsforen Leipzig by Vicki Richter-Worch, the Head of Marketing and Sarah Quellmalz, the Project manager for Strategy and Innovation, learning how the Gesundheitsforen Leipzig and also the BioSaxony can be helpful for them, and how these organizations help startups to reach their goals. Following the panel, there was a very lively Q&A session with all participants sharing their thoughts.

 

The next stop for the Soft-Landing delegation in Leipzig was at the SpinLab — The HHL Accelerator. Introducing the Spinlab Matthew McDermott, the Innovation & Business Development Manager explained how The HHL Accelerator supports entrepreneurial teams in growing and creating innovative businesses. A lot of information for the delegation!

Also, interesting for them to see, how the SpinLab works and what a startup would profit from them. Following that, the delegation listened to a short presentation by Tobias Theil, who is the Co-Founder of Stiki. Communicate smarter., which is part of the Accelerator. “Stiki gives growing teams a central location to share information that deserves to last longer than a few minutes in Slack.” After Stiki, Johann Bauerfeind, the Co-Founder of Solaga, presented Solaga their mission, while highlighting, how the accelerator helps his company.

For the final session at the SpinLab in Leipzig, Aparajita Deb from VNG AG, which is a partner of the lab, shared his insights on the Accelerator and how startups in the lab profit from VNG’s partnership.

 

Our amazing day in Leipzig with the Soft-Landing delegation ends in a networking event with ecosystem leaders at the office of Impact Hub Network Leipzig where Martin Jaehnert lovely introduced the Impacthub mission to the delegation and after that had a great chat with each other. Mor Eini our Head of Innovation Programs spoke about the importance of collaborations between both ecosystems and how startups can value from this connection. We would like to thank Victoria Schuster from PRISMA European Capacity Platform, Anne Moskalenko and Andreas Heinecke from InfAI — Institut für Angewandte Informatik for sharing their knowledge, experiences and their mission. Also thanks to Felix Erler Deutsche Bahn and CleverShuttle for giving the Soft-Landing delegation some insights about how they operate and how they managed to build the business.

 

A special thanks again to Helen Stoehr for making this day in Leipzig happen!

 

It’s Thursday and we are full of energy for a new and exciting day in Berlin! Our morning was packed with great coffee and discussions on growth financing topics in the tech industry led by Dr. Benjamin Ullrich and Dr. Tim Schloesser.

Thank you Victoria Gieseking for making it happen!

The next stop was at the WeWork at the Spree, where the Soft-Landing Delegation had a great talk with Joanna Sides, the Founder & Managing Director at Changing Perspectives.

In this Workshop, the delegation learned a lot about communication in a team, and how to build trust in it as well as how to deliver information in a correct way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last stop was the VOLKSWAGEN DIGITAL:LAB.

The Soft-Landing delegation got a tour through the DIGITAL:LAB by Suhail Bhat and Yonatan Chelouche.

Following the tour, Suhail and Yonatan gave an introduction to the Lab, how it works and insights into past and future projects.

 

 

 

 

Since its the last delegation of Soft-Landing in Berlin, we invited our partners, startups, alumni, mentors, and friends to celebrate with us European Entrepreneurship in a networking dinner. We had a great time meeting new people, creating professional opportunities and fostering innovation. It was the perfect time to thanks all of our networks for sharing their time, knowledge and experience with us in order to help startups and ecosystem builders to Soft-Land in Germany.

 

 

Check out our video of the last Soft-Landing Delegation in May, where the whole procedure is explained and you get some visual insights in the Mission!

Soft-Landing Mission to Berlin May 2019

 

 

If you want to learn more about Soft-Landing, than check out the official website: https://soft-landing.eu/

 

original article here