Start-Up Scene

Serial Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist and business builder Oliver Samwer talks about how to best prepare for the decision to become an entrepreneur. Very good stuff.

For the second time Munich Business School is hosting the "Munich Venture Summit" to enable experience exchange between students and entrepreurs as well as investors in the startup scene. Originally founded by a.o. HHL student Christian Klemenz (at that time still in his undergraduate studies at MBS), this event is worthwhile visiting to gather important know-how for own ventures. read more here.

Towerbyte Leipzig and Venture Capitalst S-Beteiligungen have founded the initiative "E-Commerce in Leipzig". The spin-off from Jena Towerbyte, which has been active for a couple of years already, focusses on supporting E-Commerce Start-ups in the Leipzig area. Their offering is a combination of entrepreneur-to-entrepreneur coaching and financial support. Read more here.

Once again WHU hosted the leading student-organized entrepreneurship event in Germany, the ideaLab!. Check put Gründerszene for a debrief.

Please find a debrief on the http://www.dmexco.de/de/(digital marketing exposition & conference)  at Gruenderszene.de

Please find a debrief on the http://www.dmexco.de/de/(digital marketing exposition & conference)  at Gruenderszene.de

Work-Group AKSW (http://aksw.org) the the "Institut für Informatik" of Leipzig University is currently working on several Research- and Development projects that need management support.



The projects focus on the fields of Semantic Web / Web 3.0, e.g. the Wikipedia-semantifizer-project dbpedia (http://dbpedia.org), the Open-Source innovation platform Cofundos.org (http://cofundos.org) and the semantic data-wiki OntoWiki (http://ontowiki.net).

AKSW is currently looking for graduates/ young professionals (preferably from HHL of course with management-background to develop the projects into spin-off start-ups. If you are interested and want more information, please contact Sören Auer, Head of AKSW.

German business school EBS now also starts its very own entrepreneurship event (WHU students have done so for a couple of years already). On October 2, the student organisation Ebspreneurship hosts this one-day event with an already interesting list of speakers, including HHL-alumnus Lukasz Gadowski.

More information on the event here.
More information on the speakers here.

If you are an entrepreneurial student or young founder, then this event on October 9th - 10th at German business school WHU is a must-go. For a couple of years now, WHU students have organized this event that has continuously received very good critics from participants. Among the speakers is also former HHL-Professor Malte Brettel, who is today running the entrepreneurship activities at RWTH Aachen.

The 50 € fee for students is a bargain as it covers housing and food for the whole weekend.
More information on idealab!2009 here. And in English here.
Check here for the list of speakers. And in English here.

Techcrunch is arguably one of the premier services for tech-oriented entrepreneurs. Amongst other things they also continuously screen the start-up scene around the world and host the UK-based Techcrunch Europe Awards for the some of the most promising startups. Their list of nominees throughout different categories also provides very good (and short) summaries of Europes' hottest startups. Friends to HHL is e.g. Amiando (COO Markus Eichinger gave a guest lecture at HHL last year), which is nominated to as a best company and best founder team.

Until August 15 you can still apply for the prestiguous Enable2Start competition of the German Financial Times. Winning this ensures you a high publicity and 50.000 Euro price money, as you can see from former winners mymuesli, statista and others. More information about the competition on Gruenderszene an FTD itself.

Currently there seems to be a hype in the US around a new VC-firm founded by web-icon Marc Andreesen. With a 300 M$ Superangel-fund they want to invest small amounts in a large number of start-ups, and then use a largely hands-off approach for all but the most promising businesses.

Well, wow, I am impressed. But not so much of the idea itself because this is what European Founders Fund and Team Europe Ventures have been doing in Germany for quite some time now - but interesting is the really huge sum they put together for their fund. Really curious how this will develop. Read more about the story on businessinsider and business week.

Gründerszene features short statements from some key players in the German internet scene (both investors and entrepreneurs) on what they expect 2009 to be like. Very interesting read. Apart fro mthe usual lamenting about tough times some expect the effect of the current financial crisis to open up opportunities for the more talented teams and well-developed ideas. Basically this means that money is still available, but it is harder to get as the hype is fading.

Read part 1 on the investor expectations here.

Read part 2 on the entrepreneur expectations here.

As Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports, a survey among over 140 experts from the German media landscape showed, that the majority expects increasing investments in new media concepts in the next year. The survey was conducted by Burda Research & Development in preparation of the upcoming dld fair. More info here.

Gründerszene interviewed Jörg Rheinboldt, Co-founder and former Managing Director of ebay Germany and today active with an own investment firm M10 as well as a social entrepreneurship project betterplace.

Jörg visited the HHL-Unternehmer-Stammtisch in August to present the international Entrepreneurs Organisation and to discuss with HHL-entrepreneurs about his experiences during the day and at the evening dinner.

Jörg is a really interesting and funny person and the video is worthwhile watching.