The MCEI team is happy to look back at a both successful and eventful spring semester 2019. The semester was marked by numerous startups, enthusiastic entrepreneurs, inspiring success stories as well as the MCEI team's efforts in organizing high energy startup and networking events to foster the entrepreneurial culture at the University of Mannheim as well as of the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan region. Like previous semesters, there was a high participation from students enthusiastic about startups, potential entrepreneurs, investors and members and experts connected to the entrepreneurial scene of Germany and beyond during the spring semeser events as well.
Education and Support
We continued with our wildly successful accelerator formats MAN 453 Thinking beyond boxes and MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit. In the bachelor's course six different startups advanced their businesses in spring. BeeSonix, Locallinks, Collabtrips, Trendmover, MYID, and Kunstkerze. Collabtrips is not only a student startup, but also an international one from France. The founder used her semester abroad to expand her startup in Germany and conducted local customer development. On master level we had three own ventures with Heyanna, Bundlpay, and MyViral. MyViral was also an international startup in this case from the UK. So the course startups have been quite international this semester. In the pitch finals with external jury members, all the teams revealed their tremendous development over the last months. With an impressed jury we continued on to our final Startup Lounge of the semester where the winners of the Pitch Battle were announced and we celebrated the winners and the startups' acheivements together.
In the Inside the Venture Track of the Masters's course MAN 633 we had student teams conduct amazing 11 projects with startups in Mannheim and beyond to help them advance. AIVY, Bundlpay, Dr. Fem Fatale, Getsafe, Heyanna, Laptop Lockware, MeinZaubertrank, MyViral, Pacific Straws, Swapfiets, and Treye Tech. Check the dedicated page for more info on all Inside the Venture Projects.
Of course, we also conducted our more traditional courses MAN 450 Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Business Model Design, MAN 632 Advanced Entrepreneurship, and MAN 636 International Entrepreneurship and Managing Change. Furthermore, we had several Inside the Venture Theses on Bachelor's and Master's level successfully completed.
Inspiring Events
The year started with the Startup Lounge #60 which featured the MCEI Seed Award 2019. Three finalists - BeeSonix, Blauherz and RideBee - were chosen for the Pitch Battle, at the end of which one team would take home the prestigious MCEI Seed Award of EUR 10,000. After an exciting Pitch Battle round in front of a jury of experts, RideBee was awarded the Best University of Mannheim Student or Alumni Startup 2018. Additionally, throughout the semester startups like Linguistische Unternehmensberatung, iQuadrat, Heyanna, Smart Space, and BeNear featured in different editions of the Startup Lounges and gave valuable insights into their startups. The teams from the courses MAN 453 Thinking Beyond Boxes - Advance your Startup and MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit organized by MCEI were also invited to the Pitch Battle in the last Startup Lounge of the semester.
During the semester, MCEI also hosted a Founder Talk with Björn Goß, Cofounder of Stocard. Stocard has evolved to Europe's market leading mobile wallet app and the startup is on the quest to become the No. 1 mobile wallet in the world. The session gave an insightful glimpse of how Stocard has been growing since its inception and their overall vision for the company.
MCEI participated at the Career Fair this year with our booth Startup as a Career Choice and the founder teams of Mirabesque, Swapfiets, and RoadAds Interactive gave broad insights into the exciting world of founding your own business for students.
It was also quite fantastic to see the vibrant startup ecosystem that has developed in and around the University of Mannheim as observed at the Q-Summit, where we participated as a partner. The Q-Summit conference is organized by students from the University of Mannheim and focuses mostly on innovation and entrepreneurship. After premiering the year before, the conference gained much traction and was repeated this year. We were happy to host several startups (iQuadrat, RideBee, Swapfiets, BeeSonix, Linguistische Unternehmensberatung, MB, Instaffo and Laptop LockWare) at our MCEI-tent in the Inno Village, giving them the possibility to present their ideas and ventures and to get in touch with like-minded people and potential customers.
Thanks for a great semester and see you all in Fall!