After a short Christmas break, MCEI successfully entered 2017 and the new semester. In the spring term 2017, MCEI launched its new courses (MAN 453 & MAN 633), continued our series of events (Startup Lounge, Founder Talks) and we held the first MCEI Seed Award. In addition, MCEI was active as a participant and partner at university-wide events (Career Fair, Q-Summit).
Teaching
This semester, the courses MAN 453 ("Thinking Beyond Boxes - Advance Your Startup") and MAN 633 ("Entrepreneurial Spirit") took place for the first time. In the bachelor´s course MAN 453, a total of ten teams developed their own startup idea. In the master's course, four "Inside-the-Venture" projects (Freachly, Misterstrip, Pediquick, PulseShift) were held, in which students' teams worked on an entrepreneurial challenge in their given start-ups. We are looking forward to a continuation of the MAN 633 in the coming semester and the bachelor´s course (MAN 453) in the next spring semester (FSS 2018)!
Furthermore, the courses MAN 636 (International Entrepreneurship and Managing Change), MAN 631 (Advanced Entrepreneurship), MAN 450 (Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Business Model Design) were held. Furthermore, several Bachelor's and Master's theses in the field of entrepreneurship were successfully completed.
Events
The first start-up lounge of the semester was already a special highlight: The MCEI Seed Award 2017 (February 14, 2017) for the most prospective start-up of Mannheim students and alumni from the previous year was awarded this year for the first time. The prize was awarded with a prize money of €10,000, which was donated by the Heinrich-Vetter-Foundation, and is intended to support the start-up in further development. The team of PulseShift convinced the jury of their idea and won the MCEI Seed Award 2017 in an interesting and highly competitive last round. Once again, a special thanks to the Heinrich-Vetter-Foundation!
During the semester, (student) start-ups from the two courses MAN 453 and MAN 633 (Orderpoints, CoTutor, Studypilot, deltron / Vimble S) as well as the Startups Pediquick and Freachly were our guests at the Startup Lounge. A big thank you goes to the team of the Café L3, for the great support with our Startup Lounges and other events.
Serial entrepreneur and investor Claude Ritter (Lieferheld, Book A Tiger) came to Mannheim to share his experience with us in the context of a co-featured Founder Talk (February 21) with the ifm Förderkreis and the C-HUB founders center.
In the spring, MCEI participated in the Career Fair (4-6 April 2017) and the Q-Summit (19-21 April 2017), with a dedicated booth featuring "Startup as a Career Choice". Numerous start-ups (Anyon, Cloudrail, contagt, CoTutor, ku.bus, leafsystems, MisterStrip, restado, SurveyCircle, Stocrad, zingoo) were able to give a broad insight into the exciting world of entrepreneurship.
At the Q-Summit, a conference organized by students from the University of Mannheim about innovation and entrepreneurship, the MCEI was represented with a tent in the Startup Village. At our booth, the start-ups UP / Reach, Cotutor, PulseShift, MisterTrip, Campusjäger, Crashtest Security, Pediquick and Cloudrail were able to present their foundations and get in touch with interested parties. In addition, the e-commerce talk “Sales Innovations vs. Product Innovation – Can Germany only do E-Commerce?” was held by Martin Rost (Zalando), Lukas Brosseder (eDarling) and Sami Charaf Eddine (RWTH Aachen, Mobile Robotics) and moderated by Dr. Jan Zybura.
More news about the MCEI
In recent months, MCEI has also done a lot on the MCEI website (mcei.de). In addition to the further development of the Success Stories, there are also some news in the category "About us" (including MCEI profile, press area) as well as an update of our “Partner” category.
We are also very excited about a contribution in the “DUB-Unternehmermagazin” (Issue 2/2017), in which the MCEI and three MCEI supported startups were presented. In the FORUM Magazine of the University of Mannheim (Issue 1/2017), the events and offers of the MCEI were also discussed in a detailed article.
You can find the German language wrap-up on the website of the Institute for SME Research and Entrepreneurship.
We wish our students, start-ups and partners a great summer break! See you in September for new projects, cooperations and events!
