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MCEI wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year & MCEI year end review 2017

MCEI wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year & MCEI year end review 2017 adapted from pixabay.com

We are looking back at an exciting year at MCEI. We have met lots of new startups and inspiring people, there were lots of advancements to our program, we have launched new courses and formats, and put up many events to foster the startup culture at the University of Mannheim and in the Rhine-Neckar Region. The following is the MCEI year 2017 in review... if you read this article for the Season's Greetings only, please scroll all the way down to the end of the article :-)...

Let us start our year review by taking a look at our networking events...

The MCEI year started with the awards ceremony of the 1st MCEI Seed Award sponsored by the Heinrich-Vetter-Siftung. More than 15 qualifying pitch decks were filed and competition was fierce. After an in-depth analysis by an expert team comprising investors and startup consultants, the three finalists, Ku.bus, Pulsehift and YourHenry, were invited to the final pitch battle in Startup Lounge #34. Furthermore, we hosted Orderpoints, CoTutor, Studypilot, deltron / VimbleSPediquickFreachly, MirabesqueEnvote, Fluchthelfer Upcycling and Clothing the Gap ( the latter two in an Enactus co-feature) in our regular Startup Lounges. The second half of the year was opened with a Startup Lounge Pitch Special with OrderpointsV|O Coffee and CoTutor (best in class from our newly launched applied accelerator-style courses MAN 453 Thinking Beyond Boxes and MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit) pitching in front of an external jury with CoTutor being the winning team. The action-packed second half of the year was concluded with MAN 631 Final Pitch Presentations: The Latest Student Startups Live On Stage and the best of MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit Pitch Battle in Startup Lounge #46, which was won by Mirabesque

In our Founder Talks, we had the pleasure to welcome Claude Ritter (Book A Tiger, Lieferheld) in cooperation with the ifm Förderkreis and C-Hub in spring. In October, we welcomed Christian Wiens (GetSafe) in a co-hosted Founder Talk with our partner bdvb Hochschulgruppe Mannheim. In November, we put up a Founder Talk Israel Special with Jonathan Glick and Oran Goldstein sharing insights on the Israeli startup ecosystem (moderated by Florian Fischer of our partner Startup Mannheim who co-hosted this event).

What's the new stuff?

Next to our well-established formats Startup Lounges and Founder Talks, we had a debut with “Startup as a career choice” on the University of Mannheim's Career Fair. We had Anyon, Cloudrail, contagtCoTutor, Ku.bus, leafsystems, MisterTripPulsehift, restado, SurveyCircle, Stocard and zingoo at our booth and many fruitful contacts were established. Another debut was the 1st Q-Summit at the University of Mannheim - THE Startup Conference event series with real impact and continuity and many student initiatives being involved (we had started a trial ourselves with the MCEI Startup Homecoming 2014 and were super happy to see what high level Q has achieved at its debut). At Q-Summit,  MCEI hosted UP / ReachCoTutorPulsehiftMisterTrip, Campusjäger, Crashtest Security, Pediquick and Cloudrail at our booth in the Startup Village an Jan of MCEI moderated the E-Commerce panel with top-speakers. We thank the Q-Summit team for the fantastic opportunity (more information on MCEI @Q-Summit here). In November, the first Startup Crawl (in cooperation with our partner thinc!) in Mannheim took place during which MCEI hosted Mirabesque and  V|O Coffee in the MCEI DesignLab. Next to these support schemes, we have launched two totally new course formats and concepts, which are fully accelerator-style following a "Scaling Lean" approach: MAN 453 Thinking Beyond Boxes and MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit.

What else happened at MCEI in 2017? Here are some stats:

  • More than 1700 event attendees at MCEI and MCEI co-featured events in our 1st MCEI pillar "Inspiration"
  • 296 students in MCEI formats in our 2nd MCEI pillar "Education"
  • In our 3rd MCEI pillar "Support" we have supported more than 50 startup projects in our courses and Inside the Venture formats:
    • 27 Student Startup Projects (4 months support horizon each)
    • 10 Student Projects Inside the Venture (4 months support horizon each)
    • 2 Bachelor Theses Inside the Venture (2 months support horizon each)
    • 9 Master Theses Inside the Venture (5-6 months support horizon each)
    • 3 extensive consulting projects Inside the Venture Projects operated by INTEGRA e.V. (3-4 months support horizon each)
  • In its first year, our  MCEI DesignLab welcomed more than 100 bookings
  • We have launced two new applied courses: MAN 453 Thinking Beyond Boxes and MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit
  • In January, Kai Bruchmüller (MCEI contacts and events) joined MCEI and in March Elisabeth Gourlin (MCEI PR) joined our team.
  • We updated parts of our website (many changes on the backend) and now you can find relevant information much faster. What is more, we introduced a new section called Success Stories, where you can receive first-hand information on MCEI-related and University of Mannheim Startups. We have (thanks to Elisabeth) more than 150 startups on display so far and (spoiler) there are many more success stories in the backend that are still work in progress. 

What is planned for 2018?

The spring 2018 Startup Lounges are already scheduled and we are looking forward to a lot of fun networking events with you! Check our events calendar on MCEI.de and follow us on Facebook. The 2nd MCEI Seed Award will be our 2018 kickoff. The application is still open: Here is more information on the application process! We are also looking forward to the second edition of Q-Summit in April, 2018. Stay tuned as more information will be made public shortly! And "there is one more thing"....most likely to be revealed by mid-2018 :-). 

We had a great year with lots of vibrant discussions and tons of fun with all of you and are looking forward to an exciting 2018!!

Lots of thanks and appreciation to all our speakers and visitors of the Startup Lounges and Founder Talks who have made these networking events so inspiring and fun! Also a big thank you to the Café L3 team for hosting us and being so supportive! Putting up all of these events would not be possible without you. We also thank all the participating Startups of our accelerator formats "Inside the Venture" and all our students who put in so much time and effort to reach the next level with their projects. It has been a truly amazing year for MCEI!

Have a relaxing Christmas break with your loved ones and we'll see you back in February - lots of new inspiring stuff is hopefully waiting for all of us to be explored in 2018!

Your MCEI Team 

 

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Sponsors

  • University of Mannheim
  • Institut für Mittelstandsforschung
  • Gründerverbund
  • ESF
  • Europäische Union
  • Baden-Württemberg - Ministerium für Finanzen und Wirtschaft
  • Absolventum