At the Europe StartupBus Challenge the participants develop a Startup from scratch within 72 hours while sitting in a bus driving through Europe. On October 27, six buses started from Amsterdam, London, Valencia, Paris, Rome and Berlin heading to Vienna. In every bus, several teams were working on their own ideas - all with the same goal to be one of the eight finalists that will pitch their idea at the Pioneers' Festival in Vienna.
What Made This Challenge So Special?
I took part in the German bus starting from Berlin, together with 21 other startup enthusiasts. The best experience was to work with people who shared the same entrepreneurial mindset and pushed themselves to their limits. During the trip we also met and competed against participants from the other buses, so-called "Buspreneurs" at our stops at well-known co-working spaces and incubators in Cologne, Karlsruhe and Munich.
It has been impressive to see how total strangers with totally different skill sets formed teams within hours and started to work on their projects. Every team had to think carefully about their idea in all kind of areas: to build a business model, to create a marketing strategy, to consider the competition and the USP’s and finally the presence in social media. Finally and most importantly, we also had to create a (design-) prototype of the idea for the presentation in front of professionals. And even after considering every tiniest detail, we had to adjust our whole concept over and over again according to the feedback we received from the professionals – all this while our bodies were desperately asking for some sleep.
In the German Bus, the five startups RingsAndBells.com, A2B, iHandy, treat.me and ShareSurance were created. But in the end, a team from the Dutch bus won the StartupBus Challenge with an application called Aiden. Aiden is an emotion-tracking app to help people reclaim their lives from depression.
Even though the 72 hours were extremely exhausting, I enjoyed every second of it. In case you ever thought about joining something like the StartupBus Challenge – Go for it, I promise it will be one of the best experiences in your life.
Max Kleinedler
Max is an entrepreneurship student at MCEI and nascent entrepreneur. We thank Max for sharing this excellent story and his experience with us. Want to meet Max in person? He will open the Startup Lounge on December 3 with an inspirational talk. Do not miss this great opportunity.
