Yesterday our course MAN 632 Advanced Entrepreneurship was attending an event of the Heidelberg startup Getsafe in cooperation with Heidelberg Startup partners. Getsafe founder and CEO Christian Wiens and their CFO Daniel Treiber were speaking on “How to VC?“, explaining how to successfully attract venture capital. Starting with their own first steps both were giving interesting insights on how to concretely approach VCs. In their case good preparation and also a bit of luck were going hand in hand. Not being afraid of big names they were applying for venture capital from early on, convincing the Samwer brothers as well as the CEO of Check24.
In Germany venture capital is still of minor significance, compared to the US and UK. Nevertheless, its importance especially in the startup-sector is significant and increasingly becoming more important. For founders vc-capital provides several advantages: Instead of being asked for securities for potential loans, founders and capital-provider share the risk by having them as shareholder and adviser on board. In recent days a lot of public capital is also available on the market. State-owned funds and guarantees are offered to fill the gap of too little German VC funds.
Our course MAN 632 Adavanced Entrepreneurship pursues a practical approach, offering visits like yesterday´s trip to Getsafe. Practical experience of founders is meant to help students applying theoretical course knowledge in practice, own projects and case studies. Also networking is another aspect, which was not missing yesterday: The event ended with beer, Bionade and pizza.
Other successful founders like Victoria Seibert (Mirabesque), Kirsten Kratz (nextU), Lea-Sophie Cramer (Amorelie), Dr. Fabian Kracht (PERI), David Handlos (Stocard), Alexander Gossmann (Opal Analytics), Marc Langner (Good Brands), Dirk Meurer (Vorwerk Ventures), Tobias Schüle (Foodspring) and again Christian Wiens (Getsafe) will be other speakers within the course.
