StartUp Tour 2012: “Berlin Calling”
Posted: January 31st, 2012 | Author: Konstantin.Ewer | Filed under: News | No Comments »Each semester the Pioniergarage organizes a StartUp Tour within Germany.This time we decided to go to Berlin which is not only the capital of Germany but also one of the hotspots of the StartUp scene in Europe.
Therefore on wednesday last week at 7:30 a.m. 14 pioneers met at the university library of the KIT to start a four-day adventure. After our arrival in Berlin we had a couple of hours to check in at our hostel and to explore the surroundings. We were also accompanied by two students from Hessen, one student from Berlin and one student from Switzerland. At 5 pm we had our first official appointment at a startup which was recently sold for over $ 100 million to google: DailyDeal. While the two founders were on vacation (even CEOs are on vacation sometimes) we were welcomed by Manuel Hinz, director of corporate development. Since Manuel was one of the first employees of the company, he could tell us a lot about the rapid development of the company and the competition with Groupon and Citydeal. As a last point he gave an advice to all of us who are still looking for the right idea: Do an internship at a startup to see what it is like to be part of a young dynamic community. Afterwards the entire group went to the Italian restaurant Due Forni, which is supposedly Oliver Samwer’s favorite pizza place.
On Thursday we had to stick to a tight schedule. In the morning we met with Henrik Berggren the CEO of Readmill. On its homepage the startup describes itself like this: “Readmill is a curious community of readers, sharing and highlighting
the books they love.”. To establish this community Henrik and his developer have built an app for the iPad with which you can tell your friends about your favorite books and highlight the best passages. Henrik, who was born and raised in Sweden, told us about the reasons why he decided to go to Berlin and what gave him the idea for Readmill. He recommended us that we should come to Berlin to found a company because it is the best place in Europe to get in touch with potential investors. Our second meeting of the day was with Benjamin Rohe, the founder and CEO of Make A Startup. Benjamin underlined that his company is not just like a incubator. Whereas classic incubators “only” support startups with their money, network and know-how, Make A Startup plays a more active role. Benjamin works at least one day each week with the founders of the startups. Thus he considers Make A Startup not as an incubator but a “co-entrepreneur”. A couple of blocks away is the headquarter of wimdu. There we met Sebastian Sielmann, head of affiliate. Wimdu is a web portal on which you can offer and rent private residences. Due to the fact that there are several big companies with the same business idea, wimdu puts a lot of effort in to Search Engine Marketing and Optimization. After Sebastian showed us the different departments of the company, Hinrich Dreiling, one of the co-founders, joined us to answer a couple of our questions. A lot of these questions dealt with the fact that Oliver Samwer’s company Rocket Internet invested in to wimdu. A valuable lesson we learned from Hinrich was that we need to hire A-players to keep up the high quality of your startup. Our last meeting of the day was with Kai Hansen, co-founder and CEO of Lieferando. Lieferando is a platform on which you can make orders at delivery services from your city. Kai told us about the beginnings of its company and their personal goals for the future. Nowadays Lieferando has more than 100 employees and is online in several European countries. Because of that it is hard to imagine that he and his two co-founders have founded Lieferando in his living room because they could not afford any office space at that time. Back then the three of them used to ride on their bicycles across Berlin to pitch their business idea to potential customers. Within a couple of months they have generated customers from all over the nation. Kai’s long-term goal is to gain more shares on the German market and expand their businesses in foreign countries.
Our first date on Friday was with Jessica Erickson from 6Wunderkinder. 6Wunderkinder is one of the most hyped startups in Berlin. Their newest product is the Wunderkit, a platform on which you can plan and organize your projects and share this with your friends and fellow people. Jessica told us that they are very proud that the Wunderkit is unique of its kind and that they did not use an existing business idea. Thus 6Wunderkinder has started an anti-copy-cat-campaign along with 13 other startups to point out that you do not have to copy someone’s business idea to be successful with your startup. After this exciting meeting we had a few hours for ourselves. Most of us used this time to drink a coffee at the cafe St. Oberholz which is a hotspot for entrepreneurs. Later on we have been invited to the headquarters of Mister Spex, an online shop for glasses. There we met Björn Sykora, one of the co-founders, and Eva Noll, head of the human resources department. The conversation we had with them was mostly about the storage and distribution of the glasses because this was the first time that we got confronted with a physical product. Björn told us that today most of the packing gets done by student employees. In the beginnings however the three co-founders sometimes had to bring the packages to the post office personally to ensure that they got delivered in time. Despite the circumstance that you can buy almost anything online by now Björn believes that there is still some potential in the e-commerce market. Last but not least we met with Magnus Resch, one of the managing partners from Springstar. Springstar is a global incubator with three investors. Magnus told us that they try to enforce their startups to introduce their products on several markets simultaneously. On this way the startups have the opportunity to scale larger and grow faster. Magnus pointed out that it is very important that more women get involved in the startup scene because you often need a lot of creativity and inspiration. By the time of 6:30 pm we handed over our last “Pioniergarage coffee mug” (the gift anyone got who was willing to spend time with us) and were done with the official part of our startup tour. In the evening hours the group divided itself in to smaller groups to enjoy Berlin’s nightlife. After a healthy breakfast we left Berlin to head back to Karlsruhe.
These four days have been an amazing experience for 14 pioneers and 3 fellow students. On this way we would like to thank all the people we met in Berlin once again to give us the chance to gain more insights in the life of an entrepreneur. Even though this semester’s startup tour just ended, there is already a plan for the next startup tour in May. For the first time in its history the Pioniergarage will cross the borders to Switzerland and meet entrepreneurs in Zurich.
Until then: Stay tuned!!
Group picture at 6Wunderkinder's office
Sebastian Sielmann from wimdu
Pionieers in front of the Brandenburger Tor
