We would be happy to see you on Tuesday!

We arrived in Zurich, where we would stay for most of our time, on May 2. Of course, our program didn’t wait and we immediately visited TECHNOPARK Zurich and ElectricFeel with CEO and Co-founder Moritz Meenen who co-founded our own PionierGarage as well. We then went to HUB Zurich. Last but not least, we had an inspirational talk with Reto Frei, founder of the first from the famous “tibits” vegetarian restaurants. Check out more: Pioneers in Zurich – day one.

On our second day in Zurich, we spoke with CEO Roman Gaus of UrbanFarmers, Doodle co-Founder Paul Sevinç, BlueLion Incubator, the inventors of the scanner mouse – Dacuda. We even had the opportunity to try the professional life of a real surgeon in a virtual reality thanks to our extremely welcoming hosts of VirtaMed. At the end of the day, the PionierGarage organized the first Founders’ BBQ (Gründergrillen) in Switzerland. Lots of people visited – it was a huge success. We hope it will flourish thanks to the startup community for its own members as it has proved to be able to not only in Karlsruhe but in other cities like Stuttgart and Hamburg as well!

May 4 was our third day in and around Zurich. We started with a talk from Creathor Venture and then went to Centralway in Winterthur and Technopark Luzern.

Saturday, May 6 took place in the Hub, not because the weather was worse than what it was during the previous, nor only thanks to the hospitality of the whole team there, but because we had plan to make a compressed version of a Startup Weekend. In just a few hours, all teams were able to achieve more than most I have met in all such events could do for twice or thrice the time! Adjectives like motivated, focused and hard-working can’t fully describe a mighty Pionieer working passionately on a great idea!

In the end, we met the creative founders of Waldraud and had a great and delicious time thanks to the people from the Senior Design Factory.

Many things could not be included in such a short text, but every single Pioneer who took part in our Startup Tour in Switzerland will tell you that it was great and a lot better than our huge expectations!

Stay tuned and get ready for our upcoming hot events!

Then become a member of the Startup Dream Team.

Startup Dream Team is an initiative, started by the student organization Silicon Students.
30 participants will get the opportunity to live together in the StartupHouse.
On this way they can build a personal network in the Silicon Valley very easily.
Besides the housing the program offers a couple of weekly events:
The participants will get the chance to
- attend a weekly speaker series with speakers like Robert Scoble, Aaron Levie and Hiten Shah
- work on own projects and present the results to a Jury on Sundays
- take part in a hackathon
All these events will be organized by the interns themselves.

For more information read this article and check out this pdf.

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity!

We just returned to our hotel from the hub, where we celebrated the first founders bbq in Switzerland. The bbq was preceded by a meetup conference about economical and ecological footprints. The guests of both events mingled and ended up with wine, beer, Bratwurst and great chitchatting. We hope that the concept of this founders barbeque will spread the word here in Zurich and will be continued!

But let’s start from the beginning. Our day started early at the Hub with insights to the Urban farmers. CEO Roman Gaus got us started with explaining the technology behind their concept of producing food IN the city FOR the city. Next stop was Doodle with Co-Founder Paul Sevinç sharing his experience and favourite books. We discovered another incubator BlueLion a little outside of Zurich but then returned to see Dacuda and Virtamed – both very promising startups.

Tomorrow we will go to Winterthur and see Luzern’s Technopark followed by a dinner at Senior Design Factory’s restaurant back in Zurich. Stay tuned !

“Zurich isch tip top!”

We just finished our first day discovering the Zurich startup-community. We started our day visiting Techno-Park where more than 200 different startups are located. Moritz Meenen, Co-Founder of the Pioniergarage in 2009, showed us around and told us about his startup ElectricFeel, which tries to revolutionize the way of electric mobility in urban areas. They have developed a smart system for renting e-bikes, which allows companies to move their staff in a greener way.

Afterwards we went to the HUB, an awesome location for startups and founders, probably the place to be for every entrepreneur. We continue our visit there with the first founders barbequeue (Gründergrillen) tomorrow. If you’re willing to meet us, you’re invited to meet us there at 8pm!

Our last date for today was at Tibits, a vegetarian restaurant concept that will soon spread europe. We had a great talk with founder Reto Frei, who passionately gave insights about his companies philosophy. The free drinks and food at the end of our visit competed a fantastic first day in Zurich.

Tomorrow we’re going to visit doodle, dacuda, Urban farmers, BlueLion and Virtamed. Looking forward!

Stay Tuned!

http://www.tibits.ch/d/

Even though  we had to change locations on short notice due to the bad weather, the PionierGarage could welcome 10 new pioneers and many more familiar faces to its kick-off event to the new semester. After everyone had grabbed a beer and found a seat, Daniel Breucker, current CEO of the PionierGarage, entered “the stage” and introduced the newcomers to the world of entrepreneurship. By explaining what the Pioniergarage does and what it stands for, he gave a good picture to those students who have never heard of us before. Daniel was assisted by Konstantin Ewer, who talked a little bit more about the upcoming events like the Startup Crawl or the Hackathon. At this point we are happy to announce that even a couple of new pioneers have already signed up for joining us on our Startup Tour Zurich next week. This is great commitment!

Then it was time for our guest speakers to take over. And since we wanted to offer our new fellows a valuable lesson we invited one of the most experienced entrepreneurs from Karlruhe: Mateo Freudenthal, the co-founder of Honestly. Mateo was accompanied by his friend Candy Behunin, who is an evangelist at Amen. Both of them told us about how they found their way in to the startup scene and why they prefer to work in their own startup instead of a big corporate enterprise. Mateo first got in touch with entrepreneurship in Australia where he used to sell bolivian finger puppets on a farmer’s market. Candy, on the other hand, graduated from Bucerius Law School before she went to a STARTup Live event in Hamburg and realized how much fun it is to work in a start up. On this way we would like to thank both of them again for not only sharing their experiences with us but also being very passionate about it. It was one of those times that you could hear a needle hit the ground. Everyone was just sitting there and thinking: ‘What comes next?’

Speaking of ‘What comes next?’: On May 2nd 15 pioneers will leave Germany for five days to see what it is like to be an entrepreneur in Zurich, Switzerland. There we will meet the guys from Doodle and other cool startups, organize the first Suisse “Gründergrillen” and checkout the Technopark. Until then, stay tuned!

Mateo and Candy presenting the PionierGarage's coffee mug

Mateo had the pioneers under his spell

You have an amazing Business Idea but haven’t found your Co-Founder yet to get started? This could be interesting:

Cyberforum and Pioniergarage present the Co-Founder Market on April 25th in Karlsruhe. Get in contact with Techies, Marketing or Sales Experts at our Speeddating, find out who is right for your team and let your idea fly!

Find out more here: http://www.mit-unternehmer-markt.de/mit-unternehmer-markt/

There is only one word to describe this year’s STARTup Live Vienna: AWESOME!!! Knowing that the event would be worth the trip, five pioneers had decided to come all the way from Karlsruhe to Vienna.
The location was sektor5, a co-working space for young entrepreneurs and free lancers in Vienna. After the check-in everyone got the chance to get to know the other participants and the START Europe team members. In the evening 12 people pitched their business ideas. Afterwards the other participants had to choose which group they would like to join for the weekend. The five pioneers split in to three different groups: Stefan Marinov and Michael Scheiss helped the two girls from Hitea. Hitea’s product is a smartphone app which does not only help you to find  a good restaurant in China, but it also assists you to get to the restaurant. Jan König and Matthias Zientek were part of the lingibli-team. Lingibli offers a great way to learn languages. All you have to do is to download their app, print the QR-codes and stick them to the matching objects. Then you scan the QR-codes with your smartphone and it will tell you the meaning of the object in the foreign language you picked. Konstantin Ewer chose headingforparty, a platform for people who want to party. At headingforpartypeople can either create or apply for a “preparty”. A preparty is an event at which you can meet new people, have a few drinks and get ready to party. The first assignment each group had was to define their goals for the weekend.

Lukas Fittl talking about Lean Canvas

Then Lukas Fittl, co-founder of soup.io gave a little introduction to Lean Canvas followed by a Skype Call with Ash Maurya, the author of “Running Lean”. Motivated by his words, the groups tried to apply the principles of Lean Canvas on their projects until late at night. After a few hours of sleep the participants returned to sektor5 to continue working on their projects. To find out what the potential customers really want the groups were supposed to go out and talk to people in Vienna. Therefore Salim Virani, the creator of Leancamp, led a small workshop on how to interview someone. Before the groups hit the roads they needed to figure out where they could meet their target group. For instance, the guys from headingforparty headed for several hostels because their product is designed for young adults looking for parties. There they got valuable input from many guests who were talking about their experiences in finding places to (pre-)party. In the afternoon it was time for the mentoring session. A dozen of top-class mentors with great experience in the startup-scene sat down with the startups and made suggestions on how to improve their products. Driven by this input the young entrepreneurs enforced their work and prepared for the final 4-minutes-pitch on Sunday. The startups could win prices in three different categories: The best startup, the rising star and the community award. The pitches were judged by a 5-men-jury. The 5 pioneers turned out to be worthy representatives of the Pioniergarage. While lingibli was voted the best startup, headingforparty won the community award.
On this way we would like to thank the START Europe team once again for this amazing event and we are happy to announce that the STARTup Live Rhine Valley 2012 will be in Karlsruhe again.

Team headingforparty at work

Skype Call with Ash Maurya