About the event

From health services, over chemical processes and digital publishing to programmatic advertising - digital technologies change our personal and professional life.
This change is enabled by entrepreneurs who take the opportunities of a newly arising startup ecosystem. In this event, we connect postdocs and young academics from across Europe with corporates and decision makers from the startup ecosystem in an intimate environment.

  • Get in touch with decision makers such as founders, managers, investors, politicians, and researchers from the digital startup ecosystem in Berlin
  • Learn more about Entrepreneurship in a startup ecosystem.
    How does this ecosystem help your idea to become a thriving venture?
    How can you make use of an ecosystem to initiate entrepreneurial projects?
  • Extend your personal and professional network with postdocs from Austria, England, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Scotland.

No matter if you are doing your first step as an entrepreneur or if you already launched your research-based startup, we offer you workshops to learn more about successfully developing ideas into thriving ventures. Learn from successful cases of digital business and from fail-stories of experienced entrepreneurs.

Day 1

Entrepreneurs and the Startup Ecosystem

(1) 1:30 PM: Opening and Keynote on the Digital Startup Ecosystem

Keynote on the digital Startup Ecosystem by Professor Rahul Basole
Associate Professor and Associate Director, Tennenbaum Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology (USA)

(2) Panel Discussion and Meet-the-Speaker

Actors from the startup ecosystem share insights about starting knowledge-intensive or technology-related ventures.
Mirco Dragowski (CEO, German Startup Association) moderates the panel discussion.

  • Start-Up Florian Reichle,
    CEO Trinckle 3D
  • Academia Rahul Basole
    Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Boundary Spanner Karina Prasad
    Head of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, Cambridge University
  • Private Venture Capital Andreas Helbig
    Investment Manager, Project A
  • Corporate Venture Capital Sebastian Dalles
    Senior Investment Manager, Deutsche Bahn Digital Ventures GmbH

(3) Dinner and "Learn-from-Failure"-Night

Entrepreneurs share stories of what they have learned from their "failures".
  • Hans Stier Bonaverde
    Founder
  • Luka Ivicevic Penta
    Co-Founder

Day 2

Digitalization and the Startup Ecosystem

(1) 9:00 AM: Entrepreneurial Breakfast

Share your ideas and resolve your questions in person. Explore and create opportunities with academics, professionals and entrepreneurs over a joint breakfast.

(2) Case Studies of Digital Entrepreneurs

We discuss three cases on how digital technologies enable new products and services; illustrating opportunities for new ventures from academics.

  • Case on Digital Platforms
    Daimler FleetBoard GmbH
  • Case on Digital Innovation
    Deutsche Bahn AG

(3) Workshops for your next steps

Participants can choose from three workshops, according to their current needs and interest.
  • (a) Proposing a value proposition to prepare your business model from scratch
    by Anja Rießland
    (Deutsche Bahn Training)
  • (b) Business Model Innovation - from Start-up to Industry
    by Tobias Friedrich
    (Acceleration & Incubation Deutsche Bahn Systel)
  • (c) Quickly build and learn what your customers want - Minimum Viable Products
    by Professor Hannes Rothe
    (Assistant Professor, Freie Universität Berlin)
  • (d) Finding the investors for my venture
    by Milos Spiridonovic
    (Head of Startups@Berlin, Deutsche Bank)

Location

Spreewerkstätten Berlin

We meet at the cultural and entrepreneurial epicentre, Berlin Mitte - at Spreewerkstätten Berlin

Insights from the event

  • I was very surprised to learn how much companies value the experience of postdoctoral researchers. Up until now I felt that doing a postdoc would rather minimise my chances of transferring into the industry sector.
    It opened my eyes to a whole new field of opportunities I hadn't considered before.

    Postdoc in Immunology and Virology

  • Interesting inspiring challenging, great networking, big ideas.

    PhD Student in Mathematics

  • These smaller events are extremely inspiring, giving the opportunity to participate to learn from each other.

    Postdoc in Molecular Biology