The fifth round of STARTPLAN ended last week - the teams presented their ideas to an expert jury and an enthusiastic audience. In just three minutes, the startups had to convince the jury with their idea, initial market figures and pilots. An exciting competition with a fireworks display of innovative projects.
Promising ideas that are not implemented - this is where most potential founders fail. In order to prevent exactly that, the HFT's own startup center PLAN G offers the STARTPLAN format. Here, researchers and students receive practical startup assistance for their ideas. In a nutshell, the promise is: "Build a startup in eight weeks."
This semester, too, many teams embarked on the joint journey. At the grand finale, the HFT START-UP NIGHT last Thursday, the various startup ideas were presented:
- Studio Minzi - Bildfläche: Sophia Hälterlein developed a novel principle for picture frames.
- Daniel Schwörer Photography: Putting architecture and space in a good photographic light? That's what Daniel Schwörer's concept is all about.
- Community Hub: The living room in the neighborhood for those who want a living room experience outside their own living space. Timothy Fuller's concept caters to people with a wide range of needs.
- GreenLog: The CO2 reporting tool from Team GreenLog is aimed primarily at SMEs. Marius Vrede and Laura Bürgel presented their idea via video pitch.
- Join: Hanna-Luisa Fraunholz and Dorothea Gugenhan developed a concept for innovative teambuilding via app.
The STARTPLAN teams were supplemented by experienced teams from the HFT who had already gained some pitch experience. Therefore, the "old hands" were not included in the evaluation. Pitching was shown by improveMID, Cepha Systems and Five Percent.
The pitches were evaluated by a top-class jury consisting of Prof. Dr. Katja Rade (Rector of HFT), Janina Erb (Program Manager at ASAP BW - Gründermotor), Tobias Dürr (Economic Development of the City of Stuttgart) and Chris Veit (Host of the Spätzle Valley Podcast & Co-Founder the hempany).
After a short consultation break, the prizes were awarded:
The jury prize went to Team GreenLog, who were able to convince of their concept in the pitch despite the video format. The audience award was voted online and clearly awarded to Team Join.
The coaches also awarded a coach prize, which went to Daniel Schwörer for particularly fast implementation of inputs.
In addition, there was a special prize from the city of Stuttgart, which had to award an exhibition space in the pop-up space Brycke - this went to Studio Minzi. So we can look forward to the novel picture frames that will be exhibited there starting in October.
