#Day1- getting started

Time flies - the first days of this year’s Startup Class are already over! It was pretty intense but amazing so far. Luckily we have 3 more weeks ahead of us.

The first day (August 29th) started with the official opening: One of the initiators of the program, Prof. Dr. Sven Ripsas, who is a Professor in Entrepreneurship at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, and Carlos Ruiz from our host Siemens welcomed the participants. An introduction to Startup Incubator Berlin and some quick information about the mission and goals of Startup Class ended the formal welcoming. Because what is the most important part of the program aren’t formal speeches but the participants!

43 potential young entrepreneurs from 19 different countries found their way to the summer school with various backrounds, cultural habits, skills and full of excitement! That’s why the head coaches, Mario and Mara, directly jumped into the team building: Telling personal stories, building an object to represent yourself out of tinfoil and making an egg fly (have a look at the pictures and you’ll understand ;) ) helped the groups to bond and grow as a team very fast.

An important step followed in the afternoon: The freshly formatted teams had to choose one of three challenges to work on throughout the whole class. Thanks to our amazing partners the decision was hard to make:

Hungry Ventures: How can we rethink small retail stores in Berlin (“Spät of the future”)?

Bosch Software Innovations: In a world where construction skills are becoming rare, rethink the education of those skills for Berlin workers.

DB Smart City: Redesign transfer stations for urban areas in Berlin in a world where space is limited.

Luckily the interests of the teams are as diverse as the participants themselves so every group was able to get their first choice - best conditions for a meeting with the challenge owners in the afternoon to get more insights and inspiration.