Celebrating Successful Founding Teams From Dortmund
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Seven teams, each with five minutes to pitch their idea and another five minutes to answer questions from the judges – this was the format of this year’s TU Start-Up Award, which the Center for Entrepreneurship & Transfer (CET) presented once again to successful start-ups from within the sphere at TU Dortmund University in November. The three highest-ranking teams – Valoon, Dr. Q and Sochili – were delighted to receive a total of 11,000 euros in prize money donated by the Wilo Foundation.
During the pitch, the seven teams presented innovative ideas from different sectors, from real estate to the food industry.
First place – and with it, 5,000 euros – went to Valoon, which impressed the judges with a solution for efficiently communicating and documenting work on construction sites. The start-up combines the benefits of construction project management software with the simplicity and acceptance of messaging services. The two founders, Janis Büse and Marvin Rosian, are alumni of TU Dortmund University and founded their company in 2022 from the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST).
The Dr. Q team secured second place and 3,000 euros. This solution is a virtual computational engineer for product development and aims to bring state-of-the-art computation software into widespread use. The three founders, Isabelle Hochberger, Dr. Henrik Stromberg and Cindy Heinz, are currently participating in cetup.INNOLAB, the CET incubator program.
The start-up Sochili took third place, winning a prize of 2,000 euros. By selling chili sauces, this business provides people in Senegal with access to electricity for the first time, thus creating new prospects. The organic and fair-trade chilies used for the sauces are grown in rural areas in West Africa. With every chili sauce sold, farmers there receive electricity for one day. The Dortmund founder Moritz Everding was also delighted to receive the audience prize of 1,000 euros. He is currently being supported by TU Dortmund University and the CET with an NRW start-up scholarship.
The judges included Prof. Tessa Flatten (Professor of Technology Management and Vice President International Affairs at TU Dortmund University), Philip Hitschler-Becker (CEO of Hitschler International GmbH & Co. KG), Dr. Lisa Lenz (founder of Building Information Cloud) and Dr. Martin Oettmeier (Head of Technology, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Wilo Group).
Learning and Networking
The event offered the approximately 160 guests countless opportunities to acquire information and network: In her presentation, Dr. Lisa Lenz from Building Information Cloud (BIC), the 2022 winning team, spoke about the progress made over the past year. Philip Hitschler-Becker from Hitschler International GmbH & Co. KG shared insights into the confectionery manufacturer’s everyday operations.
Over the course of the evening, an additional 20 start-ups were given a chance to showcase themselves in the CoWorkingSpace and talk with other guests. Small and medium-sized businesses and investors were also represented by profiles on a kind of bulletin board, where guests could scan QR codes to get in touch with them for possible collaborations.
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