Founding at the KIT Faculty of Business Administration and Economics
The KIT Faculty of Business Administration and Economics offers various support options and programs for students who want to turn their concepts and ideas into reality.
The university group PionierGarage deals with entrepreneurship and holds many events and workshops every semester where students can learn more about founding a company or even start one themselves. Students have the opportunity to gain individual impressions and experiences and to exchange ideas and network with other (aspiring) entrepreneurs.
In the same way, the KIT-Gründerschmiede as one of the largest university start-up centers in Germany, aims to support technology-based start-up companies and to serve as a reliable, empowering first point of contact for entrepreneurial teams. In addition to support and advice, the help provided by the Gründerschmiede teams also includes facilities such as office and laboratory space. Around 30 spin-offs per year originate from the KIT incubator. EnTechnon, the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Technology Management and the Gründerschmiede jointly offer the Start-Ups-Catalyst upCAT program. The Deep Tech Accelerator program helps participants with their business models, value propositions or the acceleration of market entry.
Further impressions on the topic of founding can be found in the online course Makers of Tomorrow online course. The course is designed for students from all disciplines who are interested in the topics of founding and entrepreneurship. Within ten modules, participants are also introduced to the founding stories of entrepreneurs from Germany and Silicon Valley. In addition to these testimonials, students will also learn practical tips and tricks for the first steps of a start-up. The lecture series of the course are open to the public.
The Wiwi Faculty is very proud of the start-up successes that students of business studies have achieved. We would like to briefly present some of these start-up stories here:
Right at the beginning of their studies in industrial engineering at KIT, Janna Kraft and Marie Reger realized that they enjoy working together and complement each other well in projects. Through the founding of femfeel they are continuing their successful collaboration beyond their studies in a joint project. In 2022, Janna and Marie were named Founders of the Month by KIT-Gründerschmiede for their start-up, which aims to support women during the menopause. femfeel now offers users numerous support options in this phase of life through tests, contact persons and an app. We wish them continued success!
Industrial Engineering and Management graduate Carolyn Covic founded the initiative CoffeeCodeBreak for women in the tech industry. With her mentoring program, she wants to support and encourage other women to enter the tech industry and reach their full potential. A great mission!
Former IISM doctoral students Dr. Tim Rietz and Dr. Jasper Feine are the founders of Respeak GmbH a program that kartificial intelligence for scalable user research interviews to turn them into adaptive dialogs. With this start-up, they were also recipients of the 2021 Exist start-up grant. A great achievement!
MARA is another company that was supported by the Exist start-up grant was supported. One of the founders, Maximilian Lüdersalso studied industrial engineering at KIT and later worked in the Marketing & Sales research group doctorate. In 2022, the AI Review Reply Assistant was introduced in 2022 to help sales teams respond to reviews quickly and authentically. A very cool concept!
The start-ups Spannwerk and TheLocalOne are also worth mentioning. Spannwerk was co-founded in 2020 by industrial engineering student Christian Zimmermann . The idea behind the concept was to connect companies with each other and across sectors so that they can benefit from each other's knowledge and skills. One of the founders of TheLocalOne, Han Völker, also studied industrial engineering. The aim of this start-up was to show users a diverse selection of local products on one platform and deliver them to customers. Although both start-ups are probably no longer active, we congratulate the founders on their ingenuity and commitment!
The Faculty of Business Administration and Economics is looking forward to more interesting start-up stories and advises everyone who is thinking about starting a start-up: just do it!
Further information on founding a company at the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics can be found on the linked pages and in the interviews
