Every year again, this winter we also have the Kickstart Academy and, of course, a Final Pitch (Save the Date: January 15, 2022) .Let us take you on a short journey through the past weeks and behind the scenes!
To put together a great Kickstart Academy, you naturally need a team. That was quickly assembled and started planning – especially driven by the prospect of an event series away from screens and in 3D. Even though most planning meetings comfortably took place on our own sofas, we also had joint burger meals, because, as startups know, nothing works without a team.
The First Meet‑and‑Greet and Events
But enough about the team, you want to know how the Academy runs. We received many registrations and kicked off with an intense weekend! First, there was a relaxed session at the Hive, because sharing a drink or two makes it much easier to get to know each other. To give participants a quick taste, they spontaneously took on the challenge of solving a pitch task in small groups. It fit the date November 11, with the theme Carnival. The next day continued with a team‑building evening hosted by Strong Partners. We can tell you, it’s not easy to have a folding ruler balanced on your index fingers while standing in a line as a team and then lay it down together—without anyone losing contact along the way! As you can see, it was an extremely fun evening.
Idea Generation and Problem Validation
But it’s not just about fun games; the participants also want to learn something. So we brought in Niklas Tauch from Liefergrün for our first weekend. The topic: how do I actually find an idea, and how do I know if it’s worth looking into more closely? In practice, a lot of dreaming, brainstorming, and discarding happened, but some initial approaches have already crystallized. Validating these ideas and their underlying problems and scrutinizing them closely was then taught to the participants by Jean‑Michel Diaz from Echometer . From there, they kept testing, imagining, discarding, and rethinking. The workshops were also supported afterward by various mentors from the Münster startup scene, who could share their experience and offer additional input.
Next up were the topics Problem‑Solution Fit and Prototyping
After an outstanding first weekend, reality caught up with us and the workshop weekends had to move online. The kickoff was led by Graham Horton with the important topic Problem‑Solution Fit . And since all participants are well‑versed in Zoom, the discussion of the question “Do problem and solution actually fit together?” didn’t lose any momentum. Graham kept serving his key learnings as bite‑size to‑go snacks, so everyone learned and worked diligently. The next day continued with Pia Bönnemann from blackbox innovations and hands‑on prototyping. A must‑have skill to develop ideas further and turn abstract thoughts into a concrete MVP. Again, very creative ideas emerged during the exercise, keeping things from getting boring or dry.
The Final Input Before Christmas
Just before the Christmas break, we tackled the topics Landing Page and Marketing. An MVP is nice and all, but it still needs to be tested, and of course you want to sell your product in the end. For that you need a solid landing page. We'll look at the pitfalls to watch out for and what actually makes a landing page great Linda Witzel from Digi Hub revealed to our participants. A good brand presentation also includes, among other things, the vision, tailoring to the target audience, and the USP. Maris Hartmanis and Johannes Klein-Reesink from Studio Tense reviewed these topics with our participants and applied them to the ideas that have emerged so far.
As you can see, a lot has already happened in the past weeks, and we're already heading into the final sprint because the Final Pitch is getting closer. We're really excited to see how the ideas continue to evolve and are looking forward to showing them to you at the Final Pitch .
So: Save the date!
