"The idea that Jens Pätzmann, Klaus Lang and I had some time ago has finally become a reality - true to the motto "come as strangers and leave as friends", we all got to experience internationalization together," says Professor Dr. Daniel Schallmo.
In addition to networking, the professors gave guest lectures on the local startup ecosystems in their home countries, as well as on topics such as law, project management, team building, circular economy and social innovation.
HNU also introduced itself. After the official welcome by the International Startup League project team (Prof. Dr. Daniel Schallmo, Prof. Dr. Jens Pätzmann, Prof. Dr. Klaus Lang, Sarah Leible, Verena Mattes), as well as by Vice President Prof. Dr. Elmar Steurer, the presentation of the university by the International Office, a guided tour of the campus and a visit to HNU's startup center, Founders Space, followed.
On Wednesday, various city tours of downtown Ulm with different focuses took place, planned and conducted by students of the HNU master's program "Digital Transformation and Global Entrepreneurship".
In the afternoon, participants had the chance to talk to numerous startups represented at the Startup Süd Summit at HNU. At more than 40 booths, regional and national startups introduced themselves and presented their business idea.
On the last two days, the students were allowed to get creative themselves.
Organized by the company PineBerry (founded by HNU alumni, among others), a hackathon took place in which students worked together in teams of 5-7 people to come up with solutions for two challenges. The first challenge dealt with the topic "Creation of a sustainability concept & B2B marketing strategy for European businesses". For the second challenge the students had the task to develop a concept for a user interface. The task in this challenge was to use Artificial Intelligence like ChatGPT to support and partially automate time-consuming after-sales processes.
On the final day, students presented their solutions to their peers and the jury, which consisted of PineBerry co-founders Rebecca Bregant & Danny Friedrich, as well as professors in attendance.
One winning team was chosen per challenge and they received a great gift basket with gifts from PineBerry and the International Startup League. The final group photo shows the enthusiasm of everyone involved.
"All in all, the week was a great success for the International Startup League, and the goal - networking the international partner universities - worked out perfectly," said Sarah Leible, who was responsible for the organization.
Participants were from the following countries:
Shenkar College, Israel
Tel-Hai College, Israel
UCLL Leuven, Belgium
EPHEC Brussels, Belgium
Seneca College Toronto, Canada
Oulu University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, Finland
University of West Attica Athens, Greece
FH Joanneum Graz, Austria
Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia
University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany
In 2024, the Startup Festival will be held in Belgium.
