Co-Founder Matching at WHU
Research teams struggle to become founders without experienced business team members.
The strategy consultancy McKinsey & Company estimates that increasing the number of new start-ups through additional initiatives will create an additional €500B in value and 340,000 jobs by 2030. A majority of these ventures could come from universities. 1,350 additional start-ups founded from universities in 2030 is the estimated number that McKinsey predicts.
So-called “deep-tech” startups that rely on profound technological understanding are at the core of the next wave of European innovation. Technical faculties are the institutions that foster the talent and intellectual property necessary to create such ventures.
According to the Deutscher Startup Monitor, 55,9 % of academic founders see transitioning from a scientific to an entrepreneurial role as a crucial challenge for establishing successful spin-offs.
But there are significant obstacles stopping university scientists from becoming entrepreneurs. How to solve this problem? A team of founders who provide scientific and entrepreneurial know-how has proven to be a good choice.
1) Research teams create a short summary of their team & innovation in English (best including: innovation, potential applications, current team & funding, and future timeline and projects)
2) The WHU Entrepreneurship Center forwards co-founding requests to its talent pool. The co-founding opportunities are published on the In Praxi job platform and sent to a selected mailing list of WHU students and alumni.
3) In Praxi is the alumni association of WHU. 90% of all graduates are members and can be addressed via mailing and our own intranet. Every WHU alumnus has direct access to our network of prestigious WHU founders and investors and can leverage this access for every venture they engage in.
4) Interested WHU alumni reach out to the research team to talk about further details.
Together, the team wrote the application for the EXIST Forschungstransfer (Research Transfer) grant and were successful. In 2022 they incorporated their company."
As the first German developer of quantum computers, eleQtron was able to raise over €50 million in new funds, including venture capital from Earlybird and Siegerlandfonds. eleQtron’s website reads: “With his process-oriented working style, [Jan] is the driving force behind eleQtron’s fast growth.”"
To date, the team has received over € 1 Million in grants from EXIST Forschungstransfer and won multiple awards from Digital Innovation 2019, Science4Life Venture Cup 2020, Medizinwirtschaft / proRuhr 2020, and Gründungswettbewerb AC² 2020/2021."
Since then, the team – which creates developed new technologies for wafer dicing in the production of semiconductors – raised €5m in venture capital, was able to join prestigious programs INTEL Ignite, and won multiple awards, including the world’s largest and richest intercollegiate startup competition “Rice Business Plan Competition” with support from RWTH Aachen."
To turn their research into a business, the RUB Worldfactory Start-up Center reached out to us to help find a business co-founder. WHU alumnus Sebastian Johnston joined the team and xemX was recently awarded the EXIST Forschungstransfer (Research Transfer) grant."
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Sources: 1)Antler Report, 2)Financial Times Ranking, 3)Entrepreneurship Ranking
Co-Founder Matching Program:
Adding a co-founder from WHU can accelerate the transition from research teams to startups. And this is where the WHU Entrepreneurship Center steps in with its Co-Founder Matching Program.