New Start-Up Event at WHU

On the 22^nd of January, the new start-up event “The 100 first days of your start-up” was held for the first time at WHU Campus Düsseldorf. The event was hosted by the Entrepreneurship Roundtable, an initiative by Full-Time MBA students from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. Close to 100 participants, including start-ups founders, WHU MBA students, alumni, and faculty members followed the invitation and filled the brand new lecture hall at the WHU campus in Düsseldorf. “We chose a panel discussion format to allow our speakers to provide real-life insight into the 100 first days of their respective startups and to interact with the audience,” explains Mareile Isselhorst, the event’s General Manager.

On the panel led by Alexander von Frankenberg, Managing Director of High-Tech Gründerfonds, Victor Henning, CEO and Co-Founder of Mendeley and Vice President of Strategy at Elsevier, Felix Swoboda, founder of Freedom Ventures, Frank Thelen, CEO of Scanbot and venture capital firm e42, Alexander Luik, founder and COO of Springlane GmbH as well as Tobias Weiper, co-founder at EvoPark, a WHU start-up talked about the successes and drawbacks during the initial launch phase of their businesses. Following the panel discussion participants were invited to a networking evening organized by arvato, the event’s sponsor. “Tonight’s speakers complemented each other exceptionally well. Every speaker told his unique story and gave useful advice,” says coorganizer Alexander Lüttge. For Cristiano Estrada, co-founder of the Entrepreneurship Roundtable, the event was a successful prelude to future activities around the topic of start-ups: “In the future we hope to host a variety of events rang-ing from speaker events to business competitions and workshops. There is more to come.”