From technology-oriented to social, from sustainable to creative: the most diverse ideas mature into innovative products and services at the Gründungsschmiede. Here, students, researchers and alumni benefit from a comprehensive range of advisory services, use the free coworking rooms with infrastructure, get inspired by other founders and thus lay the foundation for their business.

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current founding teams

Our youngest alumni

 

    

 

 

SLYDER

the Founders

Jonas Hölzel (computer science student)

Justus Iserhagen (production technology student)

 

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Jonas Hölzel and Justus Iserhagen want to bring the effects of a cinema screen to videos with a camera sled. Thanks to its compact and lightweight design, the camera sled should soon be part of the basic equipment of every photographer and videographer.

 

VRT Steinhauser

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VRT SteinhauserUG offers virtual and interactive learning and training solutions around the topics of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. The focus is currently on the further development and distribution of a virtual welding trainer. Through motivating tasks, the basics of welding can be trained cost-efficiently and almost risk-free in a realistic environment.

 

www.vrt-dd.de 

 

norrdesk

the Founders (from left to right):

Ronny Krönert (Master General Management)

Julius Schellmann (Dipl. Political Science)

Lasse Grimm (Master Product Design)

Short Portrait

The norrdesk team builds mobile micro-offices for rent. These allow holidaymakers and remote workers to work where they are most productive and creative. The unit provides a full-fledged workplace for one person and at the same time a professional working environment for communication with superiors, business clients or for lectures. Clients book mobile micro offices via the norrdesk app and third-party platforms. In the ancillary business, the offices can be purchased directly.

 

norrdesk.com

Just do it!

Sani-Ellips

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Short Portrait

With Sani-Ellips, Tom Pilk and Vanessa Glöckner are developing a medical-cosmetic product for the treatment and prevention of intertrigo - a skin disease that manifests itself in skin irritations, eczema or fungal infections, especially in women.

 

Just start founding and pushing your idea. There is no ideal time for this, but the time of your studies offers a very good framework.

Mates & Mate

the Founders:

Richard Schliemann, student of economics

Maximilian Klaß, student of international business

Sector: e-commerce

Short Portrait

Mates & Mate is a young start-up from Dresden, which was founded in 2019 by three friends and is now run by two of them. In addition to our love of the traditional South American mate, we are jointly pursuing the goal of giving this cult drink steeped in history a name in Germany.

We want to enable people in Germany to enjoy the lifestyle with and around mate tea. Because mate in its purest, healthiest and most energy-rich form is part of everyday life for many people in South America and is rightly known as a superfood.

In Germany, we usually only know mate as lemonade, spiked with sugar and other additives that contradict a healthy lifestyle. For us, mate is more. Our mate is healthy, can tell centuries-old stories and fits in perfectly with the current trend.

www.matesandmate.de

A small stake often keeps the risk of losing something low, but conversely it usually also takes away the chance of winning something. This is less to be understood in a financial context, but rather in a general one.

Zaalya

the Founders

Magdalena Filser, Master of Sports and Nutrition

Jessica Schleiffer, currently training as a web designer

Luise Müller, graduate in business informatics

Aylin Cicek, specialist in system gastronomy

Short Portrait

Zaalya is a green network of companies that gives consumers more security in their purchases through transparency.

The sustainability market is growing enormously and environmental protection has long been established in the minds of consumers. However, the daily shopping ritual is often dominated by conflict and confusion due to new standards and instructions for sustainable products. Through a targeted selection of our partner companies, we would like to make the decision-making process easier for the end customer when shopping. To this end, we reward shoppers through our cashback system. Consumers are rewarded for sustainable consumption through loyalty points, which increases the incentive to buy environmentally and climate-friendly products. The Zaayla loyalty points earned can be redeemed for discounts on other products and offers.

Time is precious. This should be taken into account when applying for funding, because it costs time. Therefore, find out in advance about the exact requirements and about projects that have already been funded.

SpeechMind

The Founders

Titus Hartmann

Richard Frankhänel

Justus Feron

 

Short Portrait

The SpeechMind team is developing AI-supported software for the intelligent recording of meetings. For this purpose, the individual meetings are recorded and the audio track is evaluated using algorithms from the field of artificial intelligence. The result is automatically generated minutes with a selectable level of detail. With this solution, SpechMind wants to ensure an exact and complete documentation of results and important decision-making processes from meetings. Participants who were otherwise responsible for taking minutes should be able to devote themselves to their core tasks again in the future.

 

www.speechmind.com

Epic Escape

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Short Portrait

Euventure stands for City Adventures. Marlon and Anton develop tricky outdoor tours that allow local residents and tourists to discover a city in an innovative way. Their city tours are based on the Escape Room concept. This means that just as in an Escape Room you solve puzzles to get to the next room, you solve various puzzles in the city, the solution of which leads to the next location. Anton and Marlon have turned their childhood passion into a business. From an early age, both have loved puzzles and now want to put friends, families and companies to the test, encourage them and bring them experiences they will remember fondly through creative puzzles.

 

www.euventure.de

Go through with your own idea, no matter what others say. And also have the courage to fail. Mistakes are human, you just shouldn't make them more than once.

NamNamNatura

The Founders

Markus Stopfer, B.Sc. Horticulture

Daniel Wetzler, B.Sc. Landscape and Open Space Development

Branch: Fruit Growing

Short Portrait

Markus and Daniel have founded NamNam Natura, their own business in the field of regenerative agriculture, with the aim of countering environmental problems caused by agriculture. With the help of agroecology, agroforestry and permaculture, they produce fruit, vegetables, herbs and edible mushrooms in an ecological way. These farming methods stabilise nature, ecology and the landscape with all its important functions. They market their products regionally, e.g. via the online platform Marktschwärmer or unpacked shops. With Arboreal, the two have founded another company and produce self-growing furniture from trees. The trees are shaped into the right form during growth and grow directly into finished pieces of furniture. Dried and sanded, they result in an ecological, individual and useful design product.

 

www.namnamnatura.de

ShowerHead

The founders

Michael Tischer (prospective business student)

Saskia Schmidt (business student)

 

There's no such thing as can't!

With courage, the firm conviction of one's own start-up project and a dash of audacity, you can literally move trees.

Short Portrait

Michael Tischer and Saskia Schmidt want to revolutionise the shower experience with ShowerHead. Their innovative shower head, inspired by the mechanism of modern coffee capsule machines, brings the pleasure and variety of a soothing bath into the shower cubicle as well. Whether foamy or creamy fine: with the specially developed pod system, they create an unmistakable wellness flair in every bathroom. They place particular emphasis on sustainability and would like to contribute to the long-term expansion of the start-up network in the Free State of Saxony, especially through local cooperation with industry and cosmetics.

 

Franziska Bielefeldt

The founder

Franziska Bielefeldt, (Occupational) Psychologist and Doctoral Candidate M.Sc.,

Psychology Sector: Health Care Industry (focus: nursing)

E-mail: fb@dr-franziska-bielefeldt.de

Short Portrait

As a prospective doctor of occupational psychology, Franziska Bielefeldt sees herself as an important link between managers and employees in the German healthcare industry in times of a shortage of skilled workers and digitalisation or automation.

In her freelance work, the work designer therefore supports companies and managers in this sector in increasing the job satisfaction and personal responsibility of their employees internally - with or without colleagues robots - without unnecessarily burdening the already scarce operational resources.

At the same time, she accompanies sovereign employees in health professions in strengthening their powers to exercise their vocation from within, without being exclusively dependent on help from above or outside.

Thanks to her needs-, relationship- and requirements-oriented approach, she enables companies and their employees holistically in the form of consulting and coaching to take a leading role in the participative and proactive design of tomorrow's work - for the optimal development of the potential of people and technology.

dr-franziska-bielefeldt.de

 

For me, one thing is certain: there is an incredible amount of development potential in the process of becoming self-employed. As uncomfortable as it can be to leave your comfort zone here and there, it is also impossible to fail. My tip: Give it a chance and take on the challenge!

Klareau

the Founders

Hilke Zündorf, Diplom-Hydrologin

André Spindler, Dr Dipl.-Ing

Alexander Walther, Master's student in computer science

Sebastian Habel, Business economist

Sector: Water management

Short Portrait

The klareau team develops measurement technology to record various performance parameters of wastewater treatment plants, such as the efficiency of the oxygen input or the determination of the settling behaviour of the activated sludge in the secondary clarifier. In this way, they want to optimise the purification process of the plants or reduce energy consumption. With very specifically (further) developed technology, they record the performance of the aeration facilities and uncover optimisation potential. Their recognised goal is to act in the service of the environment. With their solution, they want to better protect the connection between human infrastructure and the natural environment.

 

You have to have a clear idea of where you want to go and be able to visualise success. Then the whole thing has a chance. Of course, you also need the tools of the trade, such as a business plan that answers important questions like 'What do we need?' and 'What is our roadmap'?

AidBoards

the Founders

Sabine Loch, B.A.

Sven Grasselt-Gille, Mechanical Engineering Graduate

Priscilla Katzenmaier, Mechanical Engineering Graduate

 

Sector: Humanitarian aid

Short Portrait

AidBoards develop, produce and distribute sustainable disposable furniture made of natural fibre materials for use in humanitarian aid and disaster management. With their cots, tables and stools made of corrugated cardboard, AidBoards aim to provide quick and uncomplicated support to people affected by drought, flight and epidemics. The furniture is easy to transport to the affected crisis areas and can be disposed of sustainably on site after use. The three founders are united by their motivation to help people, protect the environment and make the world a more sustainable place.

 

www.aidboards.com

Our recommendation for research-based spin-offs: first research and team, then implementation and industry.

Kunst21

the Founder

John Felipe Branch, graduate industrial engineer

Sector: art trade

Short Portrait

With kunst21.com, John Felipe Branch has created a platform for trading shares in works of art. In a simple way, several people can buy a painting proportionally. Ownership is distributed in shares, the painting is insured, stored and sold in an auction after the investors have decided, and the profits are distributed among the investors. The platform is based on blockchain technology. Distributed ledger technologies (blockchains) enable the building of scalable and openly documented services that facilitate interaction between peers, with secure and robust business logic approaches suitable for financial products. He discovered his love of art in Magala (Spain), the birthplace of Picasso, and paints himself in his spare time.

 

www.kunst21.com

Byder

the Founders

Otto Maurer, Insurance Businessman

Stefan Titze, M.Eng Industrial Engineering

Sector: Human Resources

Short Portrait

The team led by Stefan Titze and Otto Maurer is developing a digital solution for recruitment via service providers and headhunters that is primarily aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The aim is to reduce the recruiting effort of these companies and at the same time remove the entry barrier for the digitalisation of HR and recruiting areas. For this purpose, Byder bundles companies and HR service providers on a common platform, digitally maps the applicant management process and simplifies communication and coordination. With the help of intelligent recommendation management, a competence analysis is created for each applicant:in and matched with the requirements for the job. The results support the HR manager and simplify the pre-selection of favourites. This not only increases the quality of staffing, but also greatly reduces administrative costs.
With Byder.io, companies access a large network of recruiters and their candidate pools without having to sign contracts with the service providers. Recruiters and HR managers are freed up to focus more on the personalities behind the CVs. For recruiters, the tiresome cold-calling of new clients is eliminated. They can immediately see which positions can be filled via service providers and can simply suggest candidates via drag and drop of the CV.

 

www.byder.io

SHARK

Short Portrait

The SHARK is an electric watercraft of catamaran design that can be operated efficiently and without emissions. It is designed to pull water skiers and wakeboarders across the water on a tether and can be steered by the athlete or follow pre-programmed routes. Furthermore, the SHARK can be used for sea rescue, debris removal from waters, as a manoeuvring vehicle in harbours or for securing beaches.

 

Stay persistent and don't get lost in trivialities!

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Founder Alumni

What our founders say

"The HTW Gründungschmiede supports you, especially in the pre-founding phase. Not only the office space is a blessing, but also the contact with other founders is very helpful."