“As an entrepreneur, one has to be willing to jump on the wave when the opportunity raises”
The demo-day started with a welcome speech by Ram Shoham, founder of Accelerator Frankfurt “As an entrepreneur, one has to be willing to jump on the wave when the opportunity raises, it might not come again”. In his speech, he emphasized the importance of finding the right partners to work with to secure a successful cooperation with startups and corporates. Accelerator Frankfurt offers corporates workshops to facilitate innovation and digitalisation (how to become lean like a startup, how to create engagement in your team and how to develop user-centered ideas). We want to thank our strategic partners d-fine, diefirma, Taylor Wessing and AtoBe in addition to our mentors and collaboration partners who have made the program possible and helped the startups to build their businesses. The event was moderated by Lirone Glikman who kept the audience engaged through the evening.
“The only way for corporates to innovate successfully is to work with startups”
During the inspiring fireside chat with Aki Eldar former CEO of Secured Islands (aquired by Microsoft) and Maria Pennanen CEO, monetizationAI and co-founder Accelerator Frankfurt, Aki shared his insights on how to successfully cooperated with corporates. Aki co-founded the cyber security company together with his brother after seeing a clear need from the market. After nine years they sold it to their former client Microsoft for +150M USD. Having first-hand experience working with startups and big corporates he says: “The only way for corporates to innovate successfully is to work with startups.” The biggest challenge for big corporates is high bureaucracy and slow speed. To speed things up one should find the right partners and let the startups do the innovation for you.
“Frankfurt Rhein Main has what it takes to become an international B2B startup hub”
Eric Menges CEO of FranfurtRheinMain informed us, that Frankfurt Rhein Main region has 5,7 million people and a GDP of 215 milliard euros. Frankfurt is not only a central location for banking in Germany, the Rhein Main region is a hub for automotive, life science and IT industry. Frankfurt has a lot to offer great infrastructure, culture, education, sports and quality of life. “Frankfurt has what it takes to become an international B2B startup hub, especially in FinTech. The feedback from our startups is that the proximity to customers, our mentors network combined with our hands-on approach significantly accelerates their chances to succeed,” says Maria Pennanen, co-founder Accelerator Frankfurt.
The next go-to-market wave starts on 12th of March 2018 and is open for applications online https://acceleratorfrankfurt.com/. Accelerator Frankfurt is an international program focused on getting startups investment ready and business development. The program offers startups mentoring by successful serial entrepreneurs, coaching, office space and professional services. We accept web entrepreneurs past the idea stage and the potential to scale internationally. The program focuses on B2B startups mainly from FinTech, RegTech, InsureTech, Cybersecurity & Blockchain. You can follow us on twitter @accelerator_ffm, like us on Facebook or contact per email ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com.
