Accelerator Frankfurt Newsletter (December 2018)

Empowering Women, Empowering Business

Empowering Women, Empowering Business: Creating an Inclusive Future

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,

It has been a great ride! We have had nine waves; six onsite programs in Frankfurt and three online (due to covid). The last two we did for free and dedicated them to female founders. We have had the joy of working with and supporting amazing founders. Should there be a wave ten?

We look back to 2016 when 🏄 Ram Shoham and Maria Pennanen founded Accelerator Frankfurt. We love what we do, but every accelerator needs the support of the local ecosystem to thrive. We are reaching out to all of you, friends, business partners, and people who were attending our events and have seen the value in our work.

So, Accelerator Frankfurt GmbH launched its Wave9 dedicated to Female Founders. We would like to introduce them:

Testimonial from our alumni female founder Miia Khan:
To be able to change the world we need to take an active part. We need founders who solve modern-day issues. Accelerator Frankfurt is a great way to fine-tune the initial concept and pivot. For me, the accelerator program was an integral part of when I was kickstarting my company Eventual. Maria and Ram were such great support for all of us in the program. With the help of their guidance, my peer founders and I made fast progress and also supported each other along the way. I had the pleasure to meet inspiring smart mentors who are still today in my network providing valuable support and advice. This is an amazing ride of becoming a founder of www.eventu.al - a new crowd led platform for event generation. Thank you for the friendship!

Female Founders are back
We are opening our applications now for WAVE9 - Female Founders.
Time commitment: 2 hours a week.
Duration: three months.
Location: anywhere.
APPLY https://bit.ly/2zIf1Cu.

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Female Founders - JOIN OUR Demo Day

Time flies and we are just four weeks away from our Female Founder's Demo Day. The above picture depicts our amazing workshop with Deep Work Studio, on design sprints. The Female Founders have been making insane progress in the past weeks, faster than we have ever seen throughout our program.

We invite you to join our Demo Day on December 16th at 13:00 CET, Frankfurt time. There will be a keynote plus four pitches from these early-stage startups. Q&A for all the audience with us on the call. Checkout the entrepreneurs of Wave8.


A special thanks to our Sponsor for making this program a reality:

Mindclip Behaviour helps companies get the most out of their teams through the concept of New Work and Micro-Habits. Contact maria@mindclip.com
Yours,
Accelerator Frankfurt
Online on our Youtube channel.

***
Monthly book recommendation:
Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success, by Phil Jackson. The inside story of one of basketball's most legendary and game-changing figures in the NBA. This is a book about leadership, psychology and mediation. Loved it.

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Female Founders,

We are on our way. Wednesday 21st of October, we launched our Wave8 with the final selection for the Female Founders Program. We have selected four female founders who will embark with us on a three-month-long program to validate their ideas and scale. The good thing is that you are welcome to join all our sessions as they will be livestreamed.
When: Every Wednesday
Time: 13:00-15:00 CET
Where: Twitch.TV or YouTube

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Female Founders,

We are happy to announce that the final selection for the Female Founders Program has been made. We have selected four female founders who will embark with us on a three-month-long program to validate their ideas and scale. The good thing is that you are welcome to join all our sessions as they will be livestreamed.
When: Every Wednesday
Time: 13:00-15:00 CET
Where: Twitch.TV or YouTube

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Female Founders,

The hardest thing about starting a company is to have the courage to take the first step.Have you been thinking of starting a business, but don't know where or how to start? Would you like to test the validity of it or talk to someone experienced? As our founder, Maria Pennanen put it, women sometimes lack a supportive network to test out ideas. Now there is an amazing opportunity for a riskfree testing of your business ideas. Accelerator Frankfurt GmbH is running an online female founders program starting in October! This is for early-stage female startup founders or those who are still just toying with the idea.

Time commitment: 2 hours a week.
Duration: three months.
Cost: zero.
Location: anywhere.
Here is the link for the application https://bit.ly/2zIf1Cu.

Those interested in learning more about the program can come to meet Maria in Frankfurt on Friday 18th on September at Café Fellini in Sachsenhausen at 9:15. Be brave and have the courage to realise your dream! The road to success starts with showing up.

Yours,
Accelerator Frankfurt
Online on our Youtube channel.

Monthly book recommendation:
The Biggest Bluff, How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win, by Maria Konnikova. The tale of how Maria followed a story about poker players and wound up becoming a story herself, winning some of the top players in the world, and conveying a message about human nature and herself.

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,

Summer is still on and we hope you are all enjoying the warm weather. Schools have begun and we need to start getting back to routine, as much as that can be possible. Covid-19 is still having an effect on our daily lives, but business angels and VCs alike are still moving strong with attractive investments. The biggest impact during these times is that investors are being more cautious and it is getting challenging to find good investment deals. In addition, startup valuations have been hit somewhat.

Nevertheless, our Wave7 startups, which finished the program back at the end of May, have all managed to raise funding. Their businesses have not been affected by the crisis, check them out to find out why: Wave7 Startups. Blockchain solutions and cryptocurrencies continue to gain traction.

Yours,
Accelerator Frankfurt
Online on our Youtube channel.

Monthly book recommendation:
THE CODE by world-champion surfer Shaun Tomson. The twelve stories in this book, taken from Shaun Tomson's own life experiences in and out of the surfing world, offer the simple message, "I Will" as a model to face life's challenges and help you achieve your goals.

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,

Summer is well underway, and we hope you are all enjoying the warm weather. During the next two months, we will be working on preparations for the female founders acceleration program. The program is catered for all women where ever you are in the world. The program is completely free which will be sponsored by our partners. If your organisation would like to sponsor an aspiring female founder, please get in touch with ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com .

Apply now! https://bit.ly/2zIf1Cu

Why Women? In the past few years, the startup ecosystem worldwide is booming, leaving a largely untapped talent of professional women who are either staying at home or simply ‘stuck’ in their daily jobs without being able to make the first step into entrepreneurship due to uncertainty. These women hold the potential to change our future right from the comfort of their homes using online tools and remote teams. The ‘Female Founder’ program aims to harness this entrepreneurial spirit and empower women innovators to build sustainable companies.

We wish you a fantastic summer.

Yours,
Accelerator Frankfurt
Online on our new Youtube channel.

Monthly book recommendation:
"Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator" by Ryan Holiday. This book talks about the manipulation of social media, and how it is so hard to trust anything we read in the news. Pretty shocking and an eye-opener.

Accelerator Frankfurt Wave7 has been a complete success! We took the risk and uncertainty of running an online program and streamed it live on three channels for aspiring entrepreneurs to get inspired, for investors to follow and for startups to grow. Yes, all investor and mentor meetings were livestreamed, so everyone was on the spot. If you want to see some real-life acceleration, check out our Youtube recordings #AccFM.

Next up, female founders program catered for all women where ever you are in the world. The program is completely free for female founders which will be sponsored by our partners. If your organisation would like to sponsor an aspiring female founder, please get in touch with ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com.

We wish you all a safe and healthy summer.

After having run seven acceleration waves with Accelerator Frankfurt GmbH, and 37 startups through the program, it is time to face the brutal fact: we are missing female-founders. In fact, we have had only two startups with a female founder.

Dear Friends and Colleagues, 

Accelerator Frankfurt is inviting investors to join our Demo Day on 20th of May at 16:00 CET. Five of the most promising startups in the field of Blockchain, Fintech, Regtech, and Security will be showcasing their business and why they are worthy of being the next unicorn. The online event will allow participants to join the Q&A session and to follow on with the startups.

On the agenda:
15:45 Webinar opens
16:00 - 16:15 Welcome speech by Ram Shoham
16:15 - 16:45 Keynote (special guest)
16:50 - 17:40 DEMO DAY Pitches Accelerator Frankfurt

5 minutes pitch + 3 minutes Q&A

We thank our strategic partners AtoBe, Deep Work Studio, die firma and Taylor Wessing for support during the program. A special thank you to our sponsors METZLER, Silicon Valley Bank, Helaba Digital and FrankfurtRheiunMain GmbH.

Yours,
Accelerator Frankfurt

A pure virtual program with focus on Blockchain and Fintech solutions

Wave 7 of Accelerator Frankfurt will go online because of the Coronavirus pandemic. We see it as an opportunity to invite many more people to join our portfolio companies on their go-to-market journey. Most of the sessions will be live-streamed on Twitch and YouTube. We attached a one-pager detailing more information below. Stay tuned!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It has been an exciting kick-off for 2020 with various events where we presented our plans for this year. As mentioned in our previous newsletter, we are setting up a venture capital fund that will leverage our experience, network, and corporate connections to back top entrepreneurs. Our unique-selling-point is access to the most wanted startups in Finland, Sweden, and Israel, as well as our experience to scale them in Germany.

The first fund target is to raise EUR 50 million, predominantly from family offices, and German small- and medium-sized enterprises (or "Mittelstand") who want to stay ahead with innovation and get access to our unique deal flow. Stay tuned for major announcements coming up. Please contact ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com for more information.

Best,
Maria and Ram

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We hope you had a restful and relaxing holiday season. As some of you might know, our mission statement at Accelerator Frankfurt is as follows: Change in business can only happen with passionate people. We attract those people and help them grow.

A truly successful entrepreneur never stops searching for the “perfect wave”. Similar to a surfer, we take a wave and crash, we take another and crash and another and another, while never stopping to learn from the constant feedback loop of crashing (failure). Once in a while, we catch the perfect wave, and the feeling is exhilarating. The taste of success is addictive and not final; we always want it again and again. Like surfers, entrepreneurs learn from failing fast and taking the feedback loop towards success.

We are entrepreneurs surrounded by passionate entrepreneurs. We are the best at what we do because this is our job and our passion. We want to thank our alumni startups for trusting us, for teaching us, and for the friendships created along the way.

We wish you all a prosperous 2020.
Maria and Ram

17 years of international experience in the chemical and forest industry taught Maria Pennanen that she thrives best in start-ups

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We are excited to present our November 2019 newsletter and share with you our recent activities as well as the coming events in our ecosystem.

The past few weeks have been very intense and busy with our 6th wave blockchain startups. Venture funding in our region continues to grow positively as we see some major investments closed during 2019. Also, we have participated in major global events and hosted workshops and meetups.

Please feel free to reach out to us with comments/feedback/inquiries. We want to hear from you: ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com

Accelerator Frankfurt Team.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Summer is behind us and we are on our way to the final sprint of the year. October has been a great month filled with exciting news from our alumni. Spobi is live, Anyblock secures funding, and COVR is in the final of Nordic Startup Awards. Maria was part of the 2019 yearly edition of Europe’s most influential women in the startup and venture capital space for the second year in a row.

Ram and Maria have spent a large part of October in Israel, working on exciting things that we cannot announce just yet...stay tuned for more on that.

We wish you a fantastic fall and an early “Happy Halloween.”

Accelerator Frankfurt team

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Accelerator Frankfurt Wave 6 has officially launched, and we welcome three new startups to our community. The last couple of weeks have been incredibly busy, but we are happy to finally start working with our current batch of rock-solid companies.

The blockchain space is on the right path. ICOs are dying, venture capital funds are being deployed, and corporates are starting to integrate blockchain technology into their core business activities. It is high time for blockchain companies and banks & corporations to start collaborating toward a transparent, secure, and frictionless system.

Accelerator Frankfurt will use its experience in ventures around fintech, cybersecurity and blockchain as well as its diverse network in the startup scene to drive these developments forward.

Corporates and banks looking to catch an edge, contact info@acceleratorfrankfurt.com for more information.

Accelerator Frankfurt team

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The first Blockchain Labs in Frankfurt is launching on September 10th (Save-the-date). We have a new page on our website Blockchain Labs, we invite you to visit and check it out.

During the summer break, we have been busy traveling and meeting the final selection for the Blockchain Labs wave. We are proud to have met some brilliant entrepreneurs working on heavy-tech projects which we will be sharing with you soon.

We are open to more corporate members who can benefit from our ecosystem. With our unique approach, we support you in adjusting your company to master the challenges of a digital world. Feel free to reach out to Ram for more information.

Personal invitations for the launch event will be sent by the end of this month.

Accelerator Frankfurt team
Apply to our Blockchain Labs at the bottom of the page.

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,

Summer is well underway, and we hope you are all enjoying the warm weather. Blockchain Labs is launching in September with Wave 6 of Accelerator Frankfurt. We are working hard on our final selection of the top blockchain startups who will come to Frankfurt in September. The blockchain labs fosters strategic partnerships between corporates and blockchain technologies. With access to our international network, blockchain companies will be put in touch with the relevant corporations and banks in order to accelerate implementation. If your company would like to be part of our ecosystem, please write us at info@acceleratorfrankfurt.com

We wish you a fantastic summer.

Accelerator Frankfurt team
Apply to our blockchain labs at the bottom of the page.

Down below you will find the link to the presentation Maria Pennanen delivered at the KPMG Isreal Fintech Week. A great presentation discussing the different use-cases of blockchain technology in the finance industry.

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,

We are very proud to announce that Accelerator Frankfurt was featured among the World’s Best Financial Innovation Labs of 2019! In it, Accelerator Frankfurt is ranked among the top 25 best innovation labs of the world! In the article, our founder, Ram Shoham, talks about how Blockchain will bring a new asset class altogether:
“Now you invest in stocks, in bonds, in savings. You have cash,” Shoham says. “With blockchain, we’re going to see big new possibilities open up in real estate, in art, in technology. We’re going to be able to tokenize all these different investments that have not been available to retail investors before.”

Go check out the full article by clicking on title below

Thank you.
Accelerator Frankfurt team

Ram Shoham and Accelerator Frankfurt featured in article on World’s Best Financial Innovation Labs 2019! See a couple of excerpts here or check out the full article with the link below.

The Smart Contract Meetup - Scaling the Public Blockchain for Payments was a great event with a lot of interesting ideas shared. We gained a deeper understanding of the projects developing an off-chain approach while addressing some of the legal and technical challenges they face.

We are proud to announce that Maria was included in the list of Europe's 50 Most Influential Women in Startups and VC

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,
We invite you to our coming Smart Contracts event held at our office on May 22nd, where we focus on Scaling the public blockchain for payments. Our mission is that you leave informed, inspired, and better connected. 

Scalability, high transaction costs and unclear regulatory requirements are a problem. We will host three unique blockchain projects addressing the scalability issues of open blockchain: Raiden, Perun, & Lightning Network

Additionally, Carsten Lösing from White & Case will present the legal qualifications of tokens in the payment side. Drinks and light food will be served courtesy of White & Case. Please register using this link.

Founders of Smart Contract Meetup: Ali Pasha Foroughi, Miguel Vaz, and Accelerator Frankfurt.

Thank you.
Ram - ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com

ENTREPRENEURSHIP SUMMER PROGRAM
Frankfurt for students ages 14-18 (JULY 1-5)
Price: EUR 535 (incl. vat)
SIGN UP: ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com

Liebe Freunde und Kollegen,

In der heutigen Zeit muss jedes etablierte Unternehmen ihr Geschäftsmodell innovativeren, um konkurrenzfähig zu bleiben.
Auf der anderen Seite sehen wir junge Blockchain Unternehmen, die innovative Produkte und Dienstleistungen anbieten, aber aufgrund des Alters des Unternehmens der Zugang zum Kapital und dem richtigen Netzwerk verwehrt wird.

Wir lösen dieses Problem, indem wir eine Community aufbauen, in der etablierte Unternehmen und junge innovative Unternehmer/innen auf Augenhöhe treffen. Unser Ziel ist es nicht nur den Erfolg für die Unternehmen zu sichern, sondern auch eine ehrliche und nachhaltige Beziehung zwischen den einzelnen Unternehmen aufzubauen.

Als etabliertes Unternehmen profitieren Sie, indem Sie Ihre Beziehung zur Blockchain Technologie aufbauen und vertiefen. Sie können in der Community die neuen innovativen Lösungen nutzen und testen. Die Blockchain Unternehmen werden vor der Aufnahme von uns geprüft, um ein hohen Standard zu gewähren. Somit können wir auch für Sie die Arbeit des Dealsourcing abnehmen.

Unsere Expertise spiegelt sich im Erfolg der letzten Jahre unseres Accelerator-Programms wider. Nun möchten wir auf Grundlage dieser eine neue Plattform aufbauen, welche sich komplett auf die Blockchain Technologie fokussiert.
Wenn Ihr Unternehmen Interesse an der Blockchain Technologie haben und ein Teil dieser Community sein möchten, können wir sehr gerne einen Termin für ein Meeting oder Telefonat vereinbaren.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Ram - ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,

We just returned from Tel Aviv Fintech Week and Ourcrowd Global Investor Summit. The trip was filled with meetings of Venture Capital funds that have opened their portfolio companies to Accelerator Frankfurt. During the coming weeks, we will be conducting our due diligence for the next wave. If you are a Financial Institution and seek a specific technology, now is the time to write to us, during our selection period.

For those with children, check out our entrepreneurship summer camp below.

Thank you
Ram - ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues,

We had a terrific past few weeks with many things happening. Our fifth wave completed the program successfully, we signed a major partnership with the Tel Aviv University, and more partnerships are coming.

Our focus for this year is Blockchain Technology companies. We are in the final stages of selecting the top blockchain companies who will be joining the Frankfurt Blockchain Hub and working alongside our strategic partners. If your corporation is interested in learning more about membership at the Blockchain Hub, please feel free to drop us an email at ram@acceleratorfrankfurt.com.

Thank you.
Ram

We are proud to announce that the Frankfurt Blockchain Hub and The Hogeg Blockchain Research Institute from the Tel Aviv University have signed a cooperation agreement to further support Academic research within the blockchain and cryptocurrency space.

We are very proud to announce that COVR Security AB, one of our startups, secured a funding of SEK 25M from a number of business angels.

Dear Friends, Dear Colleagues, Happy 2019! 

The start of a new year brings along new resolutions, renewed energies and for me personally, a lot of reflections on the year behind us. What is most important for us at the accelerator, is stay passionate about what we do and while this might sound cliché, it works for everyone that is part of Accelerator Frankfurt. As Steve Jobs said: “The only way to do great things, is to love what you do”. This is also true for our entrepreneurs, which is one of our key selection criteria.

Our demo day is just around the corner (fully booked, February 5th), we have a unique fireside chat with Steffen Seeger, entrepreneur, investor and co-founder of Fidor Bank, and our moderator is an officer for the Israeli Defense Forces. Don’t miss it.
 
Our Frankfurt Blockchain Hub in cooperation with Santiment will be launching in Spring its incubation program with unique international blockchain companies. We will focus on fostering partnerships and business development. More information will come in February. You can apply via our website.
 
Thank you and all the best for 2019.
Ram

Dear friends and colleagues,
On Monday the 26th of November, we welcome you to our office for another learning session on Crypto Trading Strategies. Expand your trading skills and understanding on cryptocurrencies with one of the top gurus in the space, Maksim Balashevich. Please register here or simply send me an email if you wish to join


Best regards, 
Ram

Some two hundred Artificial Intelligence (AI) enthusiasts from European national banks and ECB attended the conference in Frankfurt to learn about AI. Koenraad de Geest, the Director General of Information Systems at ECB, had the opening words and defused the commonly believed threat of mass unemployment caused by AI. The coming 4th industrial revolution will require some of us to reskill, but at the same time offers an amazing opportunity to take advantage of this new technology. Today, ECB uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the markets perception on ECB’s communication. Additionally, ECB scraps data from the internet to predict inflation. The message was to embrace the new era and not to be threatened by the science fiction fear scenarios.

Blockchain & Crypto Assets, plus Korean startups networking
 
Dear friends and colleagues,

Our community is once again gathering at the Santiment Blockchain Hub on October 24th, for an evening not to be missed. We strive to enrich our knowledge in the Blockchain and crypto field and want you to be part of this journey. Santiment is a global leader providing financial and crypto market data to investors, hedge funds and academia. Santiment’s data scientists are making regular discoveries in the crpyto space and are giving its community a close insight to such revelations. Join our coming meetup with Maksim Balashevic, CEO of Santiment, and moderated by the internationally renowned moderator, Mr. Peter Hopwood. If you are curious to keep learning, sign up here.

Best regards, 
Ram

So, how can blockchain be applied to real estate?

Blockchain technology is all about decentralization and implementing decentralized systems in order to make things more transparent. When it comes to real estate, the industry is very old fashion and virtually no large technological changes have been made in this area for centuries.

(Frankfurt am Main, 30.09.2018) Accelerator Frankfurt partners with Santiment (a successful crypto data insights provider) to set up the Santiment Blockchain Hub. The vision is to build a place where like-minded people can collaborate and to push blockchain to the next level. The Santiment Blockchain Hub, powered by Accelerator Frankfurt, will collaborate with different players in the blockchain ecosystem and academia will be a natural part of the hub. It will provide education in crypto assets and blockchain technology. The target is to create a viable self-sustainable blockchain ecosystem.

Accelerator Frankfurt launch event, October 2nd

Dear Friends and Colleagues, 

Accelerator Frankfurt is inviting its community to our launch event, which will be held in our new office location at MINDSPACE Frankfurt in the city center. A new batch of Fintech and Cybersecurity startups will be attending, as well as a few blockchain and post-ICO companies. We would like to thank our strategic partners, d-fine next, die firma, and Taylor Wessing and in Israel, atobe entrepreneurship center. For registration to the launch event, click here.

Best regards, 
Maria and Ram

Dear friends and colleagues, 

Summer months are here already but we at Accelerator Frankfurt are continuing at full speed ahead. The 4th Wave Demo day is over with great success and achievements. Currently we are traveling extensively meeting new startups, investorsand mentors. We are preparing for our next Go-to-Market program, with a strong focus on Blockchain. Below we are happy to present our July newsletter edition. 

We are always happy to get your feedback and comments and would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who replied and advised.  

Yours,

Maria and Ram
Accelerator Frankfurt

Dear friends and colleagues, 

A few days before the 4th Wave Demo day (June 19) which reflects the work our startup has achieved throughout the Go-to-Market program, we are happy to present our June newsletter edition. Events' demos, meetings and mentoring occurred this month and we would like to share some of the events here. 

We are always happy to get your feedbacks and comments and would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who replied and advised.  
 

Yours,

Maria and Ram
Accelerator Frankfurt

Dear friends,

We are excited to present our April 2018 newsletter and share with you our recent activities as well as the coming events in our ecosystem. 
The past few weeks have been very intense with the launch of the 4th Wave of our Go-to-Market program. Also, we have participated in major global events and hosted workshops and meetups. We look forward to seeing you in our next activities as a growing and developing international startup ecosystem in Frankfurt. 

Save the date: Demo Day June 19th.
 

Yours,
 

Maria and Ram
Accelerator Frankfurt

(Frankfurt am Main, 21.01.2018) Accelerator Frankfurt successfully completed its third wave. The startups Cogia (Big Data Analytics / Textmining, Germany), Cytegic (Automated Cyber Risk Officer, Israel), Enterpay (Fintech Payments, Finland), INNAAS (Fintech Digital Concierge, Italy), Robosig (FX AlgoTrading, USA) and Spobi (SportTech, Germany) with our wildcard from first wave Fenror7 pitched for a full house of 200 investors and bankers on 17th of January. The startups pitched in front of the distinguished international jury.

(Frankfurt am Main, 01.08.2017) Accelerator Frankfurt https://acceleratorfrankfurt.com offers a “Go-to-Market Program” for later stage startups in need to accelerate their business development. Accelerator Frankfurt is a private initiative and works in close cooperation with the finance industry and SMEs in Germany.

(Frankfurt am Main, 16.07.2017) Accelerator Frankfurt successfully completed its second wave. 
The startups Adjesty (Adtech, Israel), Aeroplan (Insurtech, Israel), AsiaFundManagers (Fintech, Germany), EcoKraft (Fintech, Germany), Norma (Cybersecurity, Korea), Smart Mile Solutions (Smart Cities, Netherlands) and Travel to Live (Traveltech, Canada/Sweden) pitched for a full house of 200 investors and interested stakeholders on 13th of July. The acceleration program condenses two years into four months.

ACCELERATOR FRANKFURT's second DEMO DAY! Come see our passionate entrepreneurs pitching together with our guests from VABN. We invite investors from Europe to participate!
​​

 

After working with startups for years and running an accelerator program, I can confirm that the key to success is quite simple. Obviously after you read this article, my ‘secret sauce’ will not be a secret anymore, so why am I writing this? The reason is that what we have built in Accelerator Frankfurt, cannot be built overnight.

Frankfurt is aiming to win a place as a startups hub in Germany and as a Fintech hub in Europe. Startups are often seen as the disruptors of businesses. The fear is that the use of modern technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big Data, will make most of the repetitive tasks automated and the people doing them today redundant. On the brighter side the new technologies enable companies find new business models and markets. Big corporates are starting to see the necessity to engage with startups and there are strong reasons why SMEs should do the same.

Six weeks ago Accelerator Frankfurt launched its second wave. Eight diverse startups joined us: three German (AsiaFundManagers.com, Travel to Live and EcoKraft), three Israeli (Adjesty, Aero-plan and Kensee), a Korean (Norma) and a Dutch company (Smart Mile Solutions) on board. Fintech is still our focus but being in Frankfurt we have seen the demand for Proptech, Cybersecurity, Machine-learning and Smart-city solutions that serve the corporates and medium size companies. We want to bring people with passion to Frankfurt to help the banks and corporates innovate and find solutions that solve their problems.

(Frankfurt am Main, 02.04.2017) Accelerator Frankfurt’s second wave of startups began their four-month program on the 27th of March. The startups where presented during our Launch Event at our premises in the TechQuartier in Frankfurt.

Representing Frankfurt: Eric Menges, Ram Shoham, Sebastian Schäfer, Gerhard Kebbel, Peter Feldmann, Peter Buxmann, Jochen Biedermann and Uwe Becker. 

(Frankfurt am Main, 22.01.2017) Accelerator Frankfurt successfully completed its first program with a demo day on 16.01.2017 at TechQuartier. All the eight startups (Alyne, BeeEye, Cindicis, Fenror7, Pronteo, SchnellSpesen, SecuredTouch and Wroomer) that started the program in September, pitched during the final day of their acceleration program. The startups were in areas of FinTech, RegTech, Cyber Security, Predictive Analytics and FoodTech. During the program the startups matured and developed with good results. One of the Israeli startups has already secured a pilot with a German bank and several are in discussion of starting one. In addition, six of the startups have secured follow-on funding while the others will close their financing rounds in the coming weeks. “We are very happy with the results and also in achieving our KPIs: securing a pilot with a major bank and getting over 70% of our startups funded” says Maria Pennanen, co-founder of Accelerator Frankfurt.

16.01.2017 the startups from Accelerator Frankfurt will have their Demo day @TechQuartier. They are joined by startups from our collaboration partners Deutsche Börse Venture Network Fintech Hub, Main Incubator GmbH and VABN (Aurelis real estate GmbH). We have a full house and the registration for the event is closed. However you can join the live streaming via Startupradio starting 15:50 CET.

A big thank you for our sponsors Deutsche Bank,  Main Incubator, VABN, PWC, Taylor Wessing and Accelerator Frankfurt for making this event possible.

In the startup world we emphasize the importance of teams. Not without a reason; it is what makes or breaks a startup. Success depends on the ability of the team to work together under stressful conditions and still deliver results. Understanding your own and your team’s behavior and blind spots, facilitates finding a solution when a conflict occurs. Diversity is key for good teamwork and the fuel for innovation, however to change and to work in the best possible way requires effort.

It’s about a year ago when I wrote my first blog wondering why Frankfurt, the banking centre of Germany, was not the startup hub for Fintech in Germany. In a year many things have materialised that moved the development to the right direction; some of them planned and some unforeseen. The catalyst for the planned events was the call from Minister Tarek Al-Wazir from the Hessen Ministry of Economy and Energy for different parties to present their concepts of how to build the Frankfurt FinTech Centre. The unplanned booster was the unexpected decision of UK to exit the EU, Brexit.

(Frankfurt am Main, 22.09.2016) Accelerator Frankfurt’s https://acceleratorfrankfurt.com first wave of startups have started their four month program on the 19th of September. The startups where presented during our Launch Event on Tuesday evening at our office in the Westhafen Tower.

Accelerator Frankfurt’s https://acceleratorfrankfurt.com first wave of startups will start their four month program on the 19th of September. The first program will take place in an elevated setting at one of Frankfurt’s main skyscrapers Westhafen Tower.

Maria Pennanen, Mitbegründerin des Accelerator Frankfurt, spricht im Interview mit altii über den Nutzen von Accelerators für Startups, Investoren und etablierte Unternehmen, die Zukunft Frankfurts als FinTech Hub und den Ansatz des Accelerator Frankfurt.