12. Oct 22

The first Up2B Market Discovery successfully completed

From the 26^th until the 30^th of September seven international startups participated in the Up2B Market Discovery accelerator in Mannheim and Heidelberg. The startups had the opportunity to learn everything necessary for their expansion to the German market as well as to get to know both cities as a potential location of their future subsidiaries.

Up2B Market Discovery is a program of Up2B accelerator for international startups, who are planning to enter the German market. Although the accelerator already exists since 2017, it was the premiere for Market Discovery. The decision to offer this five-days-program was made because of an increasing number of international Startups participating in Up2B, who require information specific to the German market as well as to business execution in Germany. Therefore Market Discovery was developed to answer all the questions regarding incorporation, taxes, insurances and legal issues, but also cultural aspects of business in Germany.

Kick-Off & Dinner

Seven startups appzi, Blue Colibri, CIL4Sys, CynLR, Devision X, ENNOVIA and Ubivis from five different countries (Moldova, Hungary, France, Egypt, Brazil) have been chosen to participate in this one-week-program. These B2B startups, operating mostly in the fields of IT, AI, robotics or IndustryTech are already successful abroad and ready to enter new markets.

Participating startups

A week full of work & fun

On the Kick-Off-day, the startups got the chance to get to know each other and they learned about the business culture in Germany in a lecture called “How to deal with those weird Germans?” given by Prof. Dr. Michael Graef from the University of Worms.

Tuesday started with an “Industry Deep Dive”. In this panel discussion, Pricilla Weixler from Osapiens, Mirko Twardy from fördercafé and Stefan Bley from Network Smart Production talked about current trends in the German industry. The discussion was followed by a workshop about the business strategy facilitated by Anna Hüttl. In the evening the participants were invited to a culinary city tour, where they were able to get to know Mannheim in combination with delicious food from around the world.

Wednesday begun with a sales workshop by Jonas Braun and Paul Wiechers from SaleUp and continued with another workshop about digital sales and lead generation with Sven Soltau. The day was completed by a sight-seeing in the historic old town of Heidelberg and some typical German food and beer (of course).

Corporate Speed Dating

After a breakfast with participants of the BW-International tour, Eva Haas and Kai Grunwald facilitated the sessions on Thursday morning. Eva Haas gave an input session about finance, taxes and insurance and Kai Grunwald about incorporation and legal issues in Germany. In the afternoon, the participats had the opportunity to meet six different corporates and pitch their business ideas in a Corporate Speed Dating.

The final day took place at the Startup BW Summit in Stuttgart, where the startups had the opportunity to meet other corporates and investors.

The Up2B Market Discovery program is a fantastic starting point for a B2B Start-up to research Germany as a market and learn what it takes to execute. The program provides a much-needed holistic understanding of Germany in terms of the culture, the relevant market segments, the legal requirements & taxation procedures, connections to influential corporate customer, developing scalable processes, and investments.

Kaushik K Badrinath, Business development manager, CynLr

Some impressions from Market Discovery 2022

Are you planning to expand to the German market, too?

Get more information about Market Discovery

About the Up2B Accelerator

The Up2B Accelerator is a joint venture of the organisations innoWerft Technologie- und Gründerzentrum Walldorf Stiftung GmbH, mg:mannheimer gründerzentren GmbH and Technologiepark Heidelberg GmbH and is funded by Startup BW. Since 2017, Up2B has supported more than 180 startups with a B2B and IndustryTech focus.