How did we identify and create opportunities in Germany for the incoming 10 mobility startups? Check out this co-creation Deep Dive Week  recap post!

Daniel Salgado and his team at etventure Startup Hub put together the following agenda for 21-23 May, based mainly out of the beautiful wavespace in the “center” of Berlin:

Day 1 – Introduction to Berlin

The first day started with lots of content: teambuilding exercises, an introduction to Berlin as a startup destination (by Berlin Partners) and a workshop on taxation, transfer pricing and many other fiscal considerations for startups operating in multiple countries (by EY). Here we could see immediately that we had a very engaged group, as they peppered the speakers with inquisitive questions – from the fundamental “how important is it to be German to operate in Germany?” to “isn’t it fiscally more attractive to never open a formal subsidiary?”.

The day wrapped up with the #FutureofMobility meetup – part of a series of meetups by etventure Startup Hub on the future of different industries. Our startups were the stars of the evening, presenting themselves to more than 50 participants. It was good practice, as they would keep on pitching the rest of the week…

Day 2 – Mobility in Germany

The second day started with a visit to one of the newest mobility dedicated spaces: The Drivery. We were presented to the crisp new space in a renovated old Berlin factory, including not only lots of coworking and event space, but also an integrated maker garage. Our startups were eager to discuss what’s next in the mobility sector – from discussing the recently adopted kick-start scooters in Berlin proper, to how startups must navigate the German stakeholders.

Back to the wavespace, we had a session with Eo Ipso Communications on how to be a thought leader in the German market – from engaging corporate decision makers on XING (not necessarily LinkedIn…), building trust and an appealing press release one-liner.

Finally, we ended up with an in-depth talk with xapix‘s CTO (a wavespace resident) on scaling a data-centric B2B startup from Berlin to the mobility giants. An honest and straightforward discussion ranging from tech frameworks to pricing strategies.

Finally, the day ended with a casual investor dinner + pitching (because of course!). As an invite-only event, startups met different ecosystem representatives, from corporate accelerators, angel investors to startup-friendly diplomats.

Day 3 – Co-creating the future

The third day of the Deep Dive Week was an open innovation workshop – or co-creation session – together with BASF, DB and Bombardier (as part of Beyond 1435 – a group of transportation companies invested in the future of mobility). Fun fact: 1,435 mm is the most widely used standard railway track gauge – as in, the distance between the metal rails.

Corporates presented the main areas they are looking into – ranging from future trainstations, coatings and trains themselves – and engaged in a brainstorming session with our startups to imagine what could be – from innovative usages of windows to the whole ecosystem around transportation.

After the brainstorming, startups drilled down on one or more ideas that could be developed within the scope of their own business model.

Finally, startups presented their main ideas on integrating themselves with the future innovation plans of the corporates.

As a multi-stakeholder open innovation session, it was an interesting experiment for all – giving the opportunity for the corporates and startups to get to know each other better in their favorite topics: mobility.

Startups had the chance to discuss potential future collaborations with the corporates present – and also SBB (Swiss railways) through conference call.

What they said

“Deep Dive Week was a great way for us to challenge our product within the german market with main corporates of our industry !”

“Great opportunity to get in direct contact with corporate clients”

“Deep Dive Week was great! The different events and activities and the people I connected to have given me many insights to my business, I am better equipped to run the company in the long term.”

Recap of startups

Alp Technologies | aims at providing secure and smart energy solutions for developing countries. Power BRIC, the lowest costing and longest lasting li-ion battery system for energy storage in the world.

Carlili.fr  | Urbans without a car struggle to rent a car. We offer the most convenient alternative to car ownership by delivering and recovering rental cars for an additional price of 20€.

Charge Network | is SaaS platform that connects all charging stations into a single network, enabling owners to share and monetise their charging stations. Driver App allows to book & pay for service.

Geckomatics | leverages AI in the cloud to create the future of mobile mapping, bringing high quality spatial data creation within your reach thanks to our integrated smart camera cloud platform.

Geoforage.io  | is a tool to conduct surveys focused on a map and is geared for fast responses and the data can be licensed flexibly.

Lexa Texer | offers predictive analytics, to help corporations direct decision making, by analyzing unstructured information with machine learning technology.

Re2you gmbh | your digital life shouldn’t be limited to devices.

Relate Data | Mobility involves many IoT Devices which need to be constantly monitored for connectivity and security breaches. Our solution does both and provides 360-degree visibility.

RIDER Mobility | will introduce free-market conditions to ride-hailing market, treating every driver as unique service provider, stimulating competition for higher quality and customer experience.

Woodpecker motors | is full size vehicle platform from wood for robotics and automotive hobbyists. Open sourced concept of modular, inexpensive platform was created to foster tinkering, in-home garage development.

Stay tuned

Visit our timeline at #DDWBerlin for all the details and follow @eu_lighthouse and @etv_startuphub!

Check our Hall of Fame for the pitch decks and let us know if you need to get connected with our alumni startups.

If you’d like to organise something similar, talk to the etventure team and Daniel Salgado, Scaling Manager.