23 Feb
Strong founding spirit in the Alpine town
Young start-ups work on ideas for health and leisure Berchtesgadener Land – For two and a half days, the heads of more than 30 young founders smoked at the IUBH in Bad Reichenhall. Together with mentors from the local economy, they worked on their business ideas around the health and leisure industry.
Ten teams were formed at the beginning. Some already had fully developed business plans, others only had a vague idea in mind, but all were full of enthusiasm. With the help of the ‘Business Model Canvas’, they visually worked out important aspects of the respective business model such as resources, key people or target groups on a poster. With a first draft, the participants went into exchange with more experienced colleagues. Nine international start-ups, which were guests in Bad Reichenhall as part of a development programme, visited the Digital Startup Camp to report on their stumbling blocks and experiences of success. Valuable assistance was then provided by 20 mentors from the local economy. From market analysis to financing to marketing and sales, the budding founders received many helpful tips. “Through the talks we got a good benchmark whether our idea is realistic,” said IUBH student Carla Wittemann. Through the support of the mentors, the ideas of the participants had become more mature and precise and thus had great potential for success, said co-organiser Dr. David Rempel from IUBH, expressing his satisfaction.
Knowing the guests’ wishes before they arrive
With the business plan in mind, the teams prepared up to the last minute for their big final pitches in front of the audience and the jury. The latter consisted of Dr. Regina Frey Cordes, professor at the IUBH, Thomas Bodmer, managing director of the tourism accelerator TACC, Findologic founder Matthias Heimbeck and Wolfgang Janhsen from Stellwerk 18 in Rosenheim. The professionally presented ideas ranged from innovative drinks to complex algorithms. As the overall winner, the jury chose the team from
Hotel ID, a single hotel ID for hotel guests with an integrated cross-hotel press release bonus programme. “We get to go to the international PrimeCup in Switzerland at the end of November to pitch to investors,” said Carla Wittemann, Jan-Patrick Teichmann and Dr Marc Breit, delighted about the main prize. It was sponsored by the Prime Academy, which hosted the camp. The prize for the best pitch went to Robin Renschler from HOSCOM, a software solution for the hotel industry. The best idea came from Lara Kosanke and Dominik Schneider, who developed a business idea for an external concierge service in two and a half days. Lerose Luciano from LL Training was awarded a spontaneous additional prize by the jury for the public benefit character of his idea to offer personal training for disabled people.
