Advance Conference – International Web and StartUp Conference in Cologne - September 19 & 20, 2011, Cologne (Germany)

In his workshop Kai Thierhoff, Founder and CEO of Thierhoff Consulting, presented some key advices concerning venture capital. His first advice was „Bootstrap as long as you can!“ Like this a startup can stay independend while still developing its basis. Only if a startup wants to scale up quickly, the founders should look for an …

After the panelists Patrick Meisberger (T-Venture), Markus Fuhrmann (Team Europe), Lars Hinrichs (HackFwd), and Isaac Wolkerstorfer (6 Wunderkinder) had introduced themselves, host Mike Butcher (TechCrunch Europe) got the discussion going on the pros and cons of “cloning” successful business models, and kept it lively by playing the devil’s advocate. Not unexpectedly, opinions were divided, even sharply drawn at times, between what …

While entrepreneurship, according to Fadi Bishara (blackbox), is exploding as less and less resources are needed and more and more markets become accessible around the globe, the rate of success is very low: 9 out of 10 startups fail. Searching for a scalable way through community building, mentoring, and empirical research to accelerate startups globally, they came up with what …

“Part of the business of the Fraunhofer Institute is to try to look into the future,” opened Prof. Dr. Stefan Wrobel (Fraunhofer IAIS) his presentation, but it is focused on trends that reach beyond “fleeting technology.” Seven such trends, “The Big Seven,” he introduced to the audience. These comprised input and output technologies, data models and the semantic web, mobility …

From fresh founders over incubator & web experts to global investors: 500 attendees of ADVANCE Conference 2011 closely followed the opening speech of Neelie Kroes, the EU’s Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. With clear words and passion for European entrepreneurship, she demanded for “Europe to play an even stronger part in the global ICT revolution.” …

The FoundersLeaks Sessions were the occasions for the audience to seek personal advice, ask questions no one asked before and get a taste from the secret sauce of web. On the first day of ADVANCE three sessions gave the opportunity to ask startup heros such as Morten Lund (EVERBREAD) and Tine Thygesen (Everplaces) for their insights. …

After a warm-up video clip from “The Startup Kids,” Mike Butcher (TechCrunch Europe) took the stage as the host for the “reverse pitch” panel with ten investors looking for startups. Lively and funny, but very firm about the three minutes pitch-time allotted to each candidate, Butcher led through the pitch and “grilled” the investors hopeful after their respective self-introductions with …

In his workshop Dennis Kämker, Managing Partner at betafabrik, presents the key aspects of the lean startup approach and explains why more startups should consider following this approach. He describes the approach as a different way of thinking while building up your startup. It´s about focusing on a strict process and reducing the risk of failure. …

In contrast to Morten Lund’s upbeat keynote, the panel “Digital Champions,” hosted by Roxanne Varza (TechCrunch France), started off with a presentation by Jens Hilgers (China Venture Labs) who pointed out several major obstacles faced by startup companies in Germany. According to Hilgers, three of these obstacles stand out. First, the lack of “clustering,” i.e., a relative scarcity of …