Founding a Start-Up

  Copyright: © Peter Winandy

RWTH has explicitly anchored entrepreneurial transfer as an aim of its current University of Excellence strategy and facilitates the University’s entrepreneurial culture by providing comprehensive support. In this vein, the RWTH Innovation Entrepreneurship Center serves as a key contact for those interested in setting up their own business and offers a wide range of start-up advising, coaching, and workshops. In addition, the Center provides access to specialist incubators and a strong network for founders. The RWTH Innovation Entrepreneurship Center is a cooperation between the RWTH Innovation GmbH – a subsidiary of RWTH and key contact for technology transfer and entrepreneurship – and the School of Business and Economics.

 

From the Idea to the Start-Up

From help with realizing your own idea to establishing the start-up – support is on offer for every stage of the start-up process.

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Offerings for Start-Up Founders

The offerings for founders cover the three essential stages of a start-up and support the process to creating a successful start-up.

Learn & Connect – Inspiration for Founding a Start-Up

Through Learn & Connect, students and researchers interested in founding a start-up can benefit from the experience of successful start-up entrepreneurs, both by participating in events and workshops and by accessing the start-up community. In addition to inspiration and networking opportunities, coaching sessions are offered to help with implementing your ideas and identifying and analyzing potential.

Ideation Program – Coaching Offers for Founders in the Early Stage

From the development of a coherent concept for your future business model to the preparing strong application documents for a pre-seed funding program (e.g. EXIST, Gründertipendium NRW) , through to persuasive investor presentations – the Ideation Program guides young start-up teams through the most important initial tasks to create a successful start-up step by step.

Incubation Program – Support for Start-Ups Already Receiving Funding

The Incubation Program is aimed at advanced start-up teams who have already received initial financing (for example through EXIST). The program directly follows on from the Ideation Program and helps teams to further develop their product, access the market, and prepare for a professional seed funding round. The program is deeply rooted at RWTH and provides access to top-class mentors as well as the co-working area in the Collective Incubator.

Further Offers

Co-Founders Wanted!

The job database by, and for, start-up founders brings people together who are interested in setting up a business.

Events

From traditional start-up training to regular get-togethers of the Aachen start-up scene and the Aachen Technology and Entrepreneurship Conference: the range of events is constantly being expanded so that founders can network and develop their knowledge even further.

Network

The RWTH Innovation Network is constantly growing and thus offers Aachen start-ups the opportunity to network with venture capitalists and mentors, gain access to further funding opportunities, and introduce promising start-ups to industry partners early on.