Entrepreneurial Realities

In this week's episode, Antoine meets Fabian Warmdt, the CEO and Co-Founder of Glocally (YC W22). Fabian and Antoine talk about Glocally and Fabian's personal and professional experiences of his time in the Y-Combinator. 

For the first time since many years we are in an economic downturn. This could be due to many reasons: Interest rates are rising, uncertainties in Supply Chain, the war in Ukraine, ... but whatever, this is likely to be the first time that young entrepreneurs will face such a situation. This will impact both existing funded startups which will need to plan for uncertainty and not growth at all costs and non-funded ones will find it more difficult to raise. To make sense of this situation, Antoine Leboyer Leboyer interviews Andreas Goeldi, Partner at Btov Partners, who wrote in Medium: The 10 mistakes most founders make in a downturn to help our listeners step back and make the right decisions in the current situation.

In this week's episode, Antoine meets Jochen Engert, Co-Founder and CEO at FlixMobility. Antoine and Jochen are talking about the story of Flixmobility to becoming a dominant player in Germany before going abroad to evolve into a global leader.

In this week's episode, Antoine meets Florian Scherl, founder of FAST AI Movies. Florian founded his company while being 17years old and still being a pupil. Florian takes us on his journey of how he learned coding identified the opportunity for FAST AI Movies, but also of the importance of intensely listening to what your customers want.

In this week's episode, Antoine meets Mathijs Heutinck, Founder of Venturelytic. Mathijs and Antoine talk about the story of Venturelytic as well as how founders can keep relations with interested VCs.

In this week's episode, Antoine and Christos, MD TUM Venture Labs Built Environment, meet Dénes Honus, a serial entrepreneur and currently Chief Commercial Officer of metr Building Management Systems. Together, they elaborate on the importance of built environment for societal challenges and the corresponding megatrends that shape the industry.

In this week's episode, Antoine meets Patrick Strunkmann-Meister, the Founder and CEO of BAO. Patrick tells about his experiences as an XPRENEURS mentor and tips on how young founders can identify the true value of their technical solutions and convince potential customers.

On this week's podcast, Antoine interviews Ravi Venkatesan. Ravi was last on this podcast on episode #14 as the founder of GAME (Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship to illustrate how entrepreneurship can be a force for social good. Ravi is not here in his new capacity as Chairman of The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, he is back this week to speak about his latest book: “What the Heck do I do with my life ?” and how its lessons can be of value for entrepreneurs.

This week's TUM Venture Labs podcast features two inspiring guests from Infineon: Nico Kelling, Head of AI Center of Excellence, and Lamin Ben-Hamdane, Head of Start-up cooperations. Together with Antoine, we deep-dived into: Infineon's Digital Agenda the vast potential of AI for the semiconductor industry how innovation cooperation works for the benefit of both: start-ups and Infineon!

In today's episode, Antoine meets Markos Kern, a serial entrepreneur, CEO of LYMB.iO, and co-founder of Civil Relief Munich. He tells us about his newest organization (Civil Relief Munich), which he co-founded to help thousands of people who had to fly due to the war in their home country. Three weeks after its creation, Civic Relief Munich has gathered a permanent team of 80 volunteers and 1,000 drivers to safely organize transportation from the Ukrainian Polish border to Germany. Around 1000 refugees have been transported to Munich as well as directly paired with host families with the best possible match. Details and information is at Civil Relief Convoy Munich | Linktree. You can donate at Help & donate to Ukraine - Civil Relief Munich. This is an amazing and inspiring story which illustrates that the principles of entrepreneurship can bring the best of us during the most difficult of the times.

In this week's episode, Antoine meets Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, a Partner at Speedinvest. Andreas introduced Speedinvest and his way from TUM to a VC fund in their discussion. Furthermore, Andreas explained how Speedinvest values early-stage start-ups and added some valuable tips about fundraising.

In this episode Antoine meets Gregor Haidl, a Senior Investment Manger at High-Tech Gründersfonds (HTGF) and TUM Alumnus. The HTGF is a German-based VC fund with public and private investors. In their discussion, Antoine and Gregor are talking about the operating model of the HTGF as well as how early-stage teams should engage with their first customer(s) and early adopters.

We are back from our short break: Antoine Leboyer and Roman Werner, the MD of our FAB Venture Lab, discuss with Judith Camarcat, VC Associate at Five Season Ventures, the latest trends, and challenges in Food Tech. In their exciting discussion, they cover the topic from a business as well as a research angle and especially spotlight the DACH market.

First Momentum Ventures is the first student-run VC fund founded by Sebastian and his co-founders. In this week's session, Antoine and Sebastian are talking about the story and business of First Momentum and what fellow students can learn from it.

In this week's episode, Antoine discusses with Nicolas Kozakiewicz, Chief Innovation Officer of Worldline, the hype and reality of the Blockchain. Therefore, they elaborate on the technology's primary use cases, the chances, and their limitations.

To reinvent urban mobility Pascal Blum and his Co-Founders developed electric mopeds and founded their own company, unu motors. In this week's episode, Pascal and Antoine discuss unu's path to a successful startup and its challenges along the way.

Entrepreneurial Realities, listen to Mark Gazeki, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, to start the year. Mark talks about his lessons learned during the founding and scaling companies and his tips for other founders.

We conclude this 2021 year with a thoughtful interview with Ravi Venkatesan. On this podcast so far, we have discussed with Entrepreneurs, VCs and Thought leaders to better understand some of the aspects of building companies. There is another aspect of entrepreneurship which is to be a force for positive societal change.This is for this purpose that Ravi Venkatesan has created India's Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship. He is interviewed here by Klaus Liegener from the TUM-Venture Lab Central team. Entrepreneurial Realities will take a break for the end of year and will be back the second week of January. We wish you wonderful end of year vacations, do recommend that you all get boosted and vaccinated and wish you an entrepreneurial happy new year. Thanks to Dominik Reuter, for doing an amazing job as producer of the podcast. Again thanks to the magical pianist Gabriela Montero whose unique fascinating improvisational skills have created the music of the podcast and who, like our guest Ravi Vekatesan, is both an amazing talent and a force for good.

This week's TUM Venture Labs podcast features the winners of the TUM.ai Makeathon. As a Munich-based student initiative, TUM.ai aims to have a positive impact through combining AI with entrepreneurship including their Makeathons and projects such as TUM.ai Entrepreneurship Lab in Ghana. In this episode, we talked about the exciting combination of Venture and AI, as well as the Makeathon, AI4Good, and other projects of TUM.ai with Nils Jacobsen (Team Cabalytics), Sebastian Wilhelm (Team Cabalytics), David Podolskyi (AI4Good Organizer, TUM.ai), Ekin Karabulut (Makeathon Lead, TUM.ai)!

It is not obvious that all Tech Entrepreneurs are charismatic figures like some of the greatest entrepreneurs. Many aspiring students at Munich TUM need some form of encouragement and confidence. Too many believe that their technological prowess is only what they need to succeed on their ventures. Richard Tedlow is Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. Immediately after his first “retirement” from HBS, he joined the Apple University where he stayed until 2018. He is an “emeritus” Professor of both institutions. He has published several very important History Books: the complex relation between Watson father and son at IBM , the definitive biography of Andy Grove, CEO of Intel and my personal favorite "Denial, Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face--and What to Do About It". He speaks on his last book: The Emergence of Charismatic Business Leadership and on this podcast, discusses some of the inspiring characteristics of leading entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

Peter Raulerson is a former SW CEO - Technology Consultant. He has worked on a large number of engagements related to Go-to-Market redesigns for HW and SW Companies. Along with former Plantronics Europe GM Jean-Claude Malraison and Antoine Leboyer, Current MD of the TUM Venture Lab for Software and AI, he has co-written Building Routes to Customers: Proven Strategies for Profitable Growth. One of the cornerstones of the book is the framework developed by Goeffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm which explains the various stages through which new technologies go through to be adopted by consumers. Peter gives an introduction to this framework which is fundamental for Technology Entrepreneurs.

One of the many misconceptions on Entrepreneurship is that it is linked with innovation and reserved for brilliant young graduates. At the Harvard Business School, Professor Royce Yudkoff has done a comprehensive study of different types of entrepreneurs that, at a stage in their career, want to use their experience and position to become entrepreneurs by acquiring an existing company with their means and running it. Our discussion centers on the dynamics of such a project, the risks, and the returns. The characteristics of these are not so different from other entrepreneurs. And Royce's book: HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business is recommended reading to go further.

Bill Reichert is a founder of Garage.com, a legendary Tech investor, and a current partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures. He is also the writer of the great and essential: "Getting to Wow!" Silicon Valley Pitches Secrets for Entrepreneurs, which is simply the best book I have read to understand how to make a strong pitch to a VC. He speaks to us from Silicon Valley about how to make a good pitch, the current state of the Venture business, and how Covid has changed investing.

Harvard Business School Emeritus Professor Bill Sahlman has run several of the most influential classes on Entrepreneurship which have inspired many entrepreneurs worldwide. His research has had an immense influence. His book on How to write a business plan is a major classic. His case studies are being taught at TUM and in every Entrepreneurial minded university worldwide. TUM CDTM Professor Hana Milanov teaches several of his cases for this special episode and joins us to interview Professor Sahlman. Prof. Sahlman discusses entrepreneurship, the importance of hypothesis testing, how entrepreneurship has evolved in the last years, the value of Ventures for social progress, and being financed with VCs. This is a major episode of our series of Entrepreneurial Realities. (and since Pr Sahlman refers to the importance of mothers for entrepreneurs, this episode is dedicated to all mothers.)

Daniel Garnitz is the Co-Founder and CEO of FAAREN, a Wurzburg-based provider of solutions to enable car dealers to offer car subscriptions to their customers. FAAREN was founded three years ago. They recently closed a significant funding round which values them in the double digits range. Daniel talks about the fundraising process, which was not an easy one, and presents valuable insights, lessons learned, and best practices for founders: The power of teams The need for resiliency Not over-engineering your MVP The value of sound domain knowledge and how his work as a founder has evolved

This is a crucial episode of Entrepreneurial Realities for all startups we work with at TUM. They are very strong on technology but lack marketing experience and sensitivity but need to gain visibility and market insight to get prospects and clients. This is a similar experience I went through personally in my former company. The person who helped us overcome this challenge and build a fantastic Marketing Engine is Meryll Moreau, my former VP of Marketing. Meryll gives us an excellent overview of Marketing for startups which is simply essential listening for every Tech Entrepreneur. Do not miss this podcast which will ensure you will understand the principles of Marketing for Tech Startups, how to implement them practically and how to get your startups to progress.

Of all Early Stage/Deeptech Venture Capital Firms, UVC Partners is unique for us given its proximity to Munich TUM and the impressive set of successful companies they have invested in and supported. Today, we speak with Andreas Unseld, TUM Alumni and partner at UVC, on a series of topics: how he became a Venture Capitalist, what he is looking for in projects he invests in … and as always, what he is looking for is his advice to students and entrepreneurs. Music: Gabriela Montero

This is a follow-up to last week's podcast where we interviewed Tom Eisenmann from the Harvard Business School. In this conclusion of our two-part series, we now turn to Martin Bitzinger. Martin is Group Vice President Product Management at Canadian Telecom Giant Mitel. He is also a TUM Alumni 2001 whose personal story you simply have to hear. Yes, Entrepreneurship is hard and even the best entrepreneurs have failures and multiple starts, but the real Entrepreneurs learn and restart.

We now embark on a two-part series about the challenges of entrepreneurship. Professor Tom Eisenmann is co-Chair of the Harvard Business School Center of Entrepreneurship. He recently wrote an important book called Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success, which is an essential complement to the “Lean Startup”. It looks at ventures which followed this approach and yet failed. It is a fabulous book that reminds us that failure can happen even if you are a hard-working entrepreneur. It helps identify some patterns and also explains how to "fail well" and to restart. Entrepreneurship is hard, and studying successes and failures is a source of learning and inspiration. This will be the object of next week's podcast so stay tuned.

In a recent edition, the Economist identified Tracking Space Debris as a fast growing business. In this interview, we hear from Luisa Buinhas, Christoph Bamann and Stefan Frey, the three founders of Vyoma who are developing innovative solutions to tackle this topic. In detail, we hear the three founders, how they met, gained their domain expertise, and raised funding.

For our first interview, we are joined by Herbert Mangesius , founding partner of Munich-based VC Vsquared. Herbert is a TUM CDTM Alumni who has very significant expertise and experience in Deeptech investing. He speaks about various topics, from becoming a Venture Capitalist, on the challenges and opportunities of investing on Deeptech in Germany and why he recommends students consider entrepreneurship.

In this session, Dominik Reuter, Operating Director of the Software and AI Venture Lab, welcomes Philipp Gerbert, General Managing Director of the TUM Venture Labs. Philipp introduces the Venture Lab and gives an outlook on the new Podcast: Entrepreneurial Realities. You can find more information, and contact details for each Venture Lab here: venturelabs.tum.de