Julia Zipf: The Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship (SCE), Munich University of Applied Sciences’ startup center, supports around 60-70 young founders every year in setting up their business and entering the market. The university is committed to entrepreneurship across all faculties. The SCE offers a wide range of courses and programs to get students interested in starting a business at an early stage. An important building block here is the Precelerator. It is – deliberately – an offline community space for students who love project work, want to develop as problem solvers and get a taste of the startup scene. We offer a wide-ranging workshop program for this, from hands-on printing of team T-shirts to AI tool training and software or hardware prototyping workshops.
Of course, we also want our maker community to network with each other and with our experienced startup founders in the best possible way. To ensure that this works well and, above all, quickly, we organize the “Brezelerator”, a free “Meet-our-Startups” breakfast every first Thursday of the month, as well as numerous topic-specific events.
Our event highlight this semester will definitely be the robot contest “Clash of Trash” on November 14, where self-built robots will compete against each other. Our robotics startups will also be presenting themselves.
SCE Precelerator focuses on tech fun
Munich Startup: What makes your offer special?
Julia Zipf: The Precelerator focuses on tech fun and offers a playground for anyone who wants to try their hand at technical implementation or test the technical feasibility of their business idea or invention with the help of our tech experts. Of course, we also help with brainstorming in the early phase, for example with small ideation challenges as an exercise or a case study on a real task from a startup. Students from other universities in Munich who are interested in founding a company are also already using our Precelerator program.
The Precelerator consists of a café (with free coffee), the workshop and event program, the loan of technical equipment (such as cameras, podcast microphones, drones, Raspberry, etc.) and close cooperation with the university’s student-organized MakerSpace.
Hands-on and practice-oriented
Munich Startup: Who can take part in the SCE Precelerator?
Julia Zipf: Anyone can join us, from first-semester students to budding founders. We deliberately design the workshops in such a way that no prior knowledge is required and anyone can join in at any time. Our workshops are very hands-on and practice-oriented. We want to motivate and empower people to get involved. We are open to students from all backgrounds and faculties. You can come into contact with new like-minded people and network with us.
Munich Startup: Who do interested parties approach when they want to talk to you?
Julia Zipf: Students interested in founding a company can register for our workshops and events at www.precelerator.de and follow us on Instagram at @precelerator to stay up to date with our offers. We also have a tech open hour with our tech experts on Mondays and Tuesdays from 1 to 2 pm. A time slot can be booked here. I am the first point of contact for all students who want to work with a startup for their MS/BSc or would like initial advice. Professors and lecturers who would like to book a guided tour of the Precelerator in conjunction with the short startup presentation can also contact me. The tours are very popular – around 20 professors and their courses visit us each semester, as well as various company representatives. We have around 1600 visitors per semester.
Talent pool of doer personalities
Munich Startup: Why does a good founding team need you at all?
Julia Zipf: The Precelerator offers existing startup teams a talent pool of doer personalities with a keen interest in entrepreneurship and various areas of expertise in prototyping. With the help of this pool, suitable co-founders and short-term helping hands (in the form of working student jobs) can be found more quickly. Startups can also assign tasks to entire courses or BSc thesis writers in order to focus on core topics. Due to the large number of guided tours, startups benefit from ongoing pitch training, feedback from entire courses and possibly even the personal network of the accompanying professors.
Prospective founders can come into contact with advanced teams at the networking events at an early stage and learn directly from them. Of course, they can also use the community to find potential co-founders for their own idea and learn important startup skills.
Munich Startup: Please give a few examples of who was in your Precelerator.
Julia Zipf: Micro Factory began its journey in the cLab, the MakerSpace. This is where the enthusiasm for prototyping was born. With the help of Precelerator Tech consulting, we were able to develop our own invention – a machine for small series 3D printing. Numerous pitches as part of our guided tours have resulted in valuable contacts, and a variety of tasks have been given to students and courses – from feedback on the business model to active support for the assembly of the first machines ordered. Hebio, a startup for intelligent robot systems for intralogistics, and Boxing Babe, a sportswear company for female boxers, also began their journey in the Precelerator.
Success stories: Micro Factory, Hebio and Boxing Babe
Munich Startup: How do you founders see the support from the Precelerator?
Maximilian Strasser, Micro Factory founder: To turn a good founding idea into a successful startup and ideally an established company, you not only need the idea, courage and a great team, but also supporters who help you master new and complex tasks and apply them to your own company. In the first phases of our startups, we were accompanied by the Precelerator through workshops, discussions and materials. With the Precelerator’s help, we felt well prepared and knew that we could count on competent support.
Julian Ernst, Hebio founder: We found new team members at the Precelerator networking events and were also able to assign tasks to courses as case studies or to individual BSc thesis writers through the Precelerator tours. This saved us a lot of time and enabled us to make much faster progress.
Nadia Skuse, Boxing Babe founder: I had never created a pitch deck before. The advice and workshops at the Precelerator really helped me to put together my presentation in a compact way and to practise pitching.
