Get to Know 8 Pre-Seed Startups in the 1st Cohort of Vision Lab
Entrepreneurial Diversity in Germany Brings B2B & B2C Solutions
Entrepreneurship involves overcoming hurdles. ⛏ For founders new to Germany during a pandemic, this is especially true. That’s where Vision Lab aims to help. 🇩🇪 Back in January 2021, we kicked off the first cohort.
Along with many incredible partnerships (Bain & Company, Google for Startups, SAP Next Gen, Handelsblatt Media, Egon Zehnder, V14, Aureus Capital, WHU, HHL, Bucerius Law School and more), we are thrilled to support the first cohort of Vision Lab startups with mentorship, networking, and funding.
Over six months, together in a series of workshops with cross-industry experts and consultants (legal, marketing, growth, etc.), the founders inside the Vision Lab program refined their initial ideas and morphed those into full-fledge businesses tackling an array of challenges: from how we consume news, obtain business data insights, ensure safe elevator maintenance, streamline timely reporting, gather feedback to improve the future of work, and ensure chronic care monitoring.
These first cohort founders bring roots as diverse as Algeria, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Romania, Ukraine, and beyond.
We believe it’s key to Germany’s future to actively support founders of global origins. Making opportunities available to more is a step forward in every way.
Here’s a compilation of key information about the first cohort – in one place, as they were introduced via our Linkedin channel. Hear from these founders directly on Demo Day today, June 30th!
1. Airbox Energy
According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC): “Despite its rapid growth, the world needs to be installing wind power three times faster over the next decade in order to stay on a net zero pathway by 2050 and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”
Meet Moataz Khalil and Andreas Ebner from a Vision Lab startup, Airbox Energy, who transform ways to utilize, produce, and consume energy for a carbon neutral future. 🌍
We were curious to know more:
💨 What is Airbox Energy all about?
“Airbox Energy aims to increase and stabilize wind speed to make reliable energy available from the wind. Arranging different components together, we aim to turn air into a stable and predictable renewable energy resource.”
☣️ What aspects are challenging?
“We still see toxic or discriminatory working environments which should be improved.”
🎯 How has Vision Lab been useful?
“Vision Lab accelerates the process of building startups through financing, networking and sharing of expertise.”
Get to know them here.
2. Wonderpath
💬 Feedback is a powerful way to build collaborative and high-performing teams. What happens when cultivating feedback is a less-than-wonderful experience though?
For this, we turned to the trio behind Vision Lab startup, Wonderpath. Dafni, Tanya and Lianet share what’s needed:
“Feedback is not built for the modern workplace. We envision a world where feedback is a beautiful way to continuously grow as a person.”
🌱 When describing challenges, they’re adopting a growth mindset: “Being a founder is a game of resilience. As first-time founders, we’re wearing many hats for the first time which is challenging but rewarding. We know we’ll only build our skills from here.”
🌈 As to why they joined Vision Lab? “A lot of well-funded start-up teams across Europe and in Germany appear nearly identical. To build global products, it’s important to have teams who represent global demographics and understand their challenges. Programs such as Vision Lab encourage change at the earliest stages of a start-up journey, especially when it comes to diversity.”
👉🏽 Discover more here.
3. Dataleyk
CEO/Co-founder Vasif Gaffarov and Co-founder Sanan Guliyev of Dataleyk make it easy and fast to have a stable, flexible, and reliable cloud data lake platform with near-zero technical knowledge. Store your company data from every single source, explore with SQL, and visualize with either a favorite BI tool or advanced built-in graphs. Dataleyk aggregates multiple sources of data in one central location to provide a 360° company overview and the power to run robust analytics on terabytes to petabytes of data.
We asked them:
👉🏽 What’s been their personal experience?
“Especially for us as foreign founders, the corona pandemic made networking extremely difficult. Networking and community building are some of the vital growth factors for startups. Without the current pandemic, we could more easily manage the process of delivering Dataleyk’s message to the broader community.”
👉🏽 What are their impressions of Vision Lab?
“The program offers great takeaways for participants coming from all over the world such as a network, know-how, and funding — and we are already benefiting strongly from it. Europe as an economy tries to attract exceptional minds into its countries and regions. Through programs like Vision Lab, there’s not just one, but many winners.”
Get a good look at your data lake with dataleyk.
4. Zepto
Vision Lab startup founders, Dragos Grozavu and Benjamin 👨🏻💻 Projdakov, understand the importance of saving a key resource, time.
⏳ Their company Zepto helps lawyers and other knowledge workers to track time accurately and automate the billing process, bringing transparency and predictability to the table.
🎯 These founders emphasize the importance of predicting expectations: “The biggest challenge in entrepreneurship is to build something that everyone needs but nobody knows that they need it.”
👌🏽 What sparked them to join us? “We applied for the Vision Lab since you cannot make a mistake by partnering up with a top VC such as Earlybird.” (Thanks! We’re delighted you’re in the program.)
To learn more, visit their website.
5. Newsbriefs
📰 It’s difficult to have meaningful discussions on news topics via social media platforms that were built for entertainment. That’s where Vision Lab program participant, Founder Hari K, is changing things.
His company Newsbriefs is building a mobile app that simplifies news consumption and discussion. They’re making presentation of news more intuitive and developing solutions that facilitate effective discussions between news writers and consumers.
We checked in with Hari:
❓ What are the biggest challenges?
“Newsbriefs is made possible by our rockstar team of content and data experts. Attracting top talent is our biggest priority and challenge currently.”
❓ What does Vision Lab offer you?
“Great expertise in terms of developing a business. We value the access to a network of founders and Vision Lab partners from all over the world.”
👉🏽 Test out their MVP (in use by 100k people across Europe) for the simplest way to stay updated on politics, economy, science, sports, and entertainment
6. Mainteny
Mainteny’s Tom Chenna & Prasad Subrahmanya are up to something...
So we wondered:
⛑ What are you working on?
“We want to make the newest software technology available for small and medium size elevator companies to keep them competitive.”
🥊 What challenges have you faced?
-“Applying disruptive solutions in a conservative industry (such as the elevator industry) is one of the biggest challenges for our business.”
-”Breaking through existing systems is always difficult — in the software sector this applies in several ways.”
-“Your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur is to forego the economic and social safety you would have as an employee for your dream.”
⚡️ Why did you join Vision Lab?
“When we applied, we did it mostly aiming for a broader network, knowledge building and possible access to funding.”
Keep up with them here.
7. BuiltUp AI
Let’s get real with Oleksandr Paraska: As a solo founder, Oleksandr communicates clearly when it comes to his work and his perspective on entrepreneurial survival skills.
He shared: 1) his truthful experience, 2) what sets Vision Lab apart, and 3) what he’s building. 👀
🧗♂️. 1) What challenges have you faced?
“Starting your own business as a foreigner in Germany means not knowing the legal system nor how registration and bureaucracy work. This was really hard.
My biggest obstacle I faced until today was to give up my financial security for taking the risk as an entrepreneur in an expensive country such as Germany.”
⚖. 2) How does Vision Lab compare to available programs?
“A lot of other accelerator programs do not cover people that do not speak German. I was left alone with my questions on where to find coworkers and how to deal with arising legal issues. This program offers a great opportunity for people exactly like me, with a great vision but little knowledge about the rule of law and the culture in a certain country. It’s therefore a great initiative to integrate people coming from abroad.
More than any other initiative available to immigrants, the program truly sets incentives for integration into German culture through contacts in the entrepreneurial world. The Vision Lab is better than any (governmental) integration program that I could have taken, because it focuses on the real challenges, not only on language.”
🚧. 3) What does BuiltUp AI do?
“We are helping SMEs to understand and use the vast potential that AI holds for them.”
Discover more here.
8. Leem Health Tech
🥁 Last (but definitely not least), we caught up with Dr. Tarek Roustom of Leem Health.
We wanted to know:
💻 What are you working on?
“We are building a platform for the millions of doctors & patients who use social apps for their medical communication. Our platform will enable them to organize, track, & secure their health data without the need for any extra app.”
💫 What are the biggest challenges you face?
“Finding & recruiting the right talents is by far the most critical and challenging task for an early-stage startup founder.”
🚀 How has Vision Lab been useful?
“As an immigrant entrepreneur, it’s really hard to find your first believers — especially when you don’t fit into the non-spoken stereotype definition of a successful founder. The Vision Lab team breaks those stereotypes and judges you on what you are capable of, then provides you with the resources needed to get your venture off the ground.”
The Vision Lab team breaks those stereotypes and judges you on what you are capable of, then provides you with the resources needed to get your venture off the ground.
Thanks again to our Vision Lab partnerships for their input & guidance via workshops and mentorship. This program is stronger for it! For more information on future cohorts, reach out to Nina Rinke.
Please 👏🏽 to help more readers discover the startups in this article and be sure to come listen to the startups pitch at Demo Day,Wed. June 30th, 5 pm CET!
🎟 Register right here.
Compiled by Elisheva Marcus, Marketing /PR at Earlybird Venture Capital
