Soft Landing

The KIT Founders’ Forge goes international!

Our goal: To establish KIT, together with our partners in the region, as the first contact point both for technology start-ups from Southwestern Germany that want to tap into global markets as well as for entrepreneurial talents and investors from abroad. Technology-oriented ideas to solutions in the fields of energy, mobility, digitization, and environment and health are primarily in demand.

Soft Landing (Inbound):

This 5-day boot camp is aimed at international start-ups in an early phase who want to get to know KIT, the start-up ecosystem in Karlsruhe and in the region. The focus is on an initial examination of the business model and technology. At the same time, international start-ups learn about the advantages of settling in Germany and the associated funding and financing opportunities (e.g., through EXIST). In addition, the start-ups are enabled to become involved in various accelerator programs via KIT as a host. KIT-Gründerschmiede acts as an intermediary and provides additional office space and laboratory facilities in selected cases.

Soft Landing (Outbond):

At the same time, we offer regionally based start-ups the opportunity to get to know incubators at international partner universities and the respective international market at an early stage. Our focus markets are USA, China, South America and Asia. In concrete terms, we want to support regional start-ups in positioning themselves internationally at an early stage and identifying internationally scalable business models. This part of our soft landing program is designed to help you find out why and when you should go international with your business idea and what it takes to do so.