Slush'D Festival in Heilbronn
26.10.2022
Philipp Hauff
Backstage
We were there at the first Heilbronn Slush'D 2022.
The Slush’D Start-up Festival on September 22, 2022 in Heilbronn brought together 320 founders, 100 investors and 120 decision-makers from young and innovative companies. On the grounds of the Altes E-Werk, the focus was on networking start-ups with investors, pitches were presented on two stages and current topics such as Learntech or Artificial Intelligence were discussed. In addition, many teams were given the opportunity to present themselves with their own booth as part of the event.
From the KIT Gründerschmiede environment, our teams from RevoAI GmbH, SenseIng GmbH and thingsTHINKING GmbH took advantage of this. KIT Gründerschmiede itself also had a booth and held discussions with numerous visitors* about KIT-Gründerschmiede, GHPro, and the funding startup secure KASTEL. A highlight at the Gründerschmiede booth was the visit of Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister of Economics, Labor and Tourism of the State of Baden-Württemberg.
The official program started with a welcome by Insa Schniedermeier, host of the conference and editor at t3n, Sofi Laakso, co-initiator of Slush’D, and Oliver Hanisch, CEO of Campus Founders. It was themed “One” to describe how different players form “one” ecosystem for startups and co-innovation. Speakers:inside on the stages included investor Frank Thelen, Tina Dreimann from Better Ventures and Alexander Giesecke, founder of Simpleclub, to highlight trends on topics such as LearnTech, Artificial Intelligence or Industry 4.0. In addition, there were, of course, many opportunities to pitch your company in various categories.
The jury of the Heilbronn Slush’D awarded the main prize in the form of an investment of EUR 100,000 to Istari.AI. Another EUR 25,000 and the associated participation in the AI Founders incubator program went to our startup SemorAI. We are happy together with John Holzhauer and the whole team, which is currently also funded by a EXIST Founder Fellowship and mentored by Prof. Orestis Terzidis at EnTechnon.
For all questions regarding funding programs for start-ups, we as the team of KIT Gründerschmiede are at your disposal.
