The Future Founder Demo Day, the final event of the novel Future Founder program, brought together an audience of over 200 guests from the Hamburg Entrepreneurship Ecosystem. Startup founders, students, aspiring entrepreneurs, investors, academics, and industry leaders joined for an evening of innovation, inspiration, and networking. Held at Factory Hammerbrooklyn, the event showcased groundbreaking ideas developed by the Future Founder top talents over the past three months. As a highlight, TUHH-Alumni Dr. Hendrik Susemihl presented a fascinating keynote on the success of his robotics deep tech startup Googbytz.
Future Founder: A Launchpad for Ambitious Talents & Startups
The Future Founder program is the new elite entrepreneurship program offered by five universities in Hamburg, including TU Hamburg, the University of Hamburg, Leuphana University, FH Wedel, and HAW Hamburg. As part of the upcoming Startup Factory Initiative and in collaboration with the talent platform ChefTreff, the novel program fosters entrepreneurial excellence among highly ambitious students, guiding them through an intense three-month entrepreneurial journey of ideation, prototyping, business model development, and fundraising. The program aims to provide hands-on expertise from Hamburg’s most experienced entrepreneurs and investors and to help the M.Sc. students build real startups.
Recognizing Outstanding Startups
At Demo Day, selected teams pitched in front of a top-notch jury, showcasing their disruptive ideas on stage. The ideas spanned the domains of biotech, AI-driven deep tech, health tech, sustainability, and software. At the end, the jury selected two winners: the best technology pitch and the best business pitch.
The best technology team was the TUHH spin-off GaitXpert, founded by Victor Lange (M.Sc. Mechatronics, TUHH), Carlos Chillon Geck (Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Digital and Autonomous Construction, TUHH), and Sarah Abels (Business & Economics, Uni Bayreuth). The team developed a novel, wearable gait analysis solution based on Victor’s Master’s thesis at the Institute for Mechatronics, which he turned into a patented technology. The startup was awarded six months of free laboratory space at the DESY Startup Labs Bahrenfeld as well as mentorship from PwC for Startups.
The award for the best business pitch went to PickzAI, led by Yash Luthra, Stefano Markovic, and TUHH student Sukhmani Singh (M.Sc. Environmental Engineering, TUHH), for their AI retail tech solution for opticians. The team secured six months of free office space at Factory Hammerbrooklyn and legal support from the leading VC law firm YPOG.
Additionally, Synqio, a biotech startup for cell-culture monitoring solutions, co-founded by TUHH M.Sc. Mechatronics student Nico Grümmert and Dr. Julia Rocha (Universitätsklinikum Eppendorf), received special recognition as Julia was awarded an EXIST WOMEN Stipend worth over €10,000 to develop Synqio.
Future Founder as part of the Startup Factory Initiative: Bridging Academia and Industry
The program was led by Dr. Max Vellguth, who is part of the Startup Factory Initiative Hamburg team and who emphasizes that the Future Founder program will continue to shape Hamburg’s entrepreneurial landscape. The success of the Future Founder was only possible with the collaborative engagement of an entrepreneurship-dedicated professor team around Prof. Christian Lüthje (TUHH), Prof. Michel Clement and Prof. Jana Timm (UHH), Prof. Dennis Proppe and Prof. Jan-Paul Lüdtke (FH Wedel), Prof. Paul Drews (Leuphana), and Prof. Jutta Abulawi (HAW Hamburg). In the future, the Startup Factory plans to offer a diverse portfolio of support programs such as Future Founder, to foster entrepreneurship in Hamburg and help the next generation of deep tech entrepreneurs to succeed.
As applications for the next cohort open soon, aspiring founders are encouraged to apply and gain access to this unique program. For more information, please stay tuned via www.future-founder.com.
