EXIST Women at the TUHH

The Startup Port @TUHH offers its own programme for female founders with the BMWK's EXIST Women funding. Last year, 10 female scholarship holders were already supported. The second cohort will start soon.

Our aim is to support female founders at an early stage of their idea generation and to give them the opportunity to concretize their business idea. Among other things, we help them prepare for an EXIST start-up grant. The program offers financial support, access to a qualification program, mentoring and networking with other EXIST Women founders.

Who can apply?
The program is aimed at individual female founders or teams with a joint start-up idea who have not yet founded a company or have not participated in any other start-up support program.

What does the program include?

• Scholarship of between 1,000 and 3,000 euros per month for up to 3 months
• 2,000 euros in material resources
• Participation in qualification and networking opportunities
• Workshops on special topics to support female founders
• Mentoring by experienced female founders
• Option of free office space
• Networking with EXIST Women founders from other universities in the metropolitan region
• How does the program work?

How does the programme work?

The programme runs for 12 months and starts with a kick-off event at the beginning of April. A special feature of the current programme is a joint workshop weekend at the beginning of the programme as well as regular reflection workshops that review the current status and sort it out for future planning.

What happens next?
We hope that the EXIST Women program can take place again in 2026. If there is a new call for applications, it will start in October 2025 at the earliest and in January 2026 at the latest.

If you are interested or have any questions about the program, please contact: startupport@tuhh.de.