Last week Frankfurt School Entrepreneurship Centre hosted its highly anticipated third Demo Day, attracting an audience of over 400 individuals, including investors and entrepreneurial visionaries on the campus. And a Linkedin post that went absolutely viral by Ram Shoham (Director of the Frankfurt School Entrepreneurship Centre).

The Entrepreneurship Centre connects founders at Frankfurt School with relevant partners and offers incubator and accelerator programmes to support them in every phase of their start-up. In addition to access to an exclusive network, particular attention is paid to developing agile structures to ensure the future competitiveness of the companies. Much has happened since the launch in 2022.

“Our mission is to inspire, connect and provide training within Frankfurt School as well as to external stakeholders such as investors, alumni, founders and partners. With the FS Incubator, we offer students and alumni long-term support from our team and mentors. The FS Accelerator, on the other hand, is a six to eight-week full-time programme that supports our founders in advancing to the next level. This means that several months’ work can be implemented in a very short space of time. Through this hands-on approach, we aim to move our start-ups forward quickly while ensuring their sustainable development.”, says Ram Shoham, Director of the Frankfurt School Entrepreneurship Centre.

Criteria for the participation at the Demo Day is at least that one of the co-founders has to be either Frankfurt School Alumni or a student. A standout moment of the evening was the announcement of Posto, the social media in service of REAL LIFE, as the recipient of the prestigious top prize, amounting to EUR 30,000. The rationale behind the jury’s decision was a committed team, tackling a massive market with a massive problem. Rewatch the entire event on YouTube.

Posto platform is designed to enhance users‘ control over their digital experience and support everyday activities by providing tools tailored for the real world. Posto has just launched at UC Berkeley in California,  and is now focused on the acquisition of new users and retention rates, followed by monetization. Posto is seeking a seed round of $1.6 million to consolidate the product and continue expansion into other American colleges.

Following closely behind, mylingua, the personalized language assistant, secured the runner-up position, earning a commendable EUR 20,000 cheque. They bridge the gap between structured learning platforms and real-world content comprehension. mylingua automatically aggregates web content and uses AI to recommend the pieces that match the individual vocabulary profiles and personal interests of language learners. Every user input feeds the suggestion-AI and helps to refine further recommendations. Fully bootstrapped, mylingua has built an MVP for Chinese news, is already generating first B2C revenue and currently closing its first 5k university contract. mylingua is looking for €500k to hire two additional developers and reach €10,000 monthly recurring revenue by EOY before expanding into other languages.

Adding to the excitement, Yumoso emerged as the crowd’s favourite, captivating imaginations with its groundbreaking concept of transforming car parks into sustainable energy sources. Yumoso is streamlining the construction of solar carports and infrastructure through a patent-pending quick-build system. This approach significantly reduces construction time, allowing projects to be completed in just a fraction of the time taken by traditional methods. Yumoso’s most recent achievement includes the construction of a solar carport on the Frankfurt School campus, alongside an infrastructure to convert over 250 parking lots in 2024 into renewable energy sources. Go check them out on the campus! Currently, Yumoso is seeking to raise €750,000 to launch a subscription service and expand their team.

A big round of applause goes to all the startups pitching.

Rudy is democratizing crypto investing by making expert-level investment strategies accessible, personal, and straightforward. Rudy is in the final stretch before its end-of-March launch, transitioning from test mode to full production. The team is rigorously testing their investment algorithm, ensuring every regulatory and compliance box is ticked to offer a seamless, secure investment experience. The goal is twofold: ignite enthusiasm for Rudy’s revolutionary approach to crypto investing and announce an upcoming Seed funding round in Q2. Rudy is on the lookout for visionary investors ready to join in on transforming the crypto investment landscape.

Hayi is a hyper-local social network for neighbourhoods, digitizing the neighbourhood experience across the Middle East and North Africa region. Without a local medium for the exchange of information, goods and services – neighbours are left disconnected from their local community and businesses are unable to market on a hyper-local level to customers that matter most to them. The Hayi app solves this problem by connecting you to everyone and everything around you. After acquiring 29,000 users in Dubai as well as successfully monetizing through a B2B revenue model, Hayi is now raising a $1m seed round, with a lead VC already secured.

ZeroEx is developing an emissions calculator, focusing on active CO2 sequestration through hyper-local Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) techniques. ZeroEx believes that transparency and verifiability of emissions and sequestration are the sole pathway to a sustainable future, ensuring the prevention of greenwashing.  Recently, ZeroEx has secured a 7-digit investment and built their operations team.  ZeroEx is looking for additional enthusiastic individuals to join the team.

… this was Demo day Fall 2023

we already covered the previous Frankfurt School Entrepreneurship Centre Demo Day. Read about it here.