RWTH Incubation Program
Overview
Our 3-month Incubation Program is a holistic early-stage deep tech start-up program to support founders in Europe. The program is designed to help you to build your prototype, get your product to market, scale and secure additional (early) funding.
- 3-month acceleration program for early-stage deep tech start-ups
- Structured program including multiple services, coaching, mentoring, weekly workshops and events, such as our Demo Day
- Workshops led by expert guest speakers to learn and apply a range of relevant business skills, such as networking, fundraising and pitching, founder’s mindset, sales and performance, legal matters, scaling up, internationalization
- Access to a broad investor network and other partners (e.g., VCs, Business Angels, legal experts, serial founders, etc.)
Program Elements
Without taking any equity, our offering includes 8 key pillars:
We will provide weekly virtual and in-person workshop formats with top investors, founders, lawyers and corporates from the European start-up scene. Leverage this opportunity to ask questions, learn new insights and build your knowledge base. Our workshops are structured in 3 sprints (Fundraising & Pitching, Legal Basics, Organization & Scaling), each consisting of up to 5 workshops. The majority of workshops are hosted virtually with only a few in-person days.
Our program aims to prepare you for the Demo Day where you will get the opportunity to pitch your business to attract customers and investors. The Incubation Program will also host numerous events designed to provide you with plenty of opportunity to network with other teams. In addition, the teams have the chance to participate in various events within the Aachen Entrepreneurship community via collӕb.
Personalized 1:1 coaching with one of our experienced start-up coaches – adapted to the needs of your start-up & guiding you throughout the program.
Each team within our program will have the opportunity to choose from a broad range of benefits and services for free. These offerings are specifically designed to support the start-ups in a variety of domains such as product development, preparation of investor pitch material, marketing and PR, and operations. This includes, for example, support in coding, pitch deck and logo design, photo and video shootings, cloud services (Microsoft or AWS) and legal advice.
Our program offers you the opportunity to receive mentoring from successful founders & industry experts. It’s on you how to best leverage the power of our mentors. Our mentors are there for you to share their learnings from founding a company, guide you along your way and give you insights into their industries & networks. Additionally, in cooperation with German Entrepreneurship, we have access to a large international mentoring network around the world, which we are delighted to leverage as best, too.
Our mentors
We are very proud of our great investor relations network which we have built over the past years. Sharing our expertise, contacts and providing you with a warm welcome are also part of our program. Not only will we make sure to connect you to the right partners but also help prepare you for your perfect pitch.
With our 5 Expert Hubs, we created topic-specific innovation ecosystems that will help you with product development & market expertise. Here, you may get access to existing labs, experts and a wide partner network:
- Expert Hub Life Science
- Expert Hub Resources
- Expert Hub Digitized Hardware
- Expert Hub Digital Start-ups – powered by digitalHUB Aachen
- Expert Hub Circular Economy
Each team has the opportunity to provide us with insights on which corporates they would like to connect with. Our dedicated team will try to reach out to our large network of corporate contacts to find a suitable partner for you, giving you the opportunity to gain and establish direct connections into the corporate world.
Co-founder Matching
With our large EU co-founder network, we will help to connect you with start-up founders & aspiring entrepreneurs. On collӕb, the participating teams have the chance to connect with the Aachen Entrepreneurship community. Use the network to find co-founders, your next employee or connect with like-minded people in Europe.
Co-working Space
Be one of the first start-ups to access the co-working space of the Collective Incubator or digitalHUB Aachen. The co-working spaces provide office and conference spaces as well as a large open space for interdisciplinary exchange and events.