What we’re building

For people to start something from all kinds of life situations, there’s a question to answer first: how to pay for their own living, and often for that of the people close to them and their family too.

Many funding programmes have high barriers to entry and pay for the idea and the company, not the person. That works for people with low fixed costs, or for people who are financially secure. Neither is true for most people in Germany.

So we’re developing a way to bridge the time when nothing is earned yet and the rent is still due. We’re still working out exactly how a founder’s salary in the form of a stipend should be designed. And it should work not only for founders, but also for entrepreneurs whose business is in crisis or who want to make deep strategic changes.

Who you know decides a good part of entrepreneurial success. Contacts from university and work, and often from family through your parents, open doors and bring chances, useful tips, specialist knowledge and further contacts. A real network isn’t built by cold calling. It rests on looking after relationships, on time spent together at work and outside it, and on genuine interest in each other.

Our network includes people and organisations who have explicitly offered to share what they know with others, and who are open to taking next steps together.

Successful entrepreneurship is often treated as a character trait, as if people were born with the skills.

We see it differently. Anyone can make entrepreneurial thinking and acting their own. Whatever it takes, you either bring it with you or pick it up along the way. No trait is worth more than another.

We want to find out which topics and learning formats work, and which knowledge is needed at which point. In our workshops and expert consultations, you can get advice on your own questions or learn hands-on together with others.

The media story of founding and entrepreneurship is one of charismatic lone fighters, or pairs, who risked everything on one idea and whose plan then worked out.

That’s rarely true, or at best a shortened version of the story. Beyond that, we think what actually helps is thinking and acting entrepreneurially in sparring with others. People in a similar situation listen with a different ear, and they hear different things in what you say, or have different advice.

We bring together people at similar or very different stages of their entrepreneurial journey. That can simply be focused working sessions, sparring conversations, peer advice or other formats that help. Sometimes not sitting alone at your desk is enough to get unstuck, find your way back into work, or make hard times feel less threatening.