Discover the valuable resources and personalized support provided by the Entrepreneurship Hub and meet Christian Stascheit, an integral part of the Entrepreneurship Hub and Technology Transfer Office.
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your role at the Hub.
Hello, my name is Christian Stascheit, and I work at the Entrepreneurship Hub and at the Technology Transfer Office. Among other things, I conduct initial interviews with students, researchers and graduates of TU Braunschweig, Ostfalia University of Applied Science or from partner institutes interested in starting a business to explore their ideas and visions, and I am in charge of the EXIST Application for international teams and for national teams and Ostfalia University of Applied Science. My collegue Manuela Hahn at Technology Transfer Office is coaching the national teams at TU Braunschweig.
Another important part of my work is to hold Entrepreneurship awareness workshops for different target groups to get them excited about the topic of start-ups. I conduct these workshops with my colleague Antonia Hemmling. We use methods such as design thinking to give participants an insight into innovative approaches and thus build a bridge to the topic of entrepreneurship. It is important to us to show the many advantages of a career as an entrepreneur in order to encourage students, doctoral candidates and post-docs to follow this path.
What specific resources and support services does the Entrepreneurship Hub offer to aspiring founders?
We offer personal coaching, which starts with an initial conversation. In this process, we take a closer look at the founders‘ ideas and examine how we can possibly connect them with relevant institutes or partners. For knowledge and research-based start-ups, the „Exist application“ is an excellent way to obtain funding. It is a grant that supports up to three team members in the Pre-founding phase for up to one year. Hereby, a distinction is made between the EXIST start-up grant and the EXIST research transfer.
I am in charge of the EXIST Application for international teams. Here, we support prospective founders for example in finding potential co-founders via our social media channels. It is crucial that a start-up team has an interdisciplinary background, so they cover different field of knowledge and skills and have different views on specific topics. Furthermore, we connect the teams with other start-ups, where we think a partnership or an exchange of any kinds might be beneficial for both sides. Another valuable offering is „TBMC “ (Technology Business Model Creation).
Here, researchers have the opportunity to approach us with their start-up idea. Students who already have knowledge in Entrepreneurship through the lecture Technology Entrepreneurship develop a business plan for the researcher. This covers important topics like the Unique Selling Proposition, customer insights, market research, marketing, distribution channels and the source of income and cost structure of the product or services of the researchers.
If people interested in founding a company would like to contact the Entrepreneurship Hub, they can arrange an initial meeting with you. How can they ideally prepare for the initial meeting? How does an initial interview with you work?
Students, researchers and graduates of TU Braunschweig, Ostfalia University of Applied Science or from partner institutesinterested in starting a business have the opportunity to arrange an initial meeting with me via the Entrepreneurship Hub website. An ideal preparation for this interview is to create a small pitch deck or at least prepare in a way that they can explain their start-up idea precisely and concisely in about 2-3 sentences. It is important to communicate the Unique Selling Proposition (USP), the idea, and the innovation behind it on point.
The initial meeting is straightforward and does not require extensive preparation. It can take place online or on-site at the “Gründervilla” at Rebenring 33 in Braunschweig. The goal of the initial meeting is to understand the idea in more detail, to identify the potentials and to point out possible ways of support. The initial meeting is designed to show those interested in founding a company the potential path from their idea to starting a business and to discuss support options.
