Entrepreneurial Realities

Harvard Business School Emeritus Professor Bill Sahlman has run several of the most influential classes on Entrepreneurship which have inspired many entrepreneurs worldwide. His research has had an immense influence. His book on How to write a business plan is a major classic. His case studies are being taught at TUM and in every Entrepreneurial minded university worldwide. TUM CDTM Professor Hana Milanov teaches several of his cases for this special episode and joins us to interview Professor Sahlman. Prof. Sahlman discusses entrepreneurship, the importance of hypothesis testing, how entrepreneurship has evolved in the last years, the value of Ventures for social progress, and being financed with VCs. This is a major episode of our series of Entrepreneurial Realities. (and since Pr Sahlman refers to the importance of mothers for entrepreneurs, this episode is dedicated to all mothers.)

Daniel Garnitz is the Co-Founder and CEO of FAAREN, a Wurzburg-based provider of solutions to enable car dealers to offer car subscriptions to their customers. FAAREN was founded three years ago. They recently closed a significant funding round which values them in the double digits range. Daniel talks about the fundraising process, which was not an easy one, and presents valuable insights, lessons learned, and best practices for founders: The power of teams The need for resiliency Not over-engineering your MVP The value of sound domain knowledge and how his work as a founder has evolved

This is a crucial episode of Entrepreneurial Realities for all startups we work with at TUM. They are very strong on technology but lack marketing experience and sensitivity but need to gain visibility and market insight to get prospects and clients. This is a similar experience I went through personally in my former company. The person who helped us overcome this challenge and build a fantastic Marketing Engine is Meryll Moreau, my former VP of Marketing. Meryll gives us an excellent overview of Marketing for startups which is simply essential listening for every Tech Entrepreneur. Do not miss this podcast which will ensure you will understand the principles of Marketing for Tech Startups, how to implement them practically and how to get your startups to progress.

Of all Early Stage/Deeptech Venture Capital Firms, UVC Partners is unique for us given its proximity to Munich TUM and the impressive set of successful companies they have invested in and supported. Today, we speak with Andreas Unseld, TUM Alumni and partner at UVC, on a series of topics: how he became a Venture Capitalist, what he is looking for in projects he invests in … and as always, what he is looking for is his advice to students and entrepreneurs. Music: Gabriela Montero

This is a follow-up to last week's podcast where we interviewed Tom Eisenmann from the Harvard Business School. In this conclusion of our two-part series, we now turn to Martin Bitzinger. Martin is Group Vice President Product Management at Canadian Telecom Giant Mitel. He is also a TUM Alumni 2001 whose personal story you simply have to hear. Yes, Entrepreneurship is hard and even the best entrepreneurs have failures and multiple starts, but the real Entrepreneurs learn and restart.

We now embark on a two-part series about the challenges of entrepreneurship. Professor Tom Eisenmann is co-Chair of the Harvard Business School Center of Entrepreneurship. He recently wrote an important book called Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success, which is an essential complement to the “Lean Startup”. It looks at ventures which followed this approach and yet failed. It is a fabulous book that reminds us that failure can happen even if you are a hard-working entrepreneur. It helps identify some patterns and also explains how to "fail well" and to restart. Entrepreneurship is hard, and studying successes and failures is a source of learning and inspiration. This will be the object of next week's podcast so stay tuned.

In a recent edition, the Economist identified Tracking Space Debris as a fast growing business. In this interview, we hear from Luisa Buinhas, Christoph Bamann and Stefan Frey, the three founders of Vyoma who are developing innovative solutions to tackle this topic. In detail, we hear the three founders, how they met, gained their domain expertise, and raised funding.

For our first interview, we are joined by Herbert Mangesius , founding partner of Munich-based VC Vsquared. Herbert is a TUM CDTM Alumni who has very significant expertise and experience in Deeptech investing. He speaks about various topics, from becoming a Venture Capitalist, on the challenges and opportunities of investing on Deeptech in Germany and why he recommends students consider entrepreneurship.

In this session, Dominik Reuter, Operating Director of the Software and AI Venture Lab, welcomes Philipp Gerbert, General Managing Director of the TUM Venture Labs. Philipp introduces the Venture Lab and gives an outlook on the new Podcast: Entrepreneurial Realities. You can find more information, and contact details for each Venture Lab here: venturelabs.tum.de