Voxelhost wins GROW student start-up competition
Software for midwives, algorithms for the construction industry, gaming servers on demand: 51 teams took part in the seventh round of the GROW student start-up competition organized by Karlsruhe’s PionierGarage in November. The winning teams have now been chosen in the final.
“Whenever you and your friends decide it’s time to play, click the start button and your server will be up and running in no time. Eventually, the free, on-demand, cloud-based server will support more than 100 games and variants.”
With this brief description of their start-up Voxelhost, Jonathan Ehwald and Marco Salas entered the GROW start-up competition organized by the student university group PionierGarage. In the end, the two company founders were also able to convince the expert jury, which included Daniel Karszt, head of the startup incubator CyberLab, and Benedikt Stolz, co-founder of the student VC fund First Momentum Ventures. Voxelhost received 3,000 euros in prize money for its victory in the seventh edition of GROW. In addition, Ehwald and Salas can use the office space of the PionierGarage incubator Launchpad free of charge for six months to refine their business.
Modugen and Fiami in second and third place at
“Working intensively on a business idea is the most important step on the way to founding a successful company,” says Jannik Nefferdorf from the PionierGarage team. Previous winners such as the startup Campusjäger have already successfully established themselves on the market in this way. Second place went to Modugen for the development of a special algorithm to simplify complex planning processes in the construction industry. In third place was the Fiami team with its organizational software for midwives.
Image: PionierGarage
New record number of participants in the seventh competition
The organizers were also satisfied at the end of the competition. The 51 student start-up teams that submitted their documents to at the official launch at Karlshochschule on 7 November set a new record for the number of participants. “We want to make students want to start a business and this offer is bearing more and more fruit,” says Nefferdorf happily. On December 11, ten of the 40 remaining teams were shortlisted and on January 23, the final took place in the Audimax lecture hall on the south campus of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which was well attended by students.
Picture: PionierGarage
Karlsruhe: A good place for digital applications
“The start-up scene in Karlsruhe is becoming more and more lively,” says Nefferdorf. And the Karlsruhe TechnologyRegion is an excellent place for start-ups with a focus on digital applications in particular. “When it comes to customer-oriented applications, however, there is still some catching up to do here,” says Nefferdorf. This is why numerous companies founded by KIT students have migrated to Berlin or Hamburg in recent years after an initial growth phase. In the meantime, however, there is already a trend towards a return to the fan-shaped city “The technical and infrastructural conditions for digital start-ups in Karlsruhe are simply outstanding,” emphasizes Nefferdorf.
PionierGarage promotes entrepreneurship and leadership personalities
The PionierGarage was founded in 2011 and is currently filled with life by around 30 active students. Thanks to the great commitment of former pioneers, the association currently has a good 300 members. According to its own statements, the aim of the largest university group in the field of entrepreneurship is to improve the quality of student entrepreneurship and the targeted development of leaders.
Picture: PionierGarage
The Karlsruhe PionierGarage network includes coaches and professors from numerous companies and universities. “Starting their own business is a real dream for most of our members,” says Nefferdorf, “and we want to make this a reality with all the resources available to us.”