The Elite Graduate Program "Honours Degree in Technology Management", located at the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM), is known for its diverse collaborative activities. These include the Berlin Startup Tour, which is slowly but surely becoming a beautiful tradition at CDTM. During a three-day excursion, active CDTM students and alumni visited va-rious startups in Berlin.
After the day, for students and alumni of the Elite Graduate Program "Honours Degree in Technology Management", had begun early in the morning with a train ride from Berlin to Munich, the first stop of the startup tour was awaited at 2.30 pm. The first stop was KRY, a Swedish telemedicine startup. There the students were welcomed by Manuel Grossmann, a former CDTM student who helps the company with its mission to bring remote diagnostics to Germany. The next stop was Bitwala, a blockchain bank. Bitwala offers its customers a bank account including a digital purse. This allows easy trading with Bitcoins. The co-founder and CTO, Ben Jones, told the students the history of the company and shared his view of the media hype about crypto currencies.
The next day began with a visit to the FreightHub office. The students were greeted by co-founder and former CDTM student Michael Wax, who gave inspiring insights into the founding of a successful logistics startup. Af-ter delicious pizza and interesting discussions on the roof terrace of FreightHub's office, the students went on to the next destination: 7Mind. The meditation startup was founded in 2014 by Manuel Ronnefeldt and Jonas Leve. In a relaxed group, the students had the opportunity to talk shop with the founders of the company and gather further insights with a view to setting up a startup.
The last stop on this day is the startup BCG Digital Ventures. Here the students and alumni of the Elite Graduate Program "Honours Degree in Technology Management" got a deep insight into the work of the employees of BCG DV. Many parallels to the second core course "Managing Product Development" in the study program of the CDTM students also became visible.
These days, everything revolves around data. That is why the group visited Contiamo and its beautiful workrooms at WeWork at Potsdamer Platz. Steffen Iwan, a former CDTM student and currently head of business development at Contiama, provided interesting insights into how the startup develops valuable data-based solutions for its customers. After the last visit, during which Holtzbrinck VC was on the program, the eventful day on the roof terrace of Holtzbrinck VC ended comfortably.
