Around 1,000 participants from politics, business and civil society attended the Federal Government's Digital Summit in Jena to discuss solutions for the digital transformation. In this context, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) honoured the best digital start-up ideas. The Passau start-up team "Lesson Organiser" received prize money of 7,000 euros as well as individual coaching worth 4,000 euros. "There are always dry spells on the road to founding a company, but moments like these motivate me to keep going", said Florian Niederhuber at the award ceremony organised by the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, Robert Habeck, and the BMWK Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Start-ups, Anna Christmann.
With their project, the four founders developed an analogue and electronic combination tool to make it easier for teachers to plan and manage teaching units. A teacher education student, Thea Kakavand recognised a problem with long-term structured lesson planning during her traineeship, which gave rise to the idea of the Lesson Organiser. Klara Gorisch, who studied at the University of Passau, has been contributing her expertise in finance, customer acquisition and marketing to the project for the last year. Florian Niederhuber and Tristan Schneider, both computer scientists, developed the software and enriched the team with their many years of experience in the start-up sector.
The team is being supported on its start-up journey by the University of Passau. "Promoting start-ups has been a strategic goal of the University of Passau for ten years. With the EXIST-funded project "Passau – The Entrepreneurial Campus" (PATEC), the University has developed a comprehensive start-up support programme. And it shows: a lively start-up culture has sprouted up on campus in the meantime. The success of the young start-up companies is spurring on further start-ups. I am delighted that with the Lesson Organiser we have a start-up team that deserves nationwide attention. On behalf of the University Executive, I would like to congratulate them warmly on this start-up prize", said Professor Werner Gamerith, the University Executive's Commissioner for Transfer and Sustainability.
The start-up team has taken advantage of various offers within the PATEC programme. Helene Schneider, start-up consultant at the University of Passau: "It's great to see how they have developed and grown. I have been supporting and advising the team from the very beginning and am particularly pleased for them in this great success." In the meantime, a pilot scheme was launched at Dreiflüsse-Realschule Passau, a secondary school, where the Lesson Organiser is being deployed for the first time and is currently being tested. The entrepreneurs are also making use of the services offered by INN.KUBATOR - a digital entrepreneurship incubator for Lower Bavaria. Back in March of this year, the team's innovative idea won first place in the "Ideenreich" competition organised by the Bavarian Business Plan Competition.
About PATEC (Passau – The Entrepreneurial Campus)
Through PATEC, the University of Passau seeks to establish a prominent and engaging start-up culture among its students. All students – irrespective of their academic discipline – can get inspired for their own start-up journey and are given plenty of networking and training opportunities and advice along the way. They benefit from their connection to their place of study and from the proven teaching and research expertise of the University of Passau. The start-up teams are instructed in the areas of business models, digitalisation and law, sustainability, interculturality and public relations in six start-up hubs. The project has been running since September 2020 and is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection under the "EXIST Potentials" programme, which aims to increase the number of business spin-outs from higher education institutions.