The latest round of the Gründer-Garage competition for creative startup ideas and its later-stage equivalent, dubbed Kopf-schlägt-Kapital, have been launched, with a package from Google worth $60,000 (€46,800) at stake for the former. Both competitions are being run by the Stiftung Entrepreneurship (Entrepreneurship Foundation).
Kopf-schlägt-Kapital (Head Beats Capital) is open to established companies which are less than five years old and which have a creative concept at their heart. Users will vote for ten finalists, from which a jury will select a winner.
The trophy – a metal sculpture – is intended to symbolise how proper development can see an idea become a stable business concept.
Gründer-Garage, meanwhile, offers the opportunity for would-be entrepreneurs to develop their ideas with an online training program. User feedback will help to hone the concept, and again there will be voting followed by a jury-picked winner who will be presented at the Entrepreneurship Summit 2013. They will also pick up the Google package.
A previous running of Gründer-Garage was launched last August at Google’s Unter den Linden offices and was not only aimed at tech ideas but all parts of society, such as cultural, environmental and social issues.
The competitions have already started and will run till October 13.
The Foundation’s Professor Günter Faltin said: “In the past you needed a lot of capital to start a business. Today it is possible to be successful with well-thought through concepts and little capital.”
The Entrepreneurship Foundation, called the Stiftung Entrepreneurship in German, was established in 2001 to attract more people to the subject of founding a company.