KICKSTART YOUR ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY

We understand that entering the entrepreneurial world can be tough, especially without a network or prior experience. That's why our mission is to support students with an entrepreneurial drive. Our vibrant community of over 250 members provides a compassionate and exciting environment for personal and professional development through events, workshops, hackathons, and discussions on business ideas and tech challenges. Join us to fuel your entrepreneurial journey!

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WHO IS START MUNICH?

Our 252 active members are from 20+ nationalities and are distributed over 4 Munich-based universities. Most of our members have either a technical or management background, but we strive to welcome people from all academic, professional, and cultural backgrounds. We are also dedicated to increasing the number of female members within our ranks, who currently make up 25% of our members.

Study backgrounds OF OUR MEMBERS

Business

it

engineering

Natural Sciences

Life Science

member journey

Are you considering to become involved at START Munich and to kickstart your entrepreneurial journey? Then you should definitely have a look at what awaits you!

Application Phase

Where it all begins

Our application phase opens once per semester: between October and November for the winter semester and between April and May for the summer semester. With every application phase we welcome 25 new members in our community. In order to filter through the hundreds of applications we receive and select the students with the best START-fit, we follow a two-step application process:

1.WRITTEN APPLICATION

With the written application we try to get a sense of you are, what your skills are and whether you could fit well in our community. If you convince us, you’ll move on to the second phase.The written application consist of open questions about your passions and personal goals. There’s no right or wrong answers.

2. interview

Our first face to face meeting! We’re very excited, since we can get to know you better. We’re going to dig deeper into some of your answers and experiences from the written application. The interview lasts 30 minutes and you will have to prepare a challenge that has been handed out in advance.

ONBOARDING PHASE

Becoming a STARTie

The Onboarding process takes around one month.We first take care of the administrative and technical tasks necessary to enable your participation within our community, including access to Slack, email and our shared Drive.

The core of the Onboarding will then be a series of events and initiatives that allow you to immerse yourself in the world of START. This includes get-togethers with colleagues from your own batch (as well as from previous ones), networking events with our partners, fun team-building activities such as our bi-yearly hut weekend, and finally, the Onboarding Sprint - a two-week sprint where you’ll work in teams to solve an exciting entrepreneurial challenge from one of our partners.

ACTIVE MEMBER PHASE

Build, fail, learn, repeat

You got past the application phase and you successfully completed the onboarding – now it’s time to reap all the benefits START has to offer.

The foundation of being an active member is joining one of our five Departments and providing support for ongoing projects.  You’ll have the chance to organize and take the lead for your own projects.Want to organize a big event focused on female entrepreneurship? Sure! Want to organize a series of pitch sessions to stimulate interesting ideas and provide feedback? Why not! Want to organize a trip to Berlin to network with the most interesting startups in the city? Let’s have it!

If you have creative ideas and can follow up with proactivity and proper execution, there are no limits to what you can achieve at START.

Click on the name of the department to learn more about it:

Responsibilities:

The beating heart of START are its members. The job of the HR Department is identifying the raw diamonds of the Munich startup ecosystem and ensuring they become happy and productive members of the community. Our main responsibilities include guiding the recruiting efforts, organizing and overseeing the Onboarding process, managing the Member Journey of each STARTie and curating our Alumni network.

Learnings:

For any company, picking the right people and ensuring that they become performing members of the team is one of the most crucial tasks. Within the HR department, you will have a chance to learn the necessary skills to build a high-performing team, improve your interviewing skills significantly, develop better leadership skills, and learn how to structure a recruiting process from A to Z.

Responsibilities:

We are the voice of START Munich. All the external communication, advertisement and branding goes through the Marketing department. Whether it’s for recruiting new students, promoting an event, publishing a podcast or creating an informative website. We have our hands on every project!

Learnings:

As a part of a marketing you learn to think communication and marketing holistically, like an entrepreneur would. You start understanding what it means to adapt your communication style and content to different target groups and you learn how to lead your targets from a first touch point to becoming engaged with START.

Without us, no one would know what START does.

Responsibilities:

Partnerships are vital for the community for two reasons. On one hand, as a student-run community, we rely on strategic partners who share our vision to sponsor and support us. On the other, having good partners in the VC, startup and corporate world is a massive benefit for our members, who can profit from the networking and career opportunities. As Partnerships Department, we are responsible for sourcing, negotiating and maintaining a good relationship with existing and future partners.

Learnings:

Reaching out to new potential partners and negotiating a good deal, managing the relationship with our current sponsors, developing our product offering and in general ensuring that START’s finances flourish: within this Department there is no shortage of learnings for your future entrepreneurial career.

Responsibilities:

The Operations & Growth department plays a crucial role in setting up START for long-term success. Our department has two main objectives, maintaining operations and enabling growth. We achieve the former by providing administrative support and ensuring a stable financial and legal foundation. For this, we implement professional and scalable processes to streamline operations. Additionally, we strategically source and employ new tools to improve efficiency and enable growth.

Learnings:

We act as in-house consultants, looking for solutions to technical, financial and administrative challenges based on feedback from other members of the community as well as on our own observations.

Responsibilities:

Events are a cornerstone of our community. Be it a massive event like our flagship Road to START Summit pitch-night, a VC-panel discussion or a laid-back dinner, we believe that creating the opportunity for motivated people to get together in the same room is one of the best ways to facilitate entrepreneurial exchange of ideas and drive innovation.

Learnings:

A good event is a by-product of a well thought out plan, solid execution and excellent project management. Within the Department you’ll have the chance to organize some of the most spectacular events in the Munich startup scene, as well as being a driving force behind the cohesion of the whole START community.

ALUMNI PHASE

Stay connected

Our community is the heart and soul of START Munich. As an alumni member you can stay connected to our community, join all our events and benefit from the connections of the START network.

a young man sitting on the edge of a railing working on his laptop, the background being the skyline of a city

SOME OF OUR FORMATS

Road to START Summit

#RtSS is our yearly flagship event. The combination of 200+ visitors, keynotes, panel discussions, and a startup pitch competition with expert jury make this event truly special.

Workshops

Workshops are a great way for our members to develop new skills, get out of the comfort zone and get to know our partners in the ecosystem.

Onboarding Sprint

For each new joining batch of STARTies, we organize an onboarding sprint together with a partner company to work an business and tech challenges over the course of three weeks.

Ideasprint - Hackathon

The Ideasprint Hackathon is an amazing opportunity for student to expose themselves into tech- and business challenges and build valuable solutions and MVPs over the course of 4 days.

Company Insights

Every other week, we meet up with exciting startups, VCs or corporates. They give us an in-depth account of their challenges and learnings.

Startups @ START

To encourage and support our members to found we regularly organize internal pitching sessions, feedback sessions and discussions to discuss our business ideas and startups.

Podcast

Our podcast #VentureMic is a great opportunity to talk to successful founders or investors, hear from their perspective and experiences and derive learnings for students.

Women in Startups

Our internal Female Entrepreneurship initiative aims to lower the barriers for women to become entrepreneurs or investors. Within we organize large events and personal community meetings.

Monthly START Update

On top of our bi-weekly department meetings, the whole START community gathers once a months to discuss ongoing projects and progress, and enjoy networking, pizza & drinks together.

meet our members

WS 2022

SS 2022

WS 2021

WS 2020

impressions

Bits & Pretzels
START Update
Insight @Parkdepot
Flix
Road to START Summit 2020
Insight @FINN
Y Combinator Event
Deepdrive Onboarding Sprint 2022
KPMG Workshop
VC Dinner First Momentum Ventures
Summer Hut
Insight @Remberg
Luminovo Onboarding Sprint 2021
TIER Mobility
Road to START Summit 2021

Application Phase is CLOSED

However, you can sign up to be notified when our application phase reopens.

GET NOTIFIED