A select set of eight entrepreneur teams benefit from the 2024 WHU Accelerator
06/14/2024
A Major Boost for One’s Own Start-Up
Realizing your business model. Getting coached by experienced entrepreneurs. Perhaps even finding the right investor. These are the possibilities open to a select eight start-up founder teams chosen to participate in this year’s WHU Accelerator, running from May 11 to July 4 and hosted by the WHU Entrepreneurship Center. To date, they have already completed roughly half of this intensive eight-week program, gaining invaluable insights for their start-up projects. “With the WHU Accelerator, we want to give aspiring entrepreneurs at our school consistent access to our start-up eco-system’s most powerful resource: the people themselves,” noted Maximilian Eckel, Managing Director of the WHU Entrepreneurship Center. “It’s important to us that the time invested in the Accelerator is put to the best use possible. If we can bring them into contact with the right mentors, then their participation in the program will have been worth the effort.”
This year’s Mentor Mayhem, the most ambitious and rewarding phase of the WHU Accelerator, has been split between the first and fifth weeks of the program. This phase sees participating teams meet with dozens of high-caliber professionals and refine their business models. In the mentor pool this year are two “unicorn” founders, international venture capitalists, two of Germany’s most prominent angel investors, and several serial entrepreneurs.
One trend seen among new start-ups is a strong focus on generative artificial intelligence. And indeed, AI has become an indispensable element of many new business ideas—from novel approaches to training sales staff to transforming how academic research is conducted. Whether potential investors can be won over by this new technology, or if they will show interest in more traditional business models, will be revealed at the program’s finale. The Demo Day will feature all teams pitching their developed business models to potential investors before a live audience.
Participants in the 2024 WHU Accelerator:
- Claro AI
Founders: Tameesh Biswas, Matteo Fava, and Till Westermann (MSc 2023)
Claro AI helps clients optimize their AI-based apps, rendering them thirty-times faster, easier to use, and safer.
- Cuinti
Founders: Jérôme Bau, Tim Host, and Allegro Sprute (BSc 2023)
Cuinti uses generative AI to offer companies effective training services. Through Cuinti’s innovative scenarios, clients have a chance to overcome different challenges and receive feedback on their performance.
- LaProp
Founders: Alejandro Jaramillo and Sara Kadenaj (PT-MiM 2025)
The team behind LaProp are making good use of blockchain technology to give their clients an opportunity to make small investments in real estate without having to buy an entire property outright. LaProp’s goal is to see clients benefit from a property’s value and the rent collected.
Founders: Sidney Douw, Alex Griffith, Timor Kardum, and Ingo Kiedaisch (Doctoral Program 1997). Though not a founding member, Jakub Fronczyk also offers support.
MAGIG helps other companies implement and make use of next-generation technology. The start-up offers unique customer, product, and interaction solutions, e.g., helping to develop bespoke AI strategies or AI-based software.
Founders: Lucia Scheffner and Daniel Siebert (both MSc 2025)
PlantSalt delivers exactly what its name suggests: the world’s first plant-based salt. And it, unlike sea salt or table salt, provides an ideal balance of sodium-potassium, beneficial to human health and easy on the environment. By comparison, consumption of other types of salt in many Western countries has led to an increase in cardiovascular illness and Alzheimer’s.
Founders: Fabian Kukral (MSc 2024) and Julia Römer
The masterminds behind Promodoro are revolutionizing the world of advertising with an innovative way to advertise on pizza delivery boxes. They make good use of a customer’s positive response to their delivery to create a special connection with the brand in question. By targeting the right demographics, this connection between brand and customer has strong staying power.
Founders: Henri Max Deda (PT-MBA 2023), André Kischkel, and Mark Reinke
scienceOS compiles all relevant reference literature necessary for academic research in a matter of seconds. This AI-based tool draws on a database housing more than 220 million works and, unlike other AI-based programs, provides reliable and correct article information.
- A final start-up still working in stealth mode
Founders: Sebastian Neuberg and Steffen Seibert (Promotion 2017)
This start-up, whose name has yet to be announced, allows employers ways of making the workplace more secure and efficient. It also works to improve employee performance and well-being.