Last week, SURAG participated in the BMT and the Startup Safari Sachsen-Anhalt to connect with communities and present its work. We are thrilled that we received awards at both events and grateful to have connected even further with the scientific community and the local startup ecosystem in Saxony-Anhalt.
Connecting to the scientific community at the BMT 2021 in Hannover
The week started with our participation at the 55th annual meeting of the DGBMT (German Society for Biomedical Engineering), the Annual Conference on Biomedical Engineering (BMT), which this year took place from the 05.-07.10.2021 in Hannover. The BMT provides a national and global forum for MedTech professionals to exchange knowledge and experiences, gain insights, network and discuss trending topics.
A Startup Pitch Session has been an essential part of the conference for a few years to allow startups to pitch their innovation and receive feedback from the scientific community. We took this opportunity to present SURAG in a seven-minute pitch to the present scientists and MedTech experts. At the end of the session, the audience voted for their favorite startup. We are delighted that SURAG was awarded with the 1st place. As an award, we received an individual consulting session with industry experts regarding medical device certification sponsored by the DGBMT. Thanks a lot to the audience for making this possible for us.
The startup session was also an excellent opportunity to meet Dr. Valentine Gesché, the founder of PerAGraft, who hosted the startup session. We already met Valentine during our participation in the 4C accelerator earlier this year. However, since the accelerator was conducted purely virtual, we were pleased to meet each other in person.
Apart from exciting presentations, we also used the conference to discuss with possible manufacturers of our product and increase our network among MedTech professionals. Finally, the day concluded with the poster session. We presented our first prototype with visual and acoustic feedback that supplements the surgeons’ perception during Veress needle insertion.
A successful day for the local startup community at the Startup SAFARI Saxony-Anhalt
The Startup Safari Saxony-Anhalt is the annual event for the local startup scene. This year the event took place in Bernburg, organized by the FOUND IT! Founder’s Center of the Hochschule Anhalt and bmp Ventures. The event offered more than 20 workshops in different locations around the city. This brought the event into the heart of the local society and, therefore, into the center of attention. Workshops such as “Digital Health Apps: New Providers in the Medical System” or “Startup Funding 1×1” offered great insights to the participating startups. Additionally, the Investitionsbank Saxony-Anhalt and attorney offices offered Open Office sessions to discuss individual questions regarding public funding as well as legal topics, respectively.
In the afternoon, the Startup Fight Club was taking place in the inner yard of the astonishing Bernburg Castle. The Fight Club offers uprising startups and founding teams an opportunity to enter the boxing ring with their ideas to battle each other. There is not only fame and glory to be earned; the startups can also win a prize pool worth over 270.000€.
The Fight Club was divided into two rounds. At first, all participating startups had three minutes to pitch their innovation and business idea to the jury of experts from various relevant areas. This year Julia Bütow (Referee, Ministry of Economy, Tourism, Agriculture and Forestry Saxony-Anhalt), Harriet Krzyzowski (Senior Investment Manager, Medium-sized Holding Association Saxony-Anhalt), Dominique Meyer (Innovation Manager, AOK Saxony-Anhalt), Markus Schröder (Managing Director, Serrala Cloud Solutions GmbH) and David Stuck (Investment Manager, bmp Ventures AG) were part of the jury.
Eight out of ten teams reached the second round, where pairs of two startups had to fight each other in the boxing ring – with arguments, of course. Each team had 45 seconds to convince the jury and earn their favor. Next to innovational strength and attractiveness of the target customer group, finance and feasibility were among the categories. The jurors could award each startup with up to five points per category. The points of each juror were added up at the end of the fight to determine the winner.
We are thrilled that SURAG was able to collect the most points (204) from the expert jury, followed by Novella Food (202) and Coachwhisperer GmbH (198). Congratulations to Coachwhisperer for winning the audience award as well, and all the other participating startups. Findus, InfraSen, Binaryagi, ImmoConnection, Ma‘alahi, KI-basierte Metadaten Plattform, GreenBee performed great pitches and had a vast contribution to the success of the event.
The day concluded with dinner, beer and a networking session before a bus brought us back to Magdeburg. We are very happy that, because of our first place, the event will take place in Magdeburg next year. We are looking forward to it and will support the organizers wherever we can.
Establishing a connection that lasts
It was a pleasure to get to know and interact with all those inspiring people and startups that we met last week. We wish you all the best for your future journey and hope that we will meet you again soon. In particular, we agreed with the other teams from Magdeburg (Novella Food, InfraSen) to meet again soon and to initiate a regular startup roundtable.