InsurTech Hub Munich kicks off batch 5 of its Innovation Programme, welcoming entrepreneurs hailing from 12 nations and a significant number of female founders.
It’s on: InsurTech Hub Munich (ITHM) kicked off batch 5 of its Innovation Programme on February 20, 2020, when entrepreneurs from the 39 participating startups met with more than 100 of ITHM’s corporate partners, investors and mentors. But Day One of the three-months long accelerator, which will culminate in Demo Day on May 14, was not only about getting to know each other: The participants already had to master a first task by boiling down the description of their business to a single sentence pitch no longer than seven seconds.
“The accelerator is not an innovation theatre! We are here to create meaningful connections”, coherently commented Marco Affonseca, ITHM’s Head of Global Innovation, in his opening note. “The ITHM programme is second to none in Europe”, he argued, drawing on his own past as a founder in the US. Manuel Holzhauer, Managing Director at ITHM, shows his contention with the exponential growth of the programme, manifest in the high number of applicantions and its expansion to almost 40 participants and a 13-week curriculum: “It’s exciting to start with such a diverse and promising crowd of entrepreneurs hailing from 12 nations”. He adds: “We are extremely happy to have a significant number of female founders in the programme and we’re positive that this will have an impact”, referring to the fact that women still are massively underrepresented in the startup world.
Text: Markus Walter