The two founders Jannik Semmelhaack and Tobias Wandersleb from the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Hamburg were able to convince the jury of the Hamburg Investment and Development Bank (IFB) with their young company VOIDS and thus secure another 150,000 euros in capital for the development and expansion of their company.
The start-up VOIDS wants to help medium-sized e-commerce companies to remedy imbalances between supply and demand, e.g. due to unavailability. The founders achieve this through an automated demand management solution that uses AI technologies to increase sales by 10 percent and profits by 20 percent.
A real success story for the city of Hamburg, as the two entrepreneurs only founded their company last year: Together with their beyourpilot start-up advisor Burak Gökkaya, they wrote the EXIST application from February 2022. They were also supported by their mentor and project supervisor from the University of Hamburg: Prof. Dr Michel Clemen. They received funding of 150,000 euros in August 2022 and were accepted into the world’s second largest accelerator programme, Techstars (techstars.com), shortly afterwards.
“beyourpilot is the first port of call for founders from academia who need help taking their first steps, just like we did in 2021. Why? Because the team not only successfully supports numerous start-ups in applying for one of Germany’s most prestigious funding programmes (EXIST Gründerstipendium), but also contributes an enormous amount of expertise and time,” reports Jannik Semmelhaack.
“At the beginning, we were not networked at all in the Hamburg start-up scene and also didn’t know what funding opportunities were available. In both cases, beyourpilot was a great help, along with the EXIST application,” adds Tobias Wandersleb.
In the future, they want to concentrate on two topics at VOIDS: On the one hand, on securing follow-up funding, which is explicitly desired and supported within the framework of EXIST funding, and on the other hand, on expanding the team in order to reach the next milestones in product development.
