Discover the four Graduates from Founder Institute Frankfurt second cohort
This week, the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator, Founder Institute, launches four new companies. The Frankfurt chapter now includes 12 startups in its portfolio.
The graduating founders are Alessio Tixi, Falk W Foell, Natalia Korchakova Heeb and Ramon Brena.
This semester had a special focus on language-learning and invited several industry experts to mentor and guide participants who were interested in that field. Two of the new portfolio companies are launching in that industry. The others work in Impact-GreenTech and Healthcare.
Launching a startup always requires courage and adaptability. The Coronavirus pandemic has demanded even more. Our graduates overcame numerous challenges and survived a tough program that eliminated 80% of participants.
The complete portfolio of the second cohort includes:
AgroFish is on a mission to create a Model Sustainable Farm showcasing the advantages of integrating fish production into crop farming. This German company’s farm is located in South Ethiopia where it is investing know-how and technology to spur the African economy. AgroFish founder Falk, a Frankfurt resident, joined most of the Founder Institute sessions remotely from Ethiopia.
Avalinguo applies VR and AI to help language learners. The company was recently selected for the finals of the GES Awards “Learn and Connect” track. Founder Ramon joined remotely from Mexico.
PPPHealth4All is an award-winning global digital platform to facilitate development of healthcare public-private partnerships (PPPs). The platform is “one stop” shop that enables a seamless approach for preparation and implementation of sustainable and people-centered healthcare PPPs by providing data-driven insights, tools, and technologies. It also connect stakeholders into an efficient and resilient PPP healthcare ecosystem capable of responding efficiently to global health challenges. The platform is already being used by 45 countries. Company founder Natalia, originally from Ukraine, joined remotely from Frankfurt-am-Main.
Tuto is on a mission to provide every language learner with a personal path to fluency. Language learning is one of the most fragmented industries out there and while having options is great, this also makes it particularly confusing to learn. Tuto.ai aggregates existing apps and resources together and helps learners understand when and what they should be learning next through personal human coaching and data-driven insights. Company founder Alessio joined remotely from Berlin.
Read some feedback about their experience here:
Eng. Natalia Korchakova-Heeb, Founder of PPPHealth4All and Managing Director of SDG.17 Consulting GmbH shared the following about her experience:
“I turned to Founder Institute for manifold reasons — firstly, to learn an algorithm to establish a successful startup based on more than 10 years of experience of FI, secondly to build a network of similar-minded experts and advisors and to finally to anchor in local start up scene here in Frankfurt. I am grateful to the FI for the opportunity to meet so many wonderful and positive -thinking people and all support received that empower me to develop my project that has a huge global impact in the times of pandemic. Impossible to name all of them, but I believe that I make some true friends.”
Ramon F. Brena, CEO and founder at Avalinguo, commented: “The Founder Institute Frankfurt chapter program had tremendous value for developing my Avalinguo startup. In my particular case, what I found of most value is that the FI set up meetings that more than talks were really conversations with high-caliber experts and company owners that would have been impossible to me to contact on my own; one of those meetings triggered a major pivot of my startup.
Mutual support and even friendship were developed with my fellow program mates, which prompted me to start a mastermind group that will continue after graduation.
I couldn’t be more grateful to the FI organizers (especialy Dimitris Polychronopoulos and Eugenio Grapa) and mentors for their help in shaping our startups.”
Alessio Tixi, CEO and founder of Tuto mentioned: “Momentum is critical for early stage companies and FI structured program has been very valuable to keep us moving forward. The connections, feedback and advice we all got in the past few months is something that I have learned to deeply value not only for execution, but also for my mindset as an entrepreneur. From a company building perspective we are still at the starting blocks, but we’ve all been working hard and are now ready to shift gears and bring things to the next level.”
Finally, last but not the least, Falk W Foell also adds: “The FI Early-Founder Accelerator Frankfurt lives off the dedication of her directors and a seemingly never ending care of her tutors.
It is a very different thing to present your ideas and project yourself, alone, in person and then be hit in the face by the Kind, yet ruthless critique of peers, forcing you to think — and accept, you cant get your point on the table, even everything you put together makes the perfect sense — for you — and just for you.
The way to go is arduous and hard facing your brilliance and own logic being forced to adapt to the mindest of the experienced business person for your listener.
Without this process, accompanied by truly essential work intensive assignments which, if taken serious, are a great help to get directly into the world of business practice, project organisation and marketing beyond the classes and reality of seminars, student or unassisted self-employment life.
I thank the FI for this experience.
Yet, the programme requires their attendants to either have or establish a formal company within this process. A hurdle, which should not be under-estimated. Its worth to join an international network, a crowd of like-minded others who leave you the conviction, they really want to bring you, your idea and business on.”
The FI Frankfurt Directors BrittaMues-Walter, Carolina Yeo , Dimitris Polychronopoulos, , Eugenio Grapa, Pedro Ferreira and Quetin Appleby, expressed their happiness with everyone who was been through the Cohort, including other founders, sponsors, mentors, but specially these graduates.
The group hopes to work with mor in 2021, to further strengthen the previous cohorts and ecosystem, and is current planning a new and third cohort for Fall-Winter at the moment.
In case you would like to also have an overview about the first cohort graduates, you can read all about them here: https://hallofrankfurt.de/discover-the-eight-graduates-from-founder-institute-frankfurt-898ea61a9bdd
