As part of the summer school “Building Sustainable Economies After the Crisis” at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, HSRW (Germany), a meeting was held at the university’s StartGlocal startup center.

At the meeting, Prof. Dr. Nataliia Shmatko, Director of the Startup Center “Spark” of NTU “KhPI”, explained to the school participants what a startup is, its features, and how to prepare the right pitch to attract potential investors. Christina van Holt, a representative of the StartGlocal startup center, spoke about entrepreneurship and the importance of the social impact of startups and enterprises.

Nataliia Shmatko also presented the Spark startup center to the audience, telling about its work, team, and international cooperation, as well as completed and upcoming projects of the center, and shared plans for the future. Christina van Holt, in turn, presented the StartGlocal startup center, which allowed the participants to learn more about its work and unique projects.

The meeting was also attended by Prof. Dr. Oliver Locker-Grütjen, President of the Rhein-Walde University of Applied Sciences, and Dr. Gerhard Heusipp, Director of StartGlocal. The participants of the summer school witnessed the signing of a memorandum between the startup centers Spark and StartGlocal on further cooperation and joint development.

In conclusion, Christina van Holt conducted a very interesting and useful workshop where participants reflected on the problems of the projects on the topic of the school, looked for possible solutions, and filled out the Business Model Canvas, where they described all the business processes of developing an imaginary product: offer, infrastructure, customers, finance, etc.