EWOR

What is at the heart of EWOR? 🫂 Ecosystem and Education. The EWOR ecosystem is a collection of like-minded individuals, from investors through to operators through to founders, actively helping one another to change the world. Education (and cross-mentorship) is what fuels the EWOR ecosystem. 🚀 With that in mind, we are excited to share our revamped Founder’s Resources which have been created by our leadership team, a group of former unicorn founders. Why share these resources with everyone? We are not about gatekeeping. We believe that it is immensely useful for all early founders to receive free, foundational support. 📄 Our resources include templates for financial modelling, legal contracts and pitching. 📈 More actively, we have compiled search matrixes for co-founders and grant opportunities, as well as personal development quizzes and a productivity bible. We will be giving in depth overviews of some of our resources soon, but for now, check out the selection here: https://lnkd.in/dy46z_6H ❓Which one of our resources do you find most valuable as a founder? Are there any which you think are missing? Let us know in the comments! #EWOR #entrepreneur #founder #resources #templates

Meet our fellow, Viktar Beliakou. At 12, Viktar became a super-fan of the British show “Big, Bigger, Biggest” and decided that he wanted to be an engineer. After graduating from Imperial College London, the best university in the world for Structural Engineering, he spent 5 years working at Mott MacDonald. He was involved in projects such as the £100 billion High Speed 2 railway and a £1 billion skyscraper in central London. During this time, Viktar was shocked by the inefficiencies engineers face in the information management realm. He became determined to change the way engineers work. Now, at the age of 28, Viktar is building Enjicalc, the next-generation interactive programming language for scientific and engineering calculations. This is his first step to developing the Cloud Development Environment (CDE) that serves to redefine how construction professionals write, review, and manage technical documentation. When he is not coding, Viktar spends most of his time on his bike. He recently completed 160km in 5:44h under heavy rain conditions with periodic hail in his face. On and off the bike, it is clear that Viktar Beliakou has the drive to re-segment the construction industry’s £30 billion productivity software market. #startup #entrepreneur #EWOR

🎰 Imagine stepping into a casino with a row of slot machines, each with an unknown probability of payout. With a limited number of coins, your goal is to walk away with the most money that you can get. Suppose you “get lucky” with the first machine and win on the first spin. Do you stick with the first machine and use all your coins on it - or do you try your luck with the others? 💡 This is a version of the “multi-armed bandit" problem. Daniel W. Dippold suggests that it is a good model for thinking about the exploration/exploitation dynamic of being a founder. As a founder, you have a finite amount of resources and an array of options of where to invest those resources for the best return. There are multiple start-ups you could build. And, once you’ve decided on a start up, there are multiple markets to explore, as well as products you can build for each of those markets. 🔎 If you do too much 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, such as by over-iterating your product, you might spread your resources too thin, potentially missing out on capitalising what's already working well. ⏭️ But if you do too much 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, such as by investing all of your money into your first successful product, you might miss out on new opportunities that could be even more rewarding. In entrepreneurship, as in the multi-armed bandit problem, the goal is to find the right balance between exploration and exploitation to maximise return on your resources. 🎯 Daniel argues that, ultimately, the exploration mindset is more fruitful than the exploitation mindset, especially at first. Interested to find out why? Read Daniel's full analysis here: https://lnkd.in/euRfZY2H #startup #entrepreneur #probability #EWOR

What do songwriting, Welsh Terriers and online distribution platforms have in common? Our fellow, Luke Ferris. 🎵 Luke’s career started at EMI Music, where he was promoted from Lead Web Analyst to Global Technology Change Manager in just 2 years. Following his stint at EMI, Luke earned an MBA from INSEAD business school and then joined eBay as a Senior Manager of EU Marketplaces. 🚀 In 2011, Luke used his expertise in tech and online distribution to found his first venture, laZook, a platform that simplifies online sales for brands. 5 years later, and following backing from top VC investors, laZook was acquired by a global technology distributor. 📈 Following the acquisition, Luke sought a new challenge as an Associate Partner at Bain Digital. He scaled the venture team from 3 to 70 members. 🚀 Now, Luke is building OriginAI, a GenAI platform enabling businesses to develop complex tools without developers or product teams. With EWOR’s help, Luke secured his pre-seed funding round. And, this year, he beat 20 founders to win Tech Open Air's start-up competition. 🐶 🚴 Outside of work, Luke has two main hobbies: riding his bike around Berlin with his Welsh Terrier, Maya, and writing songs for multiple bands. We guess it all adds up: Luke’s passion for songwriting reflects his knack for creativity, and his bike riding reflects continuous movement from one achievement to another. 📜 Often, a founder’s story makes sense in the end. Can you see any other commonalities between Luke’s achievements and his hobbies?

Grants propel ideas into innovations. But the best grants are hard to find. 🚀 To help, we’ve created a 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 of great grant opportunities, as linked below: https://lnkd.in/eJ466NqC ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- As inspiration for how grants can make all the difference, here are 3 recent stories of EWOR fellows who transitioned into founders after recieving grants: 1️⃣ - Elijah Mojares co-founded a bike-sharing startup at the University of the Philippines. After winning a €230k grant, his team secured 400+ active users. Spurred by this success, Elijah is now building MOMO Biotech with his co-founder, Minerva Bosch. Their joint vision is to develop next generation models to discover new drug modalities, starting with cancer 💊 🔎 2️⃣ - Clara Moldovan received a €50k Proof of Concept grant from EPFL, enabling her to found Swistor, initially as a research lab. Swistor is now creating energy storage devices that have a long lifetime, charge extremely fast (in just 2 minutes) and are environmentally friendly 🔋🌍 3️⃣ - Mark Golab co-founded Cambridge Surgical Models, winning the 2023 Cambridge University Entrepreneurs' competition and netting a €23k grant. This enabled him to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. Fast forward a year and his venture, which is developing advanced anatomical models for surgical training, was named as one of the most cutting-edge med-tech startups by cofinitive 🩺👩⚕️ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you agree that grants are both great and hard to find, and you happen to know of some great opportunities which aren't in our database, let us know! #grants #funding #entrepreneur #EWOR

Join our Deep Tech Hackathon! Team up with brilliant minds, tap into cutting-edge technology, and develop a compelling business idea. With expert mentorship from Silicon Allee, Antler, Founder Institute, and EWOR, we'll guide your team from technology to market. 💪 Your challenge: Identify a pressing real-world problem, leverage Fraunhofer HHI's advanced technologies, and create a scalable solution. 🌍 Choose from the following focus technologies: - Multimodal VR, Wearables, AI Analytics - Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) & Geographic Information Systems (GIS) - 5G & Edge Computing enabling AI-driven remote monitoring - Next-Gen 3D Visualization, Resource-Efficient VR, Advanced Scene Compression - 5G Enabled AI-Driven Digital Twin By the end of the hackathon, you’ll have a well-defined business concept ready to pitch at our Deep Tech Night, to a panel of investors and a deep tech audience. 🎤 📅 Date: August 28 & 29, 2024 📍 Location: Lanolinfabrik Register as a team or an individual here: https://lnkd.in/dFfeDg5r

𝐀𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. At least, that is the inspirational belief of our fellow, Alexander Dakhovnik. From a young age, Alex was fascinated by both biology and physics, eventually studying molecular biology at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. 🔬 In his first year at university, he learned about the Hayflick limit and telomeres (the ends of chromosomes that shorten with each cell division, eventually leading to the core mechanisms of our aging).  From that point forward, Alex was determined to slow down the root cause of all age-related diseases - the aging itself. 📜 So, he completed a PhD at Friedrich Schiller University Jena at the Leibniz Institute on Aging - Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI). During his PhD, he co-authored several high-impact papers, including in journals like Nature Portfolio. 👨🔬 He went on to pursue postdoctoral research at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. There, Alex came up with the idea to use AI to design and discover novel geroprotectors (small molecules with anti-aging properties). 🚀 This work led to the creation of SYDRA (SYnthetic DRug Algorithms), co-founded by Alex and machine learning professor, Pavlo Mozharovskyi. In 2022, NVIDIA awarded Alex with a Hardware Grant for Academic Research. In 2024, NVIDIA accepted SYDRA as a partner in their Inception Program for Startups, providing extensive support for their R&D. 👏 SYDRA has since identified five (!) new compounds that significantly extended the lifespan of the nematode worm C. elegans — compounds previously unknown in geroscience. These molecules are now being tested in healthy elderly rodents to see if they can positively impact aging dynamics. ➡️ Alex’s journey is an exemplification of our core mission at EWOR: use exceptional talent to innovate world-changing technologies. Do you think Alex is correct that, in principle, aging is a treatable condition? Let us know in the comments! #entreprenuer #startup #aging #EWOR

Meet our fellow, Daniel Koss, Switzerland’s former top gaming YouTuber who is now shaping the future of DaaS influencer software. 🎮 At age 11, Daniel was ranked 1st on 4 different Tribal Wars servers, an online strategy game with over 11 million players. 📺 At age 15, he dropped out of school and became Switzerland’s first full-time YouTuber, growing his channel to 450k subscribers and over 70 million views. 🚀 At age 18, leveraging his own experience, Daniel launched Switzerland’s first Influencer Management company, Yxterix. He went on to manage over 100 creators, including 9 of the top 10 in Switzerland, and launched national campaigns for brands like The Coca-Cola Company, McDonald's and IKEA. Daniel’s first 18 years were an exercise in turning passions into audiences and then using his experiences to help other creators. 💡His key insight? The creator market lacks access to real-time access to the most important data points, and managing agencies is hard work. 🚀 In response, Daniel founded Creable, a platform connecting businesses with a vast network of creators. His mission: help people monetise their passions. Creable now has a database of over 300 million creators, offering information on audience sentiment analysis, tone of voice, and pricing. 🔎 At EWOR, we don’t expect or want all our fellows to follow the same path. We are simply looking for talent driving innovation. Let us know in the comments if you are on an EWORian mission! #entrepreneur #startup #influencer #creator #EWOR

From nanny to tech founder. Meet Eleanor Trigwell, founder of Marvellous Babysitting. 🏫 Eleanor attended Norland College, the highly competitive, 130 year old, world-leading childcare training institute. She graduated with first class honours and went on to accumulate a decade of experience as a nanny. 🚀 Eleanor saw the need to transform the way that families find childcare. So, she founded Marvellous Babysitting to connect families with highly vetted nannies through an easy-to-use, flexible app. Eleanor has since earned features in major publications, such as the Telegraph and The New York Times, as well growing the platform to a transaction value of €300k. At EWOR, we look for founders who are not only at the top of their fields, but also strive to improve them. 🔎 If you are an expert of a field that you can improve, let us know in the comments!

What's our mission at EWOR? 🫂 Building an ecosystem of excellence across the globe to support our fellows. Last week, we hosted a brilliant angel dinner in Miami. Thank you to our attendees for the wonderful company: - 👩⚕️ Florence Shaffer (CEO of Becoming, as well as a former C-suite at Burberry and The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.) - 🏓 Irina Lanina (VU Venture Partners, as well as a former professional table tennis player!) - 💻 Pearly Yihsuan Chen (VP of Business Development at HTC VIVE, as well as Global Council VR/AR at World Economic Forum) - 🐑 Yrmis B. (CEO at All Black Sheep) - 📈 Adam Wolford (CEO, Founder at Syncquire) We had smiles all round as we discussed numerous topics from the future of health tech through to the growing strength of the female tech ecosystem. 🌍 🌏 🌎 We are keen to host many more dinners like this across the world. Where and with who should we have dinner next? #EWOR #ecosystem #investor #entrepreneur