2020 in Review: What happened? Part 1

Let’s lookback at the first 6 months of 2020.

January

We closed 2019 with On The Red Couch with Harry Yeff, and a Masterclass with Klarna’s Sybill Bruggemann, and our events team continued into 2020 in full-force.

The Dark Side of Mobility panel brought TIER Mobility, WeShare, Audi Denkwerkstatt and Chargery together for a productive discussion on the implications of mobility solutions in cities. Plus we had QVSTA Founder, Ludwig Henne, on our Founder Focus Facebook LIVE interview series.

News of the month

Community-born startup, Medloop, secure €6m investment.

February

We welcomed another international community into our network with our Beats by Dr. Dre partnership, aligning our creative-tech communities with programming and events, and an awesome interactive launch event.

Stealth Mode, our mentorship program for early-stage female founders, was introduced to the world. Over the following months we received applications from across industries before the program began mid-pandemic.

Thilo Stracke, Social Media Manager at BVG, joined us for his Masterclass, ‘The Social Media Battlefield’. He shared great insights into BVG’s approach to storytelling, humor and connecting with your audience online.

Read of the month

Maotik: CODE Just Got More Creative

News of the month

SDUI raised €2m in seed funding, including support from Factory Berlin Founder Udo Schloemer.

Soundcloud raised a total +€75mill investment

Community startup Vyking partnered with Poizon

March

In March we promoted female entrepreneurship in our community and beyond for International Women’s Month.

We held our second Futures Forum, and another Voices For Tech panel with ArtCenter as our last fully offline events in 2020. For our Founder Focus interview series we spoke to Diane Delava from mattrvest, and Emily Jordan from Ancora.ai.

Read of the month

Medloop: A Model For Preventative Care

News of the month

Penta raised a further €18.5m

n8n closed $1.5m investment from Sequoia

Penta, Kleiderly & AiSight in Forbes’ 30 under 30

April

During lockdown members found opportunity in the limitations on our work and personal lives. In the WirVsVirus Hackathon a member-led team built LabHive, a platform to make use of excess capacity in lab testing facilities. Data Natives helped host the HackCorona Hackathon, gathering innovators and technologists around the world to find pandemic-beating solutions.

Our startups started pivoting in response to the crisis. Dialogshift expanded their focus from hospitality support chatbots to include healthcare. QVSTA moved to support creators and influencers find work despite being stuck at home. Ancora.ai’s product gained even more traction as they connected COVID-19 patients with clinical trials across the world, speeding recovery and provide insightful data for medics working to tackle the virus.

Our events team hosted Immer Lokal, Jetzt Digital. The online e-commerce conference connected experts from Shopify, Jimdo and others with local small businesses, to give them advice, resources and knowledge to migrate their businesses online in the face of lockdown.

News of the month

Minespider raised €2.8m

May

We welcomed NASA Astronaut Jeanette Epps On The Red Couch for a chat with SheSaid.So founder Andreea Magdalina.

Our Chief Relationship Officer, Catherine Bischoff, was interviewed for VOGUE Business about Stealth Mode and the work we’re doing to support female founders via network building, mentorship and access to investment opportunities.

News of the month

Bring! secured 4m Swiss Francs investment

Bolt raised an additional €100m

June

In the summer we hosted a Fireside Chat with the Founder of HR solution company Personio, Hanno Renner. He shared his experience of ‘steering a $500 million company through shifting social and economic realities’. Catch up on the livestream over on Factory Berlin TV, or read our summary blogpost.

We also were joined by experts from F10, Societe Generale, Penta, Finch Capital and mattrvest for Futures Forum: FinTech.

Watch of the month

CHANGEMAKERS with Harry Yeff

News of the month

Pandata built a dashboard that strives to visualise the impact of COVID-19

Intrepida won the COVID-19 solutions EIT Grant