The #Startupnight 2022 was special in many ways: The networking event for the startup ecosystem celebrated its 10th birthday (hence the title SUN X), it came back as a big live event after two digital editions during the pandemic, and it presented three full days of programming with a wide spectrum of topics, speakers, impulses, sponsors and – of course – startups.

The Startup Incubator Berlin was an official partner and the curator of the Incubator Day on Friday, September 9th, packed with a colourful program before closing with the actual Startupnight party.

It was an honor, and some hard work for many weeks: A steering committee was established, weekly meetings held to coordinate agendas, plans were drawn up for guest speakers and panels, workshops defined and exhibitors lists built and re-built.

The result was a thrilling day with many highlights:

  • over 20 Incubators exhibited at the Incubator Day, bringing along one startup each to pitch against each other for Super Demo Day (€ 1000 prize award from the Berliner Sparkasse)
  • 7 Workshops were held to different topics such as the Lean Startup Method, rapid prototying, Legal 101 for Startups and more.
  • The X-Challenge took place for two days in a separate lounge to tackle the question on „How to find the perfect (business) match“ . About 30 strangers came together, spontaneously formed teams and worked in a professional Design Thinking workshop on a new approach. The three finalists pitched at the end of the Incubator Day on stage, and the winning team was awarded € 2,000 by the Icecubator and Spitzhorli Invest AG.

Over 30 Speakers went on stage to talk about their expertise and share their know-how: From project management leaders to representatives of all incubators to the Business Angel Club Berlin Brandenburg e.V. with three duos of investors and founders.

At the end of the day, the incubators emptied their booths in record time to make space for their startups represented. An impressive collection of 120 startups exhibited at the Startupnight, from Ed-Tech to High-Tech, from Sustainability to Aerospace. So very impressive!

So what was the magic for us in this huge project?

The magic of the Startupnight was to see all incubator in one big hall, hard-working colleagues that all support the Berlin Startup Ecosysystem and their startups to become successful.

And most wonderful of all was to see that our startups from the Startup Incubator Berlin where visible everywhere: There was a2zebra who pitched for Super Demo Day and reached the finals. Participating in the X-Challenge were two co-founders from our teams Trueffles and Stella.  And Tina from Trueffles won the X-Challenge with her team!

Joining the Workshop from professional Wafm Academie about the potential of team members was our team prevact. The team Cleverlohn made it in the Masterclass program of the HTW after finishing the Berlin Startup Scholarship with us. CBright and DocVox were nominated for the Pitching Stage in the evening by investors.

More SIB teams could be found among the exhibitors, such as We4All, Sittery, Kursinsel, Hale, Robbi and our dear alumni teams such as Bearcover, Brea, LexHub and truemetrics who meanwhile joined different programs in other incubators or secured their investments already.

What does this mean to us?

Public funding for startups works! Our offers for our startup teams work! Working together in a wide network of the Berlin startup ecosystem works!

And last but not least:  We are very proud of our startup teams and happy to accompany them on their journey to success. Big applause!