Forever young: The Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I) at WU Vienna celebrates its 20th birthday! Since its inception, more than 850 managers have improved their firms’ performances by conducting cutting-edge innovation projects with us. At the E&I Touchdown, E&I students (Bachelor, Master and MBA level) present the results of the semester in pitches of just 45 seconds. The 30 projects were conducted with disruptive start-ups, established companies and research organizations such as Klarx, Varta, Fraunhofer, Wiener Linien and the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology.

Best Pitch Award

WU Rector Univ.-Prof. Dr. Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger opened the hybrid event with congratulating words. More than 60 people attended the in-person event at WU and another 200 joined the online livestream. During the event, the best pitches were selected by a jury of experts as well as the audience. The jury consisted of Hannah Wundsam (Austrian Startups), Lisa-Marie Fassl (Female Founders), Susanne Striegl (N26), Christoph Kanneberger (APEX Ventures), Julia Reilinger (B&C Group), Dr. Katharina Klausberger (Investor, Co-owner of 12 Rounds Capital, Co-Founder of shpock) and Georg Weber (primeCrowd).

The winner of the category "Best Pitch Bachelor" was the team around the startup “bottleUP”. bottleUP strives to provide a solution for the upcoming introduction of deposit for plastic bottles and cans in Austria by offering a pick-up service. In the "Best Pitch Master" category, “mylingua” made the race. The start-up aims to personalize learning new languages with the help of AI. The audience could also vote for its favorite pitch. The "Audience Award" went to the team of students who worked on “levir” – a fully serviced plant solution for office spaces.

The E&I Touchdown was generously supported by our partners Frequentis and WKO.