Georgian-German StartUp Forum 2017

Project Description:

PMC Research in partnership with the Georgian Innovation and Technology Agency (GITA) and with support from the German Embassy in Tbilisi and Procredit Bank, organized the first German-Georgian StartUp Forum. The forum was held as part of the Germany-Georgia Friendship year of 2017. PMC Research created a platform connecting both German and Georgian business communities.

The goal of the project was to facilitate Germany’s knowledge and experience sharing with innovative startups in Georgia in order to boost Georgia’s business sector capacity development. Furthermore, it aimed to connect German and Georgian start-up communities in order to create partnership opportunities between the countries.

To achieve these goals, PMC Research organized a visit of German experts to mentor Georgian entrepreneurs. The latter had the possibility to benefit from the expertise of German start-up practitioners, and enhanced their level of knowledge about management as well as best practices for building start-ups in Germany.

In the first part of the forum, three German experts – Michael Hübl (flinc GmbH), Wolfgang Bernecker (Pandata GmbH) and Stephan Dabels (AmbiGate GmbH) – shared stories of their start-ups with the Georgian audience at Tech Park Georgia. In the second part of the forum, the topic was “Innovation Support Mechanisms in Georgia” covering private sector support programs of Enterprise Georgia, and the success stories of Georgian startuppers. At the end of the forum, German experts held meetings with 11 startuppers from Georgia at Tech Park Georgia in a B2B format. The Georgian participants represented a range of start-up fields, such as marketing, management, consulting, language learning websites, travel guide apps, smart rings, hi-tech acoustic systems and loudspeakers.