By Adedapo Adesanya
Applications are open for the latest Westerwelle Young Founders Programme, which offers outstanding young entrepreneurs from developing and emerging countries six months of business mentoring and the chance to participate in the Young Founder Conference in Berlin.
The Westerwelle Foundation for International Understanding supports collaboration between young entrepreneurs, executives and decision-makers from around the world.
Its Young Founders Programme is a fully-funded six-month programme for 25 exceptional entrepreneurs from developing and emerging economies.
The programme aims to connect young founders from all over the world and offers a mentoring programme tailored to their particular challenges. It supports them in further developing their entrepreneurial skills and their international network.
The 6-month-long Programme Spring 2021 starts with a digital kick-off conference from March 1 – 5, 2021. In the following six months, the young founders will have the opportunity to develop their company with the support of a personal mentor and to exchange ideas with the other young founders and obtain feedback.
The 10 best startups will be selected to attend the week-long Young Founder Conference in Berlin in Q3 of 2021.
Attending the conference we will give startups the chance to pitch in front of investors, further develop their entrepreneurial skills, and meet players from the German startup scene.
The requirement includes recently (in the last 5 years) started a for-profit company with a scalable business model that has achieved Product-Market Fit and has ideally secured first external funding (if you run a business model that requires external investment).
Also, the company is based in a developing or emerging country or has a strong business focus on developing and emerging economies also possessing a good working knowledge of English.
In addition, they must be available to attend the digital kick-off conference and can make time to participate in monthly mentoring and peer mentoring calls for the 6-month programme.
Modupe Gbadeyanka