The Scientist Entrepreneur CourseHybrid Event

Jan 10, 2024, 5:00 PM → Mar 13, 2024, 7:00 PM Europe/Berlin

seminar room 2 (Heidelberg/Online)

The Scientist Entrepreneurship Course is offered as a hybrid course combining onsite elements in Heidelberg with online lectures: We will meet in person for the introduction. Then, we will have four lectures online. For the pitch presentations we will meet again onsite in Heidelberg.

Course description and goals

Participants are grouped in founder teams to develop a viable and compelling business model. Each founder team will receive a current research article about an invention or discovery in the field of life sciences or health tech as a basis for its business idea and finally present it in front of a critical audience. During the lectures, you will learn the basics of intellectual property, innovation, economic value creation from academic research results and crucial components of a convincing pitch presentation.

Course materials and supplies

We will provide access to an online folder with all lectures and additional materials (e.g. articles, reading recommendations).

Pitch Presentations

We expect every team (max 4 participants per team) to prepare a pitch presentation based on a scientific article. A jury of the lecturers will grade the presentations (in case of participating students who need credit points) and provide feedback after each team presentation.

Attendance and participation

We expect you to attend all lectures and pitch presentations. If you miss more than 2 meetings (lectures or pitch presentations) or miss the pitch presentation of your team, we will not be able to provide you with a certificate of attendance or credit points. We are providing live lectures and encourage participants to raise questions via the chat function to enable an interactive learning experience. 

Technical requirements for the online lectures 

Participants need a computer with a microphone, a camera and access to the internet, all lectures will be provided via ZOOM. A camera and microphone are recommended to ensure an interactive teaching mode.

Venue for in-person meetings

seminar room 2, Im Neuenheimer Feld 327, 69120 Heidelberg 

Wed, January 10

Intro Lecture: In-person meeting in Heidelberg

• Intro to Scientist Entrepreneur Course
• Intro to Osterwalder's business model canvas in the context of life sciences
• Pitching: tips and tricks

Wed, January 17

Lecture 1: Online

• Structure of a typical pitch part 1
• In depth intro to Osterwalder´s business model canvas
• Types of market and introduction to market analysis including market segmentation
• Customer categories in digital health, medtech and biotech and customer types

Wed, January 24

Lecture 2: Online

• Structure of a typical pitch part 2
• Introduction to the concept of a business model in biotech/pharma
• Introduction to teams and their challenges
• Introduction to key activities and key partners
• Introduction to roadmaps and milestones
• The concept of de-risking of a biotech/pharma asset

Wed, January 31

Lecture 3: Online

• The biotech/pharma development process and its challenges
• The startup cash curve
• Biotech funding: sources of capital, debt versus equity financing, venture capital investment criteria
• Short intro to venture capital
• Short intro to valuation and equity dilution

Wed, February 7

Lecture 4: Online

• Introduction to patents
• Short introduction to trade secrets, trademarks, and copyrights
• Thoughts about contingency planning

Wed, March 6

Pitch Rounds: In-person meeting in Heidelberg

Number of pitch rounds depends on the amount of teams

Thu, March 7

Pitch Rounds: In-person meeting in Heidelberg

Number of pitch rounds depends on the amount of teams

Wed, March 13

Pitch Rounds: In-person meeting in Heidelberg

Number of pitch rounds depends on the amount of teams