By Friese Niklas, GMBA Class of 2018, Tsinghua-MIT Global MBA Program

Students of the GMBA students made their first experience in the entrepreneurship world and presented their business ideas at the X-Elerator in front of professional judges on 10^th December, 2016.

X-Elerator Office

Before we started with the pitches, the international relations manager Mike introduced the X-Elerator and the advantages it has for its members. Besides free work space for up to six months, it also provides legal advice and connection to private investors, business partners and other start-ups. The work of the X-Elerator has been recently honored with several start-up prices.

Furthermore, Stive, a young Serbian entrepreneur, introduced his project. He builds up a platform for internationals in China to facilitate the access to jobs for non-Chinese speakers. Stive is already part of the X-Elerator and he shared his entrepreneurship experience as well as the challenges he faces in China.

After his start-up insights, we introduced the GMBA pitches. Besides two pitches from our class, we also invited our MBA alumni Michael Chen as well as Keith and Putt from G15 to pitch.

We first started with the pitch from Peren Kant Xiao and Jorge Alvaro Montoya Urbano, students from GMBA Class of 2018. They presented their idea “Speak up”. Speak up is a human translation service that enables users to contact native speakers. This app connects foreigners with locals so that users have the ability to contact a private translator on the phone anytime.

The second pitch was presented by Michael, our MBA alumni who will enter the market with his business idea in February. Michael graduated from the GMBA last year and is currently working on his start-up called Wealthwiz.  Wealthwiz enables Chinese citizens to invest in stocks and ETFs on the American market. Furthermore, this program is giving investment recommendations based on back-testing.

After that, Jianke Xiao, student from GMBA Class of 2018, introduced her interesting idea. She works on a platform that brings volunteers and NGO’s together. Volunteers can use the platform to find job opportunities in all kinds of different organizations that offer volunteer work around the globe. Keke is currently looking for a business partner who is taking over the technical part and who helps her to set up the platform.

Keith and Putt from the GMBA Class of 2017, pitched the last business idea of the event. They are working on an app called “App-Etizer”. This app is giving customized app suggestions based on the current location of the user. Four G15 students, all from four different Southeast-Asian countries, are currently working on that project. The app is particularly focusing on South-East Asian who travel and study abroad.

Group Photo

We wish everyone good luck with their great ideas and we would like to thank everyone, who participated in this event as a pitcher and as a spectator. Besides GMBA students, we were very glad to have Prof. Steven White, alumni Michael and several MBA exchange students attending the event.