Experiential Entrepreneurship Education

The Funpreneur Competition—directed by Prof. Dr. Janina Sundermeier and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Gersch and coordinated at the Digital Entrepreneurship Hub—has grown to its 39th round by 2026. Over a single semester, students from all academic disciplines form teams, attend compact workshops on ideation, legal basics, digital marketing, and pitching, and receive hands-on mentoring from the Wirtschaftsjunioren Berlin.

With €5 in seed money and entrepreneurial creativity, teams generate real revenues and present their ventures at a festive finale hosted with Berliner Sparkasse, Profund Innovation, and IHK Berlin.

In BusinessplanLab@FUB, students work either on their own startup ideas or join real scientific spin-off teams from Freie Universität Berlin and Charité. Guided by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Gersch, academic coaches, and industry practitioners, teams master Customer Discovery, Business Model Canvas validation, competitive positioning, and financial modeling for EXIST grants and seed rounds.

Led by Prof. Dr. Janina Sundermeier, Entrepreneurship with Purpose and WoMenventures (honored with a Fellowship for Innovations in University Teaching) explore how startups can address UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), digital inclusion, and circular economy challenges while building resilient, scalable business models.

Through Berlin InnoBridge (in cooperation with ESCP Business School within the Berlin University Alliance) as well as IT-Entrepreneurship, Service Engineering, and E-Business (Prof. Dr. Janina Sundermeier & Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Gersch), students bridge technical prototyping with business model design in interdisciplinary cohorts.

Spanning the international Net Economy learning network (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Gersch) and graduate modules led by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hannes Rothe—including Towards Sustainable Futures with AI, Disruptive Innovation and Moonshot Design, and Digital Resilience for a Vital Europe—these courses equip master students with theoretical and analytical tools to design resilient digital ecosystems.