17: Startup Incubation in Berlin - A conversation with Marvin Göldner

17: Startup Incubation in Berlin - A conversation with Marvin Göldner

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down at CIC Berlin with Marvin Göldner, co-head of Startup Incubator Berlin, the entrepreneurship center of the Berlin School of Economics and Law. Startup Incubator Berlin is located within CIC Berlin. Marvin works right at the beginning of the startup journey. He describes his world as “zero to one”: working with entrepreneurs from the moment when they have an idea, a possible co-founder, a first prototype, or maybe only a problem they want to understand better. That is a fascinating place to spend time, because it is where many companies either begin to become real or quietly disappear. One of Marvin’s memorable messages in this conversation is that founders often fall in love with their idea too soon. They can become attached to a solution before they have really understood the problem. At Startup Incubator Berlin, Marvin and his team push founders to get out of the building, build prototypes, test early MVPs, and speak with real customers early and often. Their monthly UX testing format, which happens within Venture Café Berlin, is a structured method to make that happen at scale. We also talk about Berlin as a startup city. Marvin is candid about both the opportunities and the challenges. Berlin has become more mature as a startup ecosystem, with strong networks, venture capital, creative energy, and many founders looking for collaborators. At the same time, finding housing has become harder, and the city needs more scale-ups that stay and create long-term jobs. Marvin also shares his work with Climate Tech Hub Berlin and the Urban Innovation Forum, which bring together startups, researchers, infrastructure players, municipalities, and companies working on climate and urban innovation. I liked his point that good ecosystems should not be closed shops. They need easy entry points, strong events, and repeated opportunities for people to be in the same room long enough to build trust. Toward the end of the conversation, Marvin raises a question that feels very current: In the age of AI, do technical founders still need business co-founders, and do business founders still need technical co-founders? With tools like ChatGPT, Canva, Lovable, and Cursor AI, some founders can now do much more on their own than they could before. But Marvin’s view is that this only works up to a point. Building a company is not only about tasks. It is also about the mental support, trust, and shared commitment of being in it together. That theme connects with something I have seen again and again in innovation communities. Entrepreneurship often begins with people meeting each other, spending time together, testing ideas, and deciding to build. The spaces, programs, and gatherings that make those moments possible are not background infrastructure. They are part of how innovation actually comes together. Featured guest: Marvin Göldner, co-head of Startup Incubator Berlin Host: Tim Rowe, Founder and Executive Chair of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) Topics and keywords: Marvin Göldner, Startup Incubator Berlin, HWR Berlin, Berlin School of Economics and Law, CIC Berlin, Where Innovation Happens, Cambridge Innovation Center, Berlin startups, startup incubation, startup ecosystems, early-stage startups, zero to one, lean startup, UX testing, MVPs, customer discovery, Venture Café Berlin, Climate Tech Hub Berlin, Urban Innovation Forum, co-founder matching, AI and startups, ChatGPT, Lovable, Cursor AI, Canva, Berlin entrepreneurship, startup founders, innovation hubs.

16: Berlin entrepreneur spotlight: Jorge Ferreira and his company LIQUIDLOOP

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down at CIC Berlin with Jorge Ferreira, founder of LIQUIDLOOP GmbH, a Berlin-based startup working at the frontier of climate technology, electrochemistry, and sustainable chemistry.This episode is part of a larger experiment I am doing to occasionally interview entrepreneurs working within innovation hubs, to learn about the innovation process from their perspectives. I ask about their work, but also about their experience as innovators in their communities.Jorge, whose name is pronounced very much like the English name “George,” and his team are building tools that help scientists see what is happening inside complex chemical reactions in real time. One goal is to take a compound we often think of as waste, such as carbon dioxide, and transform it into something useful that we can actually build products with.In our conversation, Jorge explains how LIQUIDLOOP’s technology helps researchers study reactions related to CO₂ capture and CO₂ transformation into other molecules, some of which may matter for the energy transition. We talk about why scientists need better tools to understand these reactions, how electrochemistry can help turn electricity into fuels or useful chemicals, and why this kind of research may become an important part of a cleaner industrial future.Jorge speaks both as a scientist and as an entrepreneur. He has spent years thinking about catalysts, materials, electrochemical reactions, and how molecules behave at tiny scales. But he is also thinking about how those discoveries move out of the lab and eventually become part of real-world solutions.We also talk about Berlin. Jorge moved from Portugal to Berlin more than a decade ago to pursue his scientific work, and he describes why the city became the right place for him to build. Berlin has a special energy. It attracts people who want to explore, build, experiment, and live creatively. In Jorge’s case, that energy helped lead him to build a company working on a fulfilling scientific challenge with wide-ranging applications.This episode underscores that climate innovation is not only about big infrastructure and policy. It is also about the deep tools and scientific instruments that allow researchers to rewire how our industrial processes work. Before a technology can scale, someone has to see the reaction clearly. LIQUIDLOOP is trying to make that possible.Featured guest: Jorge Ferreira, founder of LIQUIDLOOP GmbHHost: Tim Rowe, Founder and Executive Chair of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC)Topics and keywords: LIQUIDLOOP, Jorge Ferreira, CIC Berlin, Where Innovation Happens, Cambridge Innovation Center, climate tech, carbon capture, CO₂ capture, CO₂ transformation, electrochemistry, electrocatalysis, sustainable chemistry, green hydrogen, ammonia, renewable energy storage, energy transition, startup Berlin, Berlin startups, climate innovation, deep tech, scientific instruments, Differential Electrochemical Mass Spectrometry, DEMS, startup ecosystems, innovation hubs.

15: Strengthening the Berlin Innovation Community - with Ewa Geresz, Director of Venture Cafe Berlin

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down in Berlin with Ewa Geresz, Director of Venture Café Berlin and one of the people helping grow the Venture Café network around the world. Venture Café has a simple mission: connecting innovators to make things happen. As Ewa explains in this conversation, there is a lot of thought and care behind this. Every week, in cities around the world, Venture Café brings together founders, investors, scientists, artists, students, corporate leaders, public sector people, and others she calls “curious doers” in a free, open environment. The goal is not just networking. It is to create the conditions where people who would not normally meet each other can discover shared interests, build trust, and sometimes create something entirely new. We recorded this conversation at CIC Berlin, where Venture Café Berlin holds its Thursday Gathering. Ewa shares what a typical evening looks like, including a recent gathering focused on fashion tech. Nearly 350 people attended that night, which gives a sense of the energy that is forming around this community. One of the ideas I love most in this conversation is that innovation often happens at the intersection of different worlds. Ewa and I talk about the importance of breaking silos, building trust through regular gatherings, and designing spaces where people meet first as human beings, not as job titles or company names. We also discuss why a recurring, low-barrier event can become an important piece of a city’s innovation infrastructure. Ewa also shares what it has been like to help build Venture Café Berlin, including the importance of understanding the local ecosystem before trying to strengthen it. Venture Café is not an accelerator, incubator, or investor. It is a platform for the people already building a city’s innovation community. The goal is to help local founders, ecosystem builders, institutions, and innovators find each other more easily and work together more effectively. This episode is also a good introduction for anyone who has heard of Venture Café but has never attended, or for anyone thinking about ways to strengthen the innovation ecosystem in their own city. Ewa explains who should come, how to get involved, and why the first step is often simply showing up. If you are building a company, thinking about starting something, working in science, art, technology, government, education, or just curious about innovation, Venture Café is meant to be open to you. Featured guest: Ewa Geresz, Director of Venture Café Berlin. Host: Tim Rowe, Founder and Executive Chair of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC). Topics and keywords: Venture Café Berlin, Venture Café Global, CIC Berlin, Cambridge Innovation Center, Berlin startup ecosystem, innovation communities, startup ecosystems, ecosystem building, innovation hubs, entrepreneurship, founders, investors, co-founder matching, fashion tech, UX startups, creative technology, community building, serendipity, trust, cross-sector collaboration, innovation infrastructure, Thursday Gathering, startup community, Where Innovation Happens.

14: Innovation in Berlin and the World: Timon Rupp - Innovation hub builder and MD of CIC Germany

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down in Berlin with Timon Rupp.Timon has spent much of his career at the intersection of technology, mobility, startups, corporates, and public policy. Before joining CIC as Managing Director for Germany, Timon founded and led The Drivery, one of the world’s best-known mobility innovation hubs. He and I share the vision that if we bring bright people together around a hard problem, and give them a focused place to work in close proximity to one another, the speed and quality of their innovation will increase dramatically. One result can be big, positive impacts on the world. A simple example is how autonomous driving appears to be ~8-10x safer than human driving, looking at serious accidents.We talk about how innovation ecosystems are built, why physical places matter, and what Germany can contribute to the next era of global innovation.In this conversation, Timon and I explore how innovation is not just about buildings, programs, or capital. It is about people, trust, density, and the informal collisions that help ideas move from invention to real-world impact.Since Timon runs CIC Berlin, we talked about CIC Berlin itself and share some B-roll. The building is extraordinary: large, historic, full of courtyards, high ceilings, and layers of Berlin’s complicated past. It is the kind of place where a new chapter of innovation can happen. Under Timon’s leadership, CIC Berlin is evolving from a single focused hub into what he terms a “hub of hubs,” where clusters such as artificial intelligence, mobility, fashion, fintech, health, music tech, universities, startups, corporates, investors, and policymakers can interact under one roof.From there, Timon and I discuss how globalization is changing, why global innovation platforms may become even more important in a more fragmented world, and why ecosystems like CIC can help keep channels open between people who still need to work together.We look ahead to the technologies that may define the coming decades: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, fusion energy, autonomous mobility, drones, solid-state batteries, and new forms of transportation. Some of these changes are exciting. Some are unsettling. And most are both. That makes the role of innovation communities even more important, because we need places where people can understand what is happening, ask better questions, and help guide these technologies toward useful and responsible outcomes.Toward the end, Timon offers advice for people who want to participate in this future. His message is encouraging: stay open, keep learning, talk to people, join communities, and do not try to navigate the next wave alone. Major technology waves, which he refers to as "hype cycles," are coming faster now, and each one also creates a new on-ramp for people who want to build, contribute, and help shape what comes next.Featured guest: Timon Rupp, Managing Director of CIC Germany and founder of The Drivery.Host: Tim Rowe, founder and Executive Chair of Cambridge Innovation Center.Topics include: innovation hubs, CIC Berlin, Germany innovation, Berlin startup ecosystem, The Drivery, mobility innovation, automotive innovation, artificial intelligence, AI ecosystems, quantum computing, fusion energy, autonomous vehicles, solid-state batteries, drones, startup ecosystems, corporate innovation, university innovation, Venture Café, global collaboration, innovation infrastructure, and where innovation happens.

13: Innovation in Japan: Tak Umezawa, a leading voice in Japan’s ecosystem, and Chairman, CIC Japan

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down in Tokyo with Tak Umezawa, a leading voice in Japan’s innovation ecosystem and Chairman of CIC Japan, for a wide-ranging conversation about Japan’s innovation economy. Tak has had a front-row seat to many sides of Japanese innovation. For much of his career, he led A.T. Kearney in Japan, stepping down as its Chairman last year. In that role, he served as an advisor to the CEOs of many large Japanese corporations, as well as to senior Japanese government leaders. He is known as a proponent of the idea that Japan can recognize and build on its uniqueness, not just as a technological power, but also as a cultural power. He helped spur many initiatives in this area, including the well-known Cool Japan initiative and fund. Tak also happens to have been my classmate at MIT Sloan School of Management, and a friend for 33 years. Since CIC’s arrival in Japan, Tak has helped build CIC into one of Japan’s most important startup communities. He agreed to become our Chairman a little under a decade ago, while continuing in his role at A.T. Kearney. This conversation is not just about startups. It is about the deeper question of how Japan can turn its extraordinary strengths into new global companies. And it is also two old friends catching up on a topic of shared interest. Japan is still one of the world’s great countries for quality, manufacturing, science, design, culture, and trust. But as Tak explains, having great ideas is not the same thing as innovation. Innovation requires making those ideas real. It requires commercializing them. It requires building companies that can compete in the most important markets in the world. We talk about why large Japanese companies are so good at their core businesses, but often struggle with disruptive innovation. We also talk about why Japanese startups may need to think globally from the beginning, rather than first building only for the Japanese market and expanding later. Tak makes a provocative suggestion: for some Japanese startups, getting acquired early by the right global company may actually be a smart way to bring Japanese innovation to the world faster. We also explore what Japanese innovation policy could look like if the goal were to create more globally competitive startups. Tak highlights three big ideas: Japan should attract more international investors; Japan should unlock the technology and talent trapped inside large corporations; and Japan should internationalize its people, companies, and institutions much more deeply. This leads us into a broader discussion about talent. We talk about women in Japan’s workforce. We talk about Japanese people who have lived abroad and may not feel fully welcomed back. We talk about dual citizenship, overseas Japanese talent, and what Japan might learn from countries like India and China. We also talk about Japan’s global cultural power. Food, anime, manga, gaming, beauty, fashion, and design are no longer niche interests. They are major global markets. But in many cases, non-Japanese entrepreneurs have been faster than Japanese companies at building global businesses around Japanese culture. That is both a warning and a huge opportunity. Toward the end, we talk about CIC Japan itself. Tak shares what he thinks helped CIC Tokyo develop such a strong community. He also talks about CIC Catalyst, climate innovation, life sciences, Fukuoka, Osaka, and the next stage of CIC’s work in Japan. For me, this conversation is really about Japan’s next chapter. Japan has world-class science. It has trusted brands. It has creative culture with global appeal. It has extraordinary talent. The question is how to connect those strengths to entrepreneurship, global markets, and places where innovators can find each other. That is where innovation happens. Featured guest: Tak Umezawa Chairman, CIC Japan Host: Tim Rowe Founder and Executive Chair, CIC