What does the life of a start-up CEO look? What is the future of wireless charging for EVs? How to better organise one’s time when working from home?

These and many other questions were addressed during the Label-StartUP! On 17 October 2020, the EIT RawMaterials Academy and the Label Student Board 2019 jointly organised the second edition of the Label-StartUP! The Label Student Board is made up of student representatives from each of the EIT-Labelled master’s programmes within the EIT RawMaterials Academy. This year, the Label-StartUP! was brought together by students from each of these programmes: Julian Baehr (AMIR), Bruce Lim (AMIS), Jasper Krijn (EMC), Mohazzam Saeed (EMerald), Mridul Pareek (SINReM) and Soheil Goodarzian (SUMA).

During the event, the CEOs and founders from four start-ups supported by EIT RawMaterials presented their organisations and interacted with the students on a variety of topics ranging from personal experiences to their start-up stories. These four start-ups were Magment, Metalshub, Resourcefull and Resourcify. Our supported start-ups introduced students to the available opportunities such as Master thesis topics, internships and job posts.

The Label-StartUP! event was very interesting! It was a great approach to the intricacies of start-ups and appropriate to anyone, whether they want to start a business or are just curious.

Emilie Deram, SINReM Master’s student

Sebastian Kreft presented the story of Metalshub and was later joined by Verena Knott in the matchmaking session to explain the opportunities at their company. The presentation was followed by Wouter Crijns, who delivered an exciting talk on “How to fail and start again” from the perspective of Resourcefull. Furthermore, Gary Lewis presented Resourcify followed by a conversation on “The day in the life of a start-up CEO”. Gary gave valuable insights on how to project and time management, and most importantly on how to achieve a productive work-life balance. Last but not least, Miroslav Tesic from Magment gained the attention of the (virtual) room when introducing “product development”. The students were intrigued by their fast response to COVID-19 crisis.

I’ve never been particularly inclined towards start-ups more than other businesses, but that has changed after the event. The availability of the professionals during the event was very motivating. The networking part of the event was relaxed and informal so that we could believe that it could be us one day sitting on the other side of the screen, talking about our projects.

Emilie Deram, SINReM Master’s student

All in all, the event delivered an inspiring Saturday during the COVID-19 restrictions. The organisers hope that the event will be taken on by future Label-StartUP! representatives and expanded with more activities. They also would like to thank all those who took part in the event, including Anna Donczew-Salawa from the EIT RawMaterials Academy, who actively supported the Label-StartUP! throughout the entire time.