Gregor Sinai

Maybe this is a familiar scene: a founding team has a promising technology, a polished pitch deck, and a product roadmap that grows more ambitious every week. The prototype works. Advisors are encouraging. A few potential customers have said, “Interesting.” Then comes the difficult part: nobody buys, pilots stall, and the team discovers that “interesting”

The most expensive startup mistakes are often the ones someone could have warned you about.   A wrong assumption about the market. A product nobody really needs. A decision that sets you back months. Founders need to make mistakes to learn. But do they always have to be their own? This is where mentoring comes

  Building a startup in a crowded market can feel a bit like arriving late to a dinner party where everyone is already talking at once. The instinct is to speak louder. That is usually a mistake. Startups do not lose because the market is full. They lose because their difference is vague, cosmetic, or

There’s a considerable distance between “I have interesting technology” and “I want to start a company.” Many researchers know it well: you have a promising research result. And then what? Too often, good ideas stay in the drawer, not because they’re bad, but because nobody shows what the next step could look like.   AI:SPiN

  If your product risk is high, the problem may be real. But your solution may not yet be the right one.   Before adding features, validate whether users understand, use, and value the core solution enough to change their behaviour. A common early-stage trap looks productive from the outside: the team keeps shipping. New

Why connected startup ecosystems matter for Europe’s future   “Build together. Grow together. Strengthen Europe together.”, this was the theme of this year’s INiTS Sommerfest, held in the historic Arkadenhof of the University of Vienna. As our biggest event of the year, the Sommerfest is always an opportunity to celebrate. But this year’s theme also

The Truth Detective: How to Uncover Real Customer Needs (Without Getting Lied To)   Building a startup without qualitative customer interviews is like trying to navigate a dense fog with a compass that only points toward what you want to hear. You think you’re heading North, but you’re actually walking off a cliff. To navigate

The Investor’s Spotlight:   Crafting a Pitch That Commands Attention Imagine you are walking into a crowded, noisy cinema. You don’t want to sit through a three-hour, dense documentary on the history of industrial manufacturing just to see if it’s interesting. You want the trailer. You want the visually stunning, emotionally resonant two-minute clip that