"Don’t hesitate to pivot and adapt your idea" — Interview with Christian Hohmann of Smart-up HSLU

12.07.2022 11:30, Tracy Woodley

During the summer months, we ask people who stimulate the Swiss startup ecosystem to provide the Venturelab community with food for thought, inspiration, and recommendations. Fo this year's Summer Series, we’ll be interviewing personnel from the country's leading higher education institutions about the diverse and unique programs available to support rising entrepreneurs across Switzerland. This week, we speak to Christian Hohmann of Smart-up at HSLU.

Name: Christian Hohmann
Job title: Co-Program Director of Smart-up & Lecturer
City: Lucerne
What I do:  I support the members of our university and anyone who is interested in setting up their own business by answering their questions, providing guidance throughout the process, and connecting them with the right people within our university or in our broader region.

How would you summarize the mission of Smart-up? 
Smart-up has a clear goal: “Together we make innovation fly.” The mission of Smart-up is to support all members of the university who are interested in starting their own business or are willing to take the first steps in exploring their own ideas. To achieve this, we utilize the university as a network of experts. The second half of our mission is to connect people. Lastly, we raise awareness and bring the entrepreneurial spirit into our university. 

What are the main programs/resources offered by Smart-up?
We offer four things. The first is coaching. Every university member is entitled to receive coaching. Coaching is not only done by the members of the Smart-up team. As already stated, we connect our entrepreneurs with the right experts within our university, as needed. Our second offer is our space and infrastructure. Smart-up itself hosts a small number of co-working spaces and small offices. We also support the entrepreneurs in getting access to the lab infrastructure of the university. Our third offer is a variety of events to inspire and raise awareness for entrepreneurship amongst the university members and to allow our entrepreneurs to connect. We also offer workshops on special topics. The last part of our offer is networking with our regional and national partners and inviting entrepreneurs to become an active part of the community. 

Who are the people behind Smart-up? What makes you all excited about supporting entrepreneurs? 
Smart-up is a highly diverse team built by members from every school at our university. Everybody on this team likes the energy and the spirit that exudes from young entrepreneurs and their willingness to learn and explore new paths.

How can startup founders best benefit from the support of Smart-up?
We offer broad knowledge support as well as practical help – whether it is business, legal, technological, or any other need. We always find the right person to answer their questions within our university. All of our experts are willing to support us. Sometimes this even leads to the formation of new teams or the creation of new start-ups.
 
What are you especially proud of from your work at HSLU? 
Firstly, we are really proud of having established entrepreneurship tracks in many study programs. Students can earn credits while working on their cases and the cases can be pursued in project modules. Additionally, students have a choice of different elective modules which have been chosen for this entrepreneurship track and which allow them to gain specialized knowledge. 

We are proud of the Smart-up program itself. As we are not tied to one specific school or faculty in our university, we work as an interdisciplinary team and try to understand what entrepreneurship looks like from very different points of view. This gives us a totally different understanding of entrepreneurship itself.



Our success story is of course the startups we are pleased to host. We have supported over 200 startups over the past 10 years, and quite a number of them are doing very well and scaling up. They are able to successfully address venture capitalists and raise money for their projects, and some of them have even been rewarded national prices. 
  
What are the key strengths of HSLU that make it a great place for entrepreneurs? 
To me, it is the variety of disciplines from business, computer science, art and design, social sciences, and music to engineering and architecture. Having all these different skills and mindsets together in close proximity gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to get in touch with the right people at the right moment. 

Which fields of technology are the startups from HSLU especially strong in? 
Our startups do not necessarily focus on specific fields of technology. We have quite a strong community of startups working in the food sector, others are developing sensor technologies, working on platform technologies, or looking for thermal energy storage solutions.   

Can you share a surprising moment observed during your work at Smart-up and what you learned from it? 
I’ve learned that you shouldn’t bet on the success of an idea and that pursuing a project relies on the stamina of the founder. I remember once thinking that a particular project wouldn't generate any interest in the market, but the project ended in a very successful crowdfunding campaign. 

Which book would you recommend as a must-read for any aspiring entrepreneur?
For entrepreneurs, a good read and starting point is always Running Lean by Ash Mauryas.


What is a piece of key advice that you’d like to share with every new founder? 
Don’t hesitate to pivot and adapt your idea and never fall in love with your first ideas. Or a quote from a former colleague: “Love is for people, not for prototypes.”

Finally, what is your vision/prediction for the startup community in Switzerland?
Startups will become a central part of the innovation and education ecosystem. On the one hand, a startup is an easy way to mitigate the risk of a new offer (product and/or service) for an established company. On the other hand, it’s the best way to train people's entrepreneurial skills, whether they are the founder of the startup or working in the team supporting the founders.

Anything else you’d like our readers to know?
If somebody is keen on founding his own business he or she should do it in parallel to their studies. Founding a startup is a continuous learning process that gives student entrepreneurs the opportunity to deepen their knowledge from their studies with practical insights.

 

Available support for HSLU spin-offs:  
Smart-up
Venture Kick
Innosuisse Start-up Trainings 

Connect and follow:
LinkedIn 
HSLU Hochschule Luzern
Venture Kick
Venturelab

Twitter 
@HSLU
@VentureKick
@Venturelab_ch

Facebook
Smart-up Luzern 

Notable startups founded by HSLU alumni: