Perspectives of Entrepreneurial Cybersecurity

Objectives

This lecture series gives comprehensive insights and hands-on experience into the founders' activities in the vicinity of cybersecurity and the entrepreneurial world. 

This lecture series covers talks by international and successful founders, sharing their journey as entrepreneurs and founders with you, including their take and the lessons learned. At the same time, this lecture series features guest lecturers, each covering a different aspect of the entrepreneurial world, such as venture capitalists, communication and marketing experts, and consultants for entrepreneurs.

Finally, this lecture series entails developing and presenting concrete, marketable, and innovative ideas, where students, organized in teams, identify a new product idea, do the necessary background research, and pitch it to an audience.

Please note that while this lecture is aimed at the Entrepreneurial Cybersecurity Masters Program students for grading and achieving the credit points, we invite everyone interested to attend the talks even when not participating to get credit points!

Schedule of the Presentations

This lecture usually takes place every Monday from 14:15 to 16:00 in CISPA C0, 0.05. However, there will be a few exceptions for date and location. Please check the highlighted exceptions below.

Date	Time	Presenter	Room	URL / Topic
Oct 30	14:15 – 16:00	Sven Bugiel and Giancarlo Pellegrino	C0, 0.05	Introduction and kick-off meeting Presentation of the tech transfer team
Nov 6	14:15 – 16:00	Beth Susanne	C0, 0.05	Topic: Importance and structure of a good pitch deck and communication. Personal webpage and portfolio
Nov 13	14:15 – 16:00	Lukas Bieringer (QuantPI)	C0, 0.07	QuantPI website LinkedIn
Nov 20	16:15 – 18:00	Jun.-Prof. Dr. Benedikt Schnellbächer	C0, 0.05	Topic: Digital business models and their impact Home page at UdS
Nov 27				None
Dec 4	14:15 – 16:00	Dr. Peter Manfred Memminger	C0, 0.05	Sustainable & Invest CISPA Venture Capital Fund LinkedIn
Dec 11	14:15 – 16:00	Bernd Pohl	C0, 0.05	LinkedIn Homepage
Dec 18	14:15 – 16:00	Felix Magedanz (Hanko)	C0, 0.05	Hanko GmbH
🎅 No presentations between Dec 25 and Jan 1 🎅
Jan 8	18:15 – 20:00	Brian Silverstein (MirrorTab)	Zoom	MirrorTab LinkedIn co-founder and former CTO of  Honey
Jan 15	15:15 – 17:00	Pedram Amini (InQuest)	C0, 0.02	InQuest Website Labs Biography
Jan 22	14:15 – 16:00	Juergen Philippi (CISPA)	C0, 0.05	Topic: Importance of looking at the problem, not the solution
Jan 29	14:15 – 16:00	Ingrida Krivickaite	C0, 0.05	LinkedIn Gründercampus / Triathlon (German)
Feb 5	14:15 - 16:00	Prof. Dr. Sandro Etalle (SecurityMatters)	C0, 0.05	Academic webpage News (2018): Forescout acquires SecurityMatters

 

Lecture Organization

 

1. Weekly presentations and Q&A

Roughly every week will be a presentation either by a founder, a venture capitalist, or experts, e.g., in the area of marketing, business, or customer acquisition. A Q&A follows each talk with the presenter. 

Students task (mandatory for CP): In preparation for the Q&A session, every student has to prepare by checking the startup and supplemental material (URLs are in the schedule) and submit via the CMS 2-3 questions they would ask in the Q&A. Questions could be related to the niche in the market that the company occupies, the target group they aim at, pitfalls and challenges, etc.

 

2. Development of a Project Idea

Each team/student will develop a project idea or new product.

Ideas/products can be entrepreneurial ideas you plan to pursue or potential/hypothetical (yet based on actual research, more below). ECS students are strongly encouraged to present the project idea they plan to develop or use this lecture series to create one. 

When developing the project idea, we expect each team/student to:

• Define the problem and new idea/product intends to solve, e.g., who will use the proposed idea and for doing what? Is there a market already? Who are the competitors? Will the new idea create a new market?
• Identify the unique selling point of the proposed solution
• Cover similar ideas and elaborate on how the new idea differentiates from previous solutions
• Prepare a plan covering requirements analysis, funding, and team description, e.g., what are the technical requirements to realize the idea? How does the team plan to fulfill those requirements? What skills are necessary, and how does the current team fit the project and cover necessary/required skills?

Developing the idea requires extensive research. Students must document their effort and report them in a final report and prepare a pitch of their ideas (a short presentation).

Students task (mandatory for CP): Each team must submit the following artifacts

1. (mid-term requirement) A link to a video recording of the first pitch draft
2. (mid-term requirement) Comments to other teams' pitch draft
3. (end-term requirement) The slide deck PDF file of the final version of the pitch, integrating comments and feedback
4. (end-term requirement) The final report PDF file

 

3. Final Joint Event

At the end of the semester, we will have a joint 1-day event where every student/team delivers the pitch of their ideas in front of an audience. 

To this end, the CISPA faculty will provide a short list of recent research results with potential for tech transfer into a product, and students/teams should derive their product idea and pitch from this list. This list avoids the need to reveal any real business idea that students already have in mind. At the same time, this day also provides an opportunity to exchange ideas and thoughts with the CISPA faculty.

To prepare for this event, in the introduction, you'll get to know

• General guidelines for entrepreneurial pitches
• A typical pitch structure
• How to motivate your topic

Students' task (mandatory for CP): Each team must participate and deliver the final version of the pitch in front of a jury. 

 

Requirements and Grading

See this page.

Important dates

• Kickoff: Oct 30, 14:15, CISPA C0, 0.05
• Mid-term requirements deadlines:
  • Submit link of video recording: 19.01.24
  • Submit comments of teams' video recording: 05.02.24
• End-term requirements deadlines:
  • Submit PDF slide deck: TBD 
  • Submit PDF report: TBD
  • Participate to the final event and deliver the pitch