Inspired by Max Loessl, founder Agrilution @GEW 2013, part 1

As we have previously promised you, we would like to bring in front of you some of the projects presented during the conference Global Entrepreneurship Week held last week in Maastricht, The Netherlands. There were so many great ideas and so many innovative projects discussed and we do believe they are worth sharing and we hope they will inspire you or at least motivate you to start thinking out-of-the-box .
One of the projects that made a great impact on us concerns Vertical Farming. Perhaps, you are not very familiar with this concept but Max Loessl, a 24 year old student from Germany who is currently studying at the HAS University of Applied Science in the Netherlands has built a company called Agrilution which develops this concept to a whole new level.

Vertical Farming is basically a new way of producing nutritional food using a limited surface by stacking greenhouses on top of the other which are connected as a recycling system. There are several advantages such as year-round production independent of the climate, fertility of the land, temperature or even droughts, floods and other natural disasters which jeopardise today traditional farming. Moreover, it reduces the use of water up to 99% and also the use of nutrients and there is no need to use pesticides or herbicides.

Before we go further into the subject we would like to highlight the inspiration behind this start-up. When Max was asked by the audience WHY he invests his time in vertical farming he answered: "I saw a problem in limited food resources and I wanted to find a solution. I read a book called "Vertical farming" by Dr Dickson and I knew this could be a solution to develop and produce nutritional food. And so I just got started. " This is perhaps the best advice that someone could give: "Get started and you will find the answers along the way". 

Max Loessl had an awesome idea and he started to implement it with the help and support of fellow students and professors from the university HAS in The Netherlands. He founded Agrilution in order to create awareness around Vertical Farming, to support those who believe in this innovative project as a solution for producing sustainable and healthy food and ultimately to develop technology for Vertical Farming. Now Agrilution is developing their own incubator called "Agrilution One" which shall be available soon.

Max Loessl dreams to a world with fully implemented Vertical Farming and we believe in his dream and we know he will make it happen because he has the determination to make a change in the world.

We hope you enjoyed his story, feel free to check his website Agrilution and his page on Facebook for news and updates.

Many thanks once again to Ana from Maastricht Centre for Entrepreneurship for bringing together such amazing people at the conference. Have a great successful week and DREAM BIG!

Love,
Laura &Elena

Global Entrepreneurship Week, Maastricht 2013

We started this blog almost one year ago when we were both in need of inspiration and at that time we had one goal in mind: to write about good people, those who follow their passion, who live a meaningful life, and who dream big. We are constantly looking for role models and for visionary people who stand out from the crowd because of their achievements and we are very happy that somehow we get to meet these people and to learn from them. Last week, the brunette half of the blog had the opportunity to participate at the conference "Global Entrepreneurship Week" held in Maastricht, The Netherlands and she would like to share her experience with you. 

"I attended GEW for the first time and I must say I was amazed to see so many inspiring people gathered in one place to celebrate the success of the fearless entrepreneurs who defied the traditional business model and built their own companies through a lot of hard work. The guest list has been quite long and impressive. I had the chance to listen to Mr Thorsten Jelinek, Associate Director of World Economic Forum, Vidar Andersen, a serial entrepreneur and one of the top 5 must-known people in the German start-up scene, Mr Jo Martens, CEO Nascom, Ms Saskia Vossenberg, professor at Maastricht University, Mr Max Loesll, founder of Agrilution, Mr Florian Schneider, Business developer at Nerdalize, Ms Janneke Nielsen, Chief Innovation Officer at Improve Digital, Mr Jan Scheele, TEDx Organizer, Mr Marc Post, Head of Physiology and creator of the "in vitro" burger and many others. Each of them had a great story to tell and I will share their stories with you in our future posts.

Now, to go back to the event, you should know that the conference took place in Sint Janskerk, a beautiful Gothic church built in 15th century which now hosts different cultural events throughout the year. If you ever pass by Maastricht, you should visit it, especially because it is situated in the center, in Vrijthof Plaats. The conference started with a panel discussion regarding "The New European Plan" which brought to everyone's attention the European education system that doesn't support the entrepreneurial mindset as it does in USA. Statistics show that European students are much more risk adverse than Americans and also less entrepreneurial. Mr Vidar Andersen, who was recently invited to Stanford University to receive a Lean Launchpad instructor training by Steve Blank, said: "there are so many wrong things taught in our universities and I would like to change that". Ms Saskia Vossenberg, a Researcher on gender gap in entrepreneurship and an entrepreneur herself mentioned that Europe lacks in terms of right structures and organisms that could support female entrepreneurs. A very good remark was made by Mr Jo Martens, CEO Nascom who highlighted two major traits that are fundamental for a successful entrepreneur: growth mindset and empathy. In his words, every entrepreneur needs not only to learn constantly but also to share the knowledge and teach other people. He also added that a big mistake most of the people who start their own business make is that they don't have a vision and a mission. Every entrepreneur should have a meaningful purpose when setting up their companies,  and not just a financial purpose to make money and get rich.

Following this interesting debate, more speakers took the floor and presented their innovative projects such as vertical farming, cube satellite concept, heating with computer power and other out-of-the-box ideas. You will be able to learn more about these start-ups in a future post where I will give more details about each project. In the meanwhile I will leave you with some photos provided by Maastricht Centre for Entrepreneurship. Congratulations to the fantastic organizing team and a special thanks to Ana and Julia. It was awesome!"

Love,
Laura&Elena