START Hack<\/a> is one of Europe\u2019s biggest hackathons, hosted annually in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Each year, it brings together over 500 ambitious students from around the globe to solve real-world business and social challenges by using all the tools technology provides them with in just 36 hours. Unlike traditional hackathons, START Hack emphasizes entrepreneurial problem-solving, so the submitted work can actually be used after submission.<\/p>\nOrganized by START Global, the event connects students with industry-leading companies and creates an environment for collaboration. Participants gain access to industry mentors, cutting-edge tech cases, and a platform to pitch their ideas in front of corporate and startup leaders. The ultimate goal: turn ideas into scalable, impactful solutions and at the end of iit, the final team wins a cash price of 10.000 CHF.<\/p>\n
From Frankfurt to St. Gallen<\/h2>\n
After meeting at Frankfurt School, our team hit the road for a four-hour drive through scenic Swiss villages and past Lake Constance. For many of our international students, the journey itself was a memorable experience. Once in St. Gallen, we divided into smaller teams, quickly claimed one of the few available mattresses in the communal sleeping area (spoiler: we didn\u2019t use them much), and prepared for an intense and exciting weekend.<\/p>\n
Companies sponsoring the hackathon presented a wide range of real-world challenges, and we had to quickly assess which case best fit our skills, time, and available data. Topics ranged from:<\/p>\n
\u00b7 Creating a digital, AI-powered heating system<\/p>\n
\u00b7 Analyzing land use changes using satellite imagery<\/p>\n
\u00b7 Improving energy efficiency for heating pumps<\/p>\n
\u00b7 Creating insightful dashboards for different companies<\/p>\n
\u00b7 Creating business models for companies expanding to new countries<\/p>\n
We received our selected case and immediately launched into brainstorming, planning, and coding.<\/p>\n
Beyond the cases, there were also various side quests such as a finance competition, chess tournament, and business plan competition.<\/p>\n
36 Hours of Coding<\/h2>\n
Once the clock started, the energy was high. Teams organized their approach, divided tasks, and dove into programming. Sleep was minimal. The following day included insightful expert talks, more development time, and ongoing conversations with our case sponsors to clarify requirements.<\/p>\n
In the final night, we powered through with no sleep to finish our pitch decks in time for the 8:00 AM submission deadline. Then came the final step: delivering a convincing 3-minute pitch summarizing our solution and insights. After, we fell asleep on our desks, exhausted but feeling accomplished.<\/p>\n
While none of the FS teams came away with a prize this year, the knowledge we gained, the experiences we shared, and the inspiration we took home made the journey well worth it. After the closing ceremony, we packed up and returned to Frankfurt \u2013 tired but proud. On the way back, weh ad great conversations, thereby making new friends from different tracks, intakes and programs.<\/p>\n
Outlook<\/h2>\n
This experience wouldn\u2019t have been possible without the financial support from the Frankfurt School. Thanks to this backing, we were able to represent our university in full strength, explore new technologies, and form valuable connections.<\/p>\n
We look forward to returning to START Hack next year \u2013 even better prepared, even more inspired, and with new ideas ready to bring to life to hopefully take home a prize!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Earlier in March, a group of ten dedicated students from Frankfurt School went on an exciting journey to St. Gallen, Switzerland, to participate in START Hack, Europe\u2019s most entrepreneurial hackathon. The initiative was organized through FS Coding, the university\u2019s student tech community, which recently launched GDG on Campus \u2013 supported by Google. This group aims […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1433,"featured_media":38378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,2506,31],"tags":[426,2553,2383],"class_list":["post-38268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fslife","category-initiativen","category-student-initiatives","tag-frankfurt-school","tag-fs-coding","tag-student-initiatives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38268"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38379,"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38268\/revisions\/38379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.frankfurt-school.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}