Anyone founding a company must also be able to improvise at the beginning.

However, the outbreak of the corona pandemic demanded an unprecedented degree of flexibility from many start-ups, but in many cases the changed business ideas are still relevant today.

This applies, for example, to Roman Kessler's Make Europe GmbH.

He founded his company in 2015 and has since organized trade fairs and network meetings for inventors, hobbyists and programmers in the region under the names "Make Rhein-Main" and "Webweek".

For 2020, Kessler wanted to attract a total of 50,000 participants to his events in three federal states and then had to cancel almost everything because of the pandemic.

What saved his company was an innovative ticketing service based on blockchain technology.

The box office moved to the Internet

The city of Frankfurt had also heard about this and commissioned the start-up to develop an admission system for Tanzhaus West that was adapted to data protection.

In the first summer of the pandemic, 3,000 guests were able to celebrate at various parties in the club, albeit seated and at a distance.

"We have shifted the box office to the Internet," says Kessler.

In accordance with the Corona regulations at the time, Tanzhaus visitors were able to store their address data securely.

Since then, Kessler and his colleague Alexander Zegla have expanded the technology that was tested in the Tanzhaus.

Its core is that the admission tickets are sent via a so-called Web3 address.

A decentralized database is used for this, which can identify the respective ticket buyer without any problems, even without the telephone number, e-mail or postal address having to be stored.

This protects against data fraud and theft.

"The ticket looks like a QR code and can be validated with a mobile phone," explains Kessler.

Basically nothing changes for the customer.

"It's just the safest technology."

Of course, this is also used at our own events, which can now take place again - in real locations or virtually, meetings in the so-called Metaverse are now part of the Make Europe GmbH repertoire.

The start-up has recently won prizes in the USA and Switzerland for its software solution, and the founders are also negotiating the introduction of their technology with Bundesliga clubs, trade fair and concert organizers.

Pandemic as tailwind for business idea

The two Bad Homburg high school graduates and company founders Patrick Barme and Max de Boer are also thinking about growth.

Although their story took the opposite course: They did not experience the pandemic as an obstacle, but as a tailwind for their business idea.

Because if an industry has experienced an upswing as a result, then it's food delivery services, and the two friends founded one of these immediately after graduating from high school under the name "Groceries on demand".

The idea is simple: the customers pass on their shopping lists, the men hurry to the supermarket and the goods should be at the front door in less than an hour.

The start-up now operates under the name “Karambo”, and because her studies brought her to Koblenz, the founders took it there with them.

They still divide their time between university and start-up.

Sometimes three customers call a day, sometimes ten.

Then Patrick Barme and Max de Boer drop everything and drive to the supermarket.

If necessary, they could secretly disappear from online lectures, says de Boer.

During the exam phase, however, the delivery service had to take a break.

Now the university is in second place: "We want to take a year off so that we can devote ourselves one hundred percent to the start-up," says Barme.

They have already programmed their own ordering app, but what is still missing is a pricing system with small surcharges per item instead of the delivery fee of just under four euros.

The “Karambo” founders have set themselves the goal of two growth phases, for which they are also campaigning for investor funds: For the time being, they would be satisfied with twenty orders a day; if it were more, they could hire helpers.

In the long term, they envision expansion into medium-sized cities with fewer than 250,000 residents.

The big competitors Flink, Gorillas and Co. do not yet exist there, they are mainly concentrated in the big cities.