For two days, the OMR Festival once again casts its spell over the city. Over 60,000 visitors and world stars such as Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds and basketball legend Dirk Nowitzki ensure a highlight in Hamburg's event calendar. Startup City Hamburg is flying the flag for startups with its own booth, which was visited by Hamburg's First Mayor Dr. Peter Tschentscher and a delegation of French startups.
French startups as guests in Hamburg
A fixed point in the hustle and bustle of OMR is the booth for the founders of six French startups, who travelled to the Hanseatic city on the initiative of La Tech Hambourg and Hamburg Invest. La Tech Hambourg is a network founded a few months ago to promote Franco-German friendship at startup level. The aim is to give young, innovative companies from the western neighbouring country the opportunity to conquer the German market from Hamburg and to encourage them to open a branch here. Celia Pégeot-Müller, one of the founders of La Tech Hambourg, emphasizes the high quality of life and access to many attractive companies that can become cooperation partners as advantages of the location.
A crisis as an opportunity
The OMR Festival is characterized by a variety of programme elements. In addition to keynotes and panels on four stages, there is an expo in three halls, master classes on current topics from the digital economy and guided tours of the exhibition grounds. Hamburg Invest's Startup-Unit is organizing a total of four such tours. One of them dealt with the question of how startups cope with crises that come from outside, but can also be caused by undesirable developments within their own company. A good example of this is moinAI, which initially did not have the success it had hoped for as a travel platform. However, a chatbot developed for customer communication was very well received and turned out to be the actual business model. Meanwhile, the startup has successfully integrated artificial intelligence into its offering.
The mayor has a heart for startups
Hamburg's First Mayor Dr. Peter Tschentscher traditionally undertakes a special kind of guided tour at the OMR Festival. He not only visits the booths of the large companies, which in extreme cases occupy an entire hall for themselves - see Vodaphone. He also regularly stops by the Startup City Hamburg booth. This year was no exception, where he chatted with some of the French founders. There are many links between Hamburg and France, including the Airbus site in Toulouse and the city partnership with Marseille. The OMR Festival now offers the opportunity to further deepen this relationship.
