With Teamful, the three budding founders Andreas Schunk, Jannis Kolb and Paul Zaha have their finger on the pulse of the times and show how the use of the latest technology can transfer research findings into practice in a meaningful way. Specifically, the trio is developing an evidence-based system to evaluate and improve the performance of start-up teams. Teamful uses AI approaches and combines them with current entrepreneurship research in order to recognise how well the team is performing at an early stage using a specially calculated team score. Teamwork can then be sustainably improved at an early stage through team interventions.
From 1 April 2024, the team around idea generator and doctoral student Andreas Schunk will be supported by an EXIST grant. The three founders, who met at the Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation (IEI) at the University of Bayreuth, will not only have access to premises at the IEI, but also financial support and comprehensive mentoring from start-up consultant Dr Andreas Kokott, co-mentor and Chair of Entrepreneurial Behaviour. Andreas Kokott, co-mentor and Chair of Entrepreneurial Behaviour Prof. Dr Rebecca Preller and Prof. Dr Niklas Kühl, who holds the Chair of Information Systems and Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bayreuth and acts as the main mentor. Kühl's research focuses on the interdisciplinary combination of technical and human-centred methods in the development of socio-technical information systems, making him the ideal mentor for the founding idea of Teamful: "Teamful uses artificial intelligence methods in an innovative way for the project. I am delighted to be able to support the EXIST scholarship holders with my expertise in the future."
With the EXIST funding, Teamful now has a year of intensive mentoring and financial security, which gives the team the freedom to put their start-up idea into practice, says Andreas Schunk, who is currently doing his doctorate in the field of Entrepreneurial Teams at the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Digital Business Models of Prof. Dr Matthias Baum and will contribute his scientific expertise and media competence to the content-related product development, marketing and strategy at Teamful in the future. Paul Zaha, Master's student in Digitalisation and Entrepreneurship (D&E), will be available to contribute his wide-ranging expertise to system architecture, technical development and data protection. Industrial engineer and D&E graduate Jannis Kolb will take care of the areas of sales, finance and legal.
