Konsultori won the Global Startup Ecosystem Hero Award 2023

Global Startup Awards 2023 – Konsultori Press Release

Konsultori is an award winner

Ten years ago, Petra Wolkenstein founded Konsultori. At the same time, Kim Balle and Péter Kovács launched the Global Startup Awards, the world’s largest independent startup ecosystem competition. Their paths met at a magical awards gala in Copenhagen. Petra Wolkenstein received the Global Startup Ecosystem Hero of the Year 2023 award, after having won the CESA Startup Ecosystem Hero Award of 2022. This made the successful work of the last 10 years in startup education and business collaboration visible. The Global Startup Awards community has welcomed another precious member.

Global recognition at #GSAwards

At the Global Startup Awards, ambitious startups and ecosystem players battle in national and regional rounds for national and regional award recognition. The competition culminates at the grand finale in Copenhagen for global recognition. This year, 500 attendees from 42 countries representing over 200 companies participated in the Global Grand Finale Awards Show, while about 18,000 companies had applied for the award at the beginning. The award is granted based on jury votes combined with public votes for the applicants, thus making the network and feedback of the ecosystem visible.

The #GSAwards provides a global platform aiming to find the top 1% of local startups and ecosystem players. It supports and connects the best entrepreneurs in the world.

Konsultori’s background story and why we were recognized

Petra Wolkenstein, the founder of Konsultori, has always thought in terms of business partnerships. She founded a consultancy on her own, but soon her business network included top accelerators, leading business angels and universities. Today, the growing team of Konsultori has expertise in all areas of business development, be it strategy, organization design or finance.

The company is passionate about working with startups. Their constantly changing, vibrant business segment means a daily challenge and learning experience. Konsultori helps startup entrepreneurs with strategic business growth, finding investors, buying and selling a company, HR tools and organizational design.

Over the years, Petra Wolkenstein has participated in more than 140 accelerator programmes. More than 7000 entrepreneurs have benefited from the trainings. Meanwhile, Konsultori is also investing in startups in Sub-Saharan Africa as a general partner of the Startup Wise Guys Africa Fund.

Petra\’s vision is that startups who live physically far away or cannot afford to join a large accelerator have access to quality training. Therefore, she rolled out digital self-training courses in extension to the well-known Konsultori workshops.

“Thank you very much for this wonderful recognition. The nomination alone was a great pleasure, but winning is the cherry on top. Thank you a lot and thank you to Global Startup Awards which does such a tremendous work to make players in the industry visible.

This award is not just for us as Konsultori, but it is for our startups we are working with. We have trained more than 7000 founders on investor readiness and negotiation. The award gives visibility, which is highly needed for the innovative entrepreneurs. And as this is an award in the category of ecosystem hero, it all boils down to collaboration in the ecosystem. I am proud to work with Startup Wise Guys, who have won the best accelerator today and the investments that we are making on the African continent.

It is more than rewarding that we are seeing Africa-based startups Emata and Kubik winning in two categories and seeing more and more investors in the room that are passionate like us to invest into Africa-based startups. Let us motivate even more investors to provide capital to the underserved continent with this excellent potential and great founders.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and look with gratitude at the journey so far. The Global Startup Awards give us the opportunity to celebrate so that tomorrow we can continue our work even stronger and with new energy.

Thank you.

Petra Wolkenstein