Start-up Incubator has set up a network of mentors for start-ups in South Tyrol as part of the Interreg-Projects Startup.Euregio and Startup.Accelerate.
The aim of the network is to bring together, in a single pool, successful entrepreneurs and managers who are happy to support start-ups with their expertise and experience. Each mentor provides 10 hours of their time per year without charge which can be booked by the start-up. Our Start-up Incubator will undertake the intermediary role and appointment coordination.

Werner Amort holds two positions of responsibility within the High Technology Industries (HTI) group of companies: he is the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of Leitner ropeways and also the chairman of the supervisory board of the Prinoth company. As such he is the perfect contact for dealing with all queries to do with finance, management, export and innovation.

After graduating from the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan, Esther Ausserhofer continued her studies first of all in England and then in the USA. After work experience in various countries, she joined the South Tyrol family business of Dr. Schär as assistant to the CFO in 2010. In this capacity she oversaw several M&A projects, amongst others in Spain, the USA and in Brazil. Today she is a member of the administrative board of the Dr. Schär Group as well as consultant and business coach in the firm.

Tamara Benetti is Founder and CEO of Cimashine where she advises various DTC brands in the European and American markets. She is also the General Manager of Otovo Austria, a company that installs and sells photovoltaic systems and batteries for single and two-family homes. Previously, she worked as COO of a high-growth global fitness brand (Arena Strength Ltd) and as a manager at McKinsey & Co, an international management consultancy. Tamara holds a Bachelor's degree in International Business from the Rotterdam School of Management and a Master's degree in Finance from HEC Paris, a French higher education institute specialising in economics and commerce. She provides consulting in the areas of business modelling, bootstrapping, i.e. the early stages of (self-)financing a start-up, scaling e-commerce/DTC brands and remote working.

Claes Broqvist is an entrepreneurial thinking executive with 30 years of experience in the sports and outdoor industry.
Among other things he was CSO at Oberalp Group, Sales Director Global at Odlo and Sales & Marketing Director at Haglöfs Scandinavia. His core competence is to efficiently manage corporate strategies that focus on growth, talent management and reliable profit and loss control.

Andrea Cappelletti is a Senior Manager with 37 years of experience as General Manager and Sales, chairman of companies and company boards. He has created and managed start-ups, and is an expert in corporate finance. Today he helps start-ups find funding and investors, develop commercial networks and accompanies them in exit stages.

Nora Dejaco is firmly anchored and networked in the international innovation and startup landscape. The ecosystem innovation expert, experienced entrepreneur, marketer and event organiser has a passion for innovation, venture building, personal development issues, gender equality & sustainability, technology and culture and commutes between Vienna and South Tyrol: as COO, she is currently supporting the further development of the innovation cluster AES in Bruneck, has co-founded the mobility start-up RISER and her 360° agency noi.works, which serves international clients with a focus on purposeful communication & marketing. She has been co-hosting the co-creation jazz festival onQ for 3 years. Nora has completed training in the following areas. International Business MBA, MA Advertising, Mag. Phil of Literature, studied Visual Design at the University of Art in Linz, research on co-innovation in networks.
Nora enjoys sharing her knowledge & advising on the following topics: Selfpacing & Resilience, Business Creation & Development, Sustainability and Marketing Communication.

Marco Domizio has over 30 years of experience in the ICT sector, innovation management of processes, and problem-solving skills. Today he is supporting start-ups and SMEs: as a mentor, he helps them analyse, define, pursue, and eventually obtain their business goals. His focus? Optimizing the customer experience in business processes through digitisation, sharing, and motivation.

Marius Eccel grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. His grandfather founded the company Daunenstep AG in 1907, of which Marius Eccel is the managing director today. Since 2013, he has been the founder and managing director of RentEvent. Mr. Eccel also sat on the board of directors of Lavarent GmbH for 13 years and is today a member of the Entrepreneurs' Association of the Province of Bolzano and was former president of the Young Entrepreneurs Group of South Tyrol.

Erich Falkensteiner is the founder, chairman and co-owner of the FMTG-Falkensteiner Michaeler Tourism Group. This now includes 33 Falkensteiner Hotels and Residences in 7 countries and more than 20 other companies. Brought up in a hotel owning family, he has been expanding the family business since the age of 19, founding new firms, business divisions and partnerships. Additionally, he has also been active as an angel investor for several years

Riccardo Fisogni worked for more than 13 years in large finance companies in which he held leading positions in various sectors such as asset management and investment banking. Recently he has been specialising in management consultancy, open innovation and start-up investments. He is part of the Business Angels network and of the Investors Club of Trentino and supports start-ups as an investor and mentor.
Luca Francescangeli advises both large corporations and start-ups on strategic communications, media relations, training and crowdfunding. As Communications Director he was part of the initial team of Change.org in Italy, which he later led as Country Director. He is also a trainer with international experience, serving as a mentor for the Google News Initiative and the Google Hustle Academy. As a freelance journalist, he writes for several newspapers, including Wired Italia. He also maintains a blog in the Huffington Post, within the fintech section.

Federico Giudiceandrea is the founder and president of MiCROTEC, which he founded in 1981 with the idea of using image processing to automate and optimise manufacturing processes in industry. He is also President of the South Tyrolean Economic Ring and a member of the Chamber Council and Chamber Committee of the Bolzano Chamber of Commerce.
Once a start-up entrepreneur himself, his focus is on innovation, research and product development.

As a member of the family who founded Gruber Logistics Martin Gruber has had experience of entrepreneurship from childhood. Today Gruber Logistics is a multi-national firm with almost a thousand employees and with branches throughout Europe. Since 2017, Martin Gruber has been the majority shareholder and Group CEO.

Alexander Kiesswetter is a consultant with many years of experience in the areas of digital transformation, organizational development and change management. He was CDO at Raiffeisen Information System and was responsible for projects such as defining the strategic development perspective of the IT architecture, developing the new RIS strategy, introducing a service desk according to best practice ITIL and much more.

Evelyn Kirchmaier is the General Director of Markas GmbH, a service company with locations in Italy, Austria, Germany and Romania, with more than 9,000 employees today. Furthermore, she is a member of various administrative and advisory boards in Italy and Austria. Over the course of her career she has given innumerable lectures, as well as taken part in interviews and panel discussions.

Renate König is a chartered accountant and tax consultant, and is furthermore well informed in today's financial world. Her core areas are strategic consulting, business planning and finance, mergers & acquisitions as well as reorganisational and generational change within corporate management. In addition, she provides advice in the following subjects tax, management and group consulting for industrial, commercial and service companies of all sizes including start-ups.

Andreas Loacker joined the family business of the same name in 1996, where he is now Vice Chairman of the Board and Managing Director Innovaiton at Loacker. He is responsible for the innovation processes, research, raw materials and cultivation.

Elmar Mair is CTO and Founder of the US-based start-up Netleaf. He was Head of Autonomous Driving AI at Lucid Motors and Head of Perception at GoogleX. Elmar Mair provides his expertise in the areas of automotive & automation, robotics, AI and Ag tech.

Karl Manfredi is a founding member of the start-up Hydrocell, the first private company of its kind in the hydrogen sector in South Tyrol. Previously, he was CEO of Schmidhammer GmbH, South Tyrol's leading plant engineering company, and CEO and co-owner of the telecommunications company Brennercom AG. He is co-owner of the Hotel Terra The Magic Place with its restaurant (2 Michelin stars). He has also been active as an investor for many years. Karl Manfredi studied economics, attended the master's course in international management at the ZfU Business School (CH), and holds diplomas from Harvard Business School, Babson College, Northwestern University (USA) and CEIBS (Shanghai, China).

Vincent Mauroit was born and raised in Ghent in Belgium and holds an academic Master of Science degree in electromechanical engineering from the University of Ghent and an Executive MBA in General Management from the University of Mannheim and the ESSEC Business School in Paris. He lead the Innovation, product management and advanced development activities of a renowned German automotive tier1 supplier where he was responsible for the innovation management process and the business development of new products for several car manufacturers in Europe, USA and China. Vincent co-founded a start-up and is a mentor for several start-up companies and currently heads the Innovation Management and Tech Transfer activities of the NOI Techpark in Bolzano. He has an overall passion for innovation and especially for technological innovations which contribute to a better and more sustainable world and have the potential to make major contributions in solving the big challenges the world is currently facing.”

Angelo Morini specialises in the management of complex organisations and Business Development with experience in guiding companies towards consolidation, emerging market positioning and growth in revenues, margins and market share. Over 20 years of experience in Integrated Service Management, Healthcare and Manufacturing.
Founder & CEO of Innovative Startup NATURALSALUS. Founder & CEO of Innovative Startup EGAVÌ.

Heiner Oberrauch is President of the Oberalp Group. He embarked on an entrepreneurial path very early on: at just 19, he and his older brother opened the first branch of Sportler in Bozen-Bolzano. Nowadays, Salewa, Dynafit, Pomoca, Wild Country and most recently, the American climbing shoe brand Evolv are part of this group of entrepreneurs. The group employs 650 brand developers, has ten offices all over the world and exports to more than 40 countries.

After graduating in economics at the FH in Munich, Peintner worked in management positions in purchasing, logistics and controlling, first at Ulma Italia and from 2011 at Intercable Group. From 2017 to 2021, Peintner took over Intercable Slovakia as Managing Director. Within 2 years, he has employed and managed 580 employees. He has successfully installed 55 automatic and semi-automatic production lines. Among other things, he is a coach and trainer in various areas such as controlling, system quality and systemic coaching.

Italo Petitti graduated in Aerospace Engineering at the Polytechnic of Turin. He worked for two organizations in the field of aerospace(ESA first and Alenia).
After this experience he decided to work in the automotive industry abroad, for "Toyota Motor Europe" where he worked on the development of vehicles for the European market.
After almost 10 years at Toyota in the R&D department he started a consulting career at McKinsey & Co. Italo was employed at GKN Automotive as Vice President Business Transformation and Improvement and today he is Executive Affairs and Transformation Officer in Intercable Automotive Solutions.

Carlo Rivis, is a Tech-Entrepreneur, Innovator & Deep Tech Visionary with more than 18 Years of experience driving innovative solutions and developing Global Businesses. After years of experience as an innovator, now he is living in California (USA), leading a Venture Studio helping impactful solutions enter and disrupt international markets.
His background includes successful experience building international businesses, designing innovations, and training people.
He worked with Startups and companies helping them to develop novel technologies, design effective business strategies to enter the market, win international industry awards, raising money from international inventors and establish a multi-million valuation business.

Even Stefan Rubner’s grandfather was already what we would call a “start-upper” today. He founded a hydro-powered sawmill in the Puster Valley, which has developed over the years into what is now a multinational company. Stefan Rubner has, as it were, been brought up in an atmosphere of entrepreneurship and innovation management. The Rubner Group is still a family business today. As Vice-president, Stefan Rubner is in charge of an organisation with 20 locations in four countries.

After graduating in Economics and Management at the Free University of Bolzano, Daniel Schmidhofer turned his passion for video games into his profession. With 21 years he was among the best players competing in the World Championship of Video Game Players. In 2003, he founded ProGaming Italia, a leading company in Italy in the conception and realisation fo B2B and B2C events in the gaming industry focusing on export. Since the company was national reference point for the most important international tournaments: a particular highlight is the partnership with ESL - the world's leading platform for electronic sports – which is in place for more than 15 years. As a mentor he provides know-how in the areas management, marketing, innovation and purchasing.

Philipp Senoner studied electrical engineering and information technology specialising on control and automation engineering at the TU Munich. While studying he completed several internships in both Germany and the US, and worked as student trainee at OSRAM. After completing his diploma thesis he worked for several years as development engineer and project manager. In May 2009, he finally founded his own company together with three friends: alpitronic GmbH. The company, which focuses on the development of power electronics, is a leading manufacturer of DC fast charging technology and now employs over 450 people.

Wolfram Sparber has been the head of the Eurac Research Institute for Renewable Energy since its foundation in 2005. In this capacity, he has been able to push ahead with establishing and driving forward the institute’s main areas of focus. Wolfram Sparber studied Applied Physics, followed by work at research institutions as well as various energy companies including Alperia AG, where he is still Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board.

He is leading IASSP, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Strategy and Policy, since 2016. Previously, he worked for over 25 years in 4 different energy companies as CEO, GD, and Board member. Since 2012, he has been active as a business angel with IAG, the Italian Association of Business Angels. His main areas of expertise are energy, digital, life science, e-mobility and smart building.

Franz Tschimben works in the tech field between Silicon Valley and Europe. He is currently CEO of Covision Lab, a computer vision and A.I. technology centre in South Tyrol, which is backed by seven multinational technology companies. Previously he founded his start-up, Common Interest and Aker Inc., and worked for Savari Inc., PwC, Accenture and Samsung. Franz Tschimben holds a Master's degree in Strategy and International Management from the University of St. Gallen, and a master's degree from ESADE Business School. He offers guidance and know-how in automation, A.I., comupter vision, business modeling, fundraising strategy and market entry.

Günter Wimmer operated as a retail salesman on both local and international scale, and was self employed for over 25 years. Now, since more than twelve years, he is Sales and Marketing Director at systems Ltd. As a mentor he contributes his extensive experience as consultant in the areas of sales, marketing, management and IT.