15: Strengthening the Berlin Innovation Community - with Ewa Geresz, Director of Venture Cafe Berlin

In this episode of Where Innovation Happens, I sit down in Berlin with Ewa Geresz, Director of Venture Café Berlin and one of the people helping grow the Venture Café network around the world.Venture Café has a simple mission: connecting innovators to make things happen. As Ewa explains in this conversation, there is a lot of thought and care behind this. Every week, in cities around the world, Venture Café brings together founders, investors, scientists, artists, students, corporate leaders, public sector people, and others she calls “curious doers” in a free, open environment.The goal is not just networking. It is to create the conditions where people who would not normally meet each other can discover shared interests, build trust, and sometimes create something entirely new.We recorded this conversation at CIC Berlin, where Venture Café Berlin holds its Thursday Gathering. Ewa shares what a typical evening looks like, including a recent gathering focused on fashion tech. Nearly 350 people attended that night, which gives a sense of the energy that is forming around this community.One of the ideas I love most in this conversation is that innovation often happens at the intersection of different worlds. Ewa and I talk about the importance of breaking silos, building trust through regular gatherings, and designing spaces where people meet first as human beings, not as job titles or company names.We also discuss why a recurring, low-barrier event can become an important piece of a city’s innovation infrastructure.Ewa also shares what it has been like to help build Venture Café Berlin, including the importance of understanding the local ecosystem before trying to strengthen it. Venture Café is not an accelerator, incubator, or investor. It is a platform for the people already building a city’s innovation community.The goal is to help local founders, ecosystem builders, institutions, and innovators find each other more easily and work together more effectively.This episode is also a good introduction for anyone who has heard of Venture Café but has never attended, or for anyone thinking about ways to strengthen the innovation ecosystem in their own city. Ewa explains who should come, how to get involved, and why the first step is often simply showing up.If you are building a company, thinking about starting something, working in science, art, technology, government, education, or just curious about innovation, Venture Café is meant to be open to you.Featured guest: Ewa Geresz, Director of Venture Café Berlin.Host: Tim Rowe, Founder and Executive Chair of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC).Topics and keywords: Venture Café Berlin, Venture Café Global, CIC Berlin, Cambridge Innovation Center, Berlin startup ecosystem, innovation communities, startup ecosystems, ecosystem building, innovation hubs, entrepreneurship, founders, investors, co-founder matching, fashion tech, UX startups, creative technology, community building, serendipity, trust, cross-sector collaboration, innovation infrastructure, Thursday Gathering, startup community, Where Innovation Happens.