"I am an entrepreneur and at the same time I am Maria" - The success story of inveox

It all began in our scholarship program Manage and More: Maria and Dominik Sievert laid the foundation for their start-up during their participation here because they recognized the deficiencies in cancer diagnoses in pathology laboratories: Manual data entry, but also the manual repackaging of laboratory samples, has so far led to a susceptibility to errors that is difficult to assess. With the digitization and automation solution from inveox for sample receipts in pathology laboratories, on the other hand, cancer diagnoses can be made not only faster, but also more precisely and reliably - because all diagnostically relevant information on tissue samples taken is documented on an online platform, and the samples are scanned, photographed and analyzed in the inveox machine to be prepared for further processing. Big Data and Artificial Intelligence thus enable personalized and finely layered diagnostics, minimizing false diagnoses and saving costs. The innovation literally went through the roof - so inveox was able to expand the start-up to Krakow, Poland, in 2018, and open a branch in the USA in 2020.

Maria and Dominik Sievert got to know each other at Manage and More, where they not only got in touch with the start-up scene, but also acquired important personal key competences for their start-up. Their new knowledge enabled them to assess the market situation in pathology correctly, recognize the innovative potential of their idea and then actively implement it in a start-up. But what is it like as a woman in the start-up scene? Do women founders need the same skills or are they even expected to do more than their male colleagues? "I think that founding a company - completely independent of gender and age - is always a very individual experience, where you learn and work through so many things for the first time. Basically I only have my perspective as a founder - and this perspective is a very positive one. The founding period was challenging for me personally, but at the same time marked by many positive experiences and turns of events. From the very beginning, I experienced the start-up scene as a very flexible and open environment that offers founders a very balanced basis for development.“

Maria Sievert was guided above all by her strong interpersonal skills. Also as a manager and entrepreneur her motto is: to remain authentic as a human being. "I am an entrepreneur and at the same time I am Maria - I have visions and goals and I am interested in life, in progress in medicine and so much more. As CEO, I combine rational thinking with my emotional qualities - because only the combination of both will get us ahead. Business acumen is necessary to run a company successfully, but success does not come from that alone. In my view, the cooperation of and with people is the breeding ground for the success of inveox; therefore, the emotional side of managing a company is just as important to me as the rational side. As a founder and entrepreneur, a certain sense of opportunity certainly distinguishes me: In order to develop an innovative solution, you have to recognize the need for improvement and the potential for innovation on the one hand, and on the other hand you have to act at the right moment and take the step forward", says Maria Sievert. She describes herself as the following:

This attitude has proven its worth. inveox was named "StartUp of the Year 2017" by Für-Gründer magazine, achieved a place on the Forbes list of "Most Promising Start-ups 2018", was among the finalists for the German Innovation Prize in 2019 and became a member of the World Economic Forum in the same year.