Social Innovation Sprint
Ten working days at CIC Berlin. You bring a social or ecological problem that a business model can grow from, or you join a team. Then you build the software for it with AI. No coding experience needed.
- 10working days at CIC Berlin, 16 to 27 November 2026
- 40places, no jury, in the order people sign up
- 4people per team, at most. Or come alone.
- €0to take part. The tools are not free.
- 17UN Sustainable Development Goals as a guide
Over ten working days you take a problem you know well and build software that deals with part of it.
The Social Innovation Sprint is the new programme of the Startup Incubator Berlin for entrepreneurship where the social or ecological purpose sits in the business itself, whether for profit or non-profit. You work with AI tools the whole way. No programming skills required. First you sharpen the problem, then you build. On the Thursday of the second week, strangers test what you made at the public testing evening. The sprint runs in English, on site at CIC Berlin. It starts in November 2026 and comes round every two months.
How the programme works
The first two days belong to understanding: you sharpen the problem and write down your assumptions.
Building with AI runs through the whole fortnight, from the first requirement you write down to the version that goes online.
Two public evenings at Venture Café. In week one people challenge your problem. On the Thursday of week two they sit down and use what you built while you watch.
The sprint follows the lean startup method: a workshop every morning, then build time, a short demo every evening. Four strands are spread across both weeks. The detailed schedule for November goes online in October.
Ten days, four strands
First sprint, November 2026 Week 1: 16 to 20 November. Week 2: 23 to 27 November.Understand first, build second. Sharpen the problem and describe precisely who or what it affects. Write down assumptions, drop the first one.
With AI tools, no prior knowledge needed. Five stages: understand, specify, version, verify, ship. Accessible and data-sparing from the start.
What should change for the people affected or for the environment, and how would you notice? This becomes your impact challenge, mapped to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. You make it measurable and check it in the test.
Who pays, and does it carry itself? Price, customers, revenue, margin, funding and investors. Serving the public good works in any legal form, from a limited company to an association; profit is allowed. Then the honest calculation: what does the app cost per month?
Thu 19 Nov: Problem Night. Thu 26 Nov: testing evening. Both at Venture Café.
How you build
Vibe coding means you say in plain sentences what the software should do, and an AI agent writes the code. Your part is to describe precisely what should exist and to check what comes back.
Example of a description, the way you might write one in the sprint: Build an exchange where bakeries list leftover goods in the evening: photo, quantity, price, pick-up until 7 pm. People reserve with a first name only and pay in the shop.
The problem behind it: Bread left over in the evening, much of it binned, and nobody nearby knows about it.
The problem comes first. The description grows out of it.Which tools we use
We are not tied to one product. We start from your problem and pick what fits it, and part of the two weeks is learning to judge a new tool quickly. These are the ones we expect to work with in November.
- BuildAgents you work withClaude Code, Codex, Cursor
You describe what should exist, the agent writes the code, you check what came back.
- BuildStraight from the browserLovable, Bolt, Replit
Nothing to install. Good for getting a first clickable version in front of people fast.
- DataWhere the data livesSupabase, Neon, local models
Accounts, roles and records, with the option of running the models on our own machines.
- ShipGetting it onlineVercel, Netlify, Cloudflare
A real address, a domain, error logs, and a monthly bill you can explain.
How you steer
The Social Startup Cockpit shows whether your venture can carry itself and what it changes for people and the environment. It was developed at HWR Berlin in the research of Prof. Dr. Sven Ripsas and first tried out in a sprint at SIB in 2023.
Do people use or buy your solution, and are there more of them over time?
Who pays what price, and what is left per sale after costs?
How many months does the money last until income covers the costs?
What is left for the owners, and what changes for people and the environment?
A first honest estimate is enough. It gets sharper with every test.
You need no background in financial planning or impact measurement.
In the sprint the cockpit comes out three times:
- Week onefor your impact challenge
- Week twoin the user test
- At the endin your short impact report
Vibe for Good!
For a long time an idea only became software if somebody could pay a development team. An exchange for the bread a bakery has left in the evening, the handover notes of a small care service: for a single business that was never worth a developer’s fee, so it stayed on paper and in spreadsheets.
With AI tools that now takes ten days. We would rather use them on problems of people and the environment that nobody has built software for yet. It lasts longer when it becomes a business or an organisation with paying customers. That is why the first two days belong to the problem, and the code waits.
For us, social responsibility means four things:
- Understand first.We sharpen the problem before we build, and drop assumptions that do not hold.
- Protect data.Only the data a venture really needs. Sensitive data stays with models on our own machines, and the prototype goes live with test data until somebody takes responsibility for running it.
- Save energy.Where a small model is enough, we use the small one.
- Pass it on.What gets built goes out under an open licence, so others can carry on with it.
What a day looks like
Every day has the same rhythm. Short input, long build time and a daily demo turn ten days into a prototype.
Help comes from the whole room: daily peer reviews in the plenary, code reviews between teams, shared prompts.
Who this is for
- Founderson your own or in a team of up to four, with or without a company, with or without a finished idea. You can also find your team here.
- Start-ups and companies of any legal formprofit-oriented ones too, whose product itself is the impact, with customers, revenue and investors in view
- Associations, initiatives and social enterpriseswho know a social or ecological problem precisely and want to build a solution
- Students and stafffrom all Berlin universities and from anywhere in Germany
Bring along:laptopten days of timea problem that will not let you goa small budget for tools
How to join
Bring a problem, alone or as a team: tell us what it is, who or what it affects, and what should be better afterwards for people or the environment. A first idea is enough. If you have no problem of your own, tell us what you bring: code, design, knowledge from a field, business, communication or organisation. We then connect you with a team looking for exactly that. What makes your problem social or ecological, and who might pay for a solution, is something we work out together in the sprint.
Participation & location
- No prior knowledge
- Open to all
- No fee
- 40 places
- Attend all ten days
- Own laptop
We are part of the business community at CIC Berlin, Lohmühlenstraße 65, 12435 Berlin, where Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Treptow meet. U Schlesisches Tor, S Treptower Park.
Profit and impact do not rule each other out.
‘Nachhaltig wirken’ is meant to increase the performance and competitiveness of enterprises that serve the public good, and of those that want to become one, especially in their start-up and growth phase. More than half of all founders say they also want to create value for society with their business. Yet many support programmes are aimed mainly at start-ups that are primarily about profit. That is where the programme comes in.
The project “Vibe Coding Sprint Academy – Startup Now for Impact” (ESF project number 2026000476) is funded within the ESF Plus programme “Nachhaltig wirken – Förderung gemeinwohlorientierter Unternehmen” by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and the European Union through the European Social Fund Plus (ESF Plus).