Munich Startup: Who are you and what does TUM Boring do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
TUM Boring: We are a team of 60 highly motivated, interdisciplinary, and international students from the Technical University of Munich (TUM). We have joined forces to solve traffic problems by developing new tunneling solutions that can improve the quality of life in cities. Therefore, we are designing and building an innovative tunnel boring machine to participate in Elon Musk's 2021 'Not-a-boring' competition.
How TUM Boring benefits from the Hyperloop success
Munich Startup: The TU's Hyperloop team won the last challenge four times. How do you benefit from their success? How do you cooperate?
TUM Boring: The Hyperloop team has shown that a Munich student initiative can not only take on Elon Musk's highly complex technical challenges, but also achieve great results! They have proven that a group of students can truly transform urban mobility in an innovative way. This has built trust, and we benefit from it. And of course, we look forward to continuing this great legacy. We have been in close contact with the Hyperloop team over the past few months and are very grateful for all the valuable advice they have given us.
Munich Startup: How did you approach recruiting for TUM Boring? How did you grow to 60 members so quickly?
TUM Boring: We're very fortunate to be based in Munich. It has an incredibly strong ecosystem for engineers and a strong industry and academic network. This attracts students from all over the world who also want to bring tech innovations to various fields. Therefore, the recruitment process was very easy. There were enough suitable people; we just had to find them. Through social media campaigns and by presenting the project in lectures, we quickly achieved success.
New communication formats for the crisis
Munich Startup: What were your biggest challenges working in such a large and interdisciplinary team and how do you deal with them?
TUM Boring: As a team, we are currently facing the major challenge of the current coronavirus pandemic. This has led to a change in the dynamics within the team. Not being able to meet in person was a major challenge for a team of over 60 people.
But even with the coronavirus pandemic, we're not giving up; we've just had to come up with creative solutions to improve communication online. From an organizational perspective, this includes holding weekly general team meetings and additional subteam meetings and using tools like Slack and OneDrive.
And from a team development perspective, we came up with solutions like 'Random Coffee.' This is a program where we pair each team member with another one every week so they can have a video call and get to know the other team members better. Although the pandemic made interaction more complicated, we also saw some benefits. It allowed us to work more internationally, especially since some of our members were in their home countries at the beginning of the project. At one point, we were having team meetings with people in Germany, Singapore, and Egypt at the same time.
TUM Boring is looking for more sponsors
Munich Startup: How do you finance the project?
TUM Boring: We are funding this project thanks to sponsors. This project would not be possible without the tremendous support of industrial companies and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). They are important partners in the realization of this project. We are already collaborating with some very great sponsors and look forward to more in the coming months before the competition.
Munich Startup: What are your next steps?
TUM Boring: As mentioned, our next steps are, on the one hand, finding additional sponsors and, on the other, completing our final design to prepare for the competition.
Machine to be sent to California in spring
Munich Startup: What is your schedule?
TUM Boring: We successfully completed the preliminary design phase in October and are currently working on our final design. Once complete, we will build the machine and ship it to California, where the competition will take place in spring 2021.
Munich Startup: There are three parts to the competition. Which part do you want to win?
TUM Boring: This is something we're currently working on. And since the competition is still ongoing, it's a confidential point that we unfortunately can't make public at this stage. But we'll keep everyone updated via social media.
Munich Startup: How do you think you will win the competition?
TUM Boring: We are very proud of our highly motivated and competent team, which is made up of great people who already have experience in many different areas. And we firmly believe that by bringing together all the knowledge and experience each individual has, we will be able to develop a very strong and innovative project.
Munich Startup: What do you think about Elon Musk? Do we need a German Elon Musk?
TUM Boring: It's very nice and important that Elon Musk is taking on this issue! And yes, of course, Germany and the world need more people who work on difficult problems and try to solve them. We need people who make a difference in the world!
