What makes a successful startup scene? – Part 3: Germany

“In 2015, the start-up scene in Germany has reached a new level of development.”

– Ernst & Young: Liquidity meets perspective. Venture Capital and Start-ups in Germany 2015.

Germany’s startup scene has increasingly gained momentum over the course of the last decade. Concentrated in local clusters like Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Karlsruhe more and more startups are being founded and funded. Especially adtech, fintech and food startups are popular, with different regional hot spots. Famous startups are for example Zalando, Delivery Hero, SoundCloud, Number26, and Freeletics.

Slowly but steadily governmental programs, big VC money and public awareness are arriving and promoting entrepreneurship. Universities increasingly offer courses on the topic and student initiatives are growing and supporting the movement “from the bottom”.

“[In 2015] We have seen a great number of funding rounds of EUR 10m and above with a lot of deals even exceeding EUR 50m and a considerable number of three digit EUR amounts at the upper end.”

– Ernst & Young: Liquidity meets perspective. Venture Capital and Start-ups in Germany 2015.

The appearance of crowdfunding platforms like StartNext  and countless startup competitions add to the growing momentum and provide platforms for young companies to get public attention and support. When it comes to student activity Germany’s biggest student entrepreneurship club, PionierGarage from Karlsruhe, just set another milestone by opening their own coworking space named Launchpad.

Together, all these initiatives achieved that entrepreneurship is a career choice that young people are aware of. The traditional German stigma towards failing is still present, but slowly eroding. And with its world class research and industry there undoubtedly exist excellent preconditions for innovation.

Within the country the capital Berlin certainly takes the most prominent role. I will not write anything about Berlin here, everybody should rather go and watch this incredibly hilarious pitch of the city:

To sum up, Germany’s startup scene might not yet be as impressive as the Silicon Valley or Israel, for example. However they are picking up the pace quickly, so there are exciting times ahead!