Latest / Blockchain Germany – Web3 Startups, Crypto Innovation & Venture Capital by Startuprad.io™ / Germany's New Startup Strategy Is Really a Scaleup Strategy
Transcript
- 0:00Joe Menninger: The German minister said something this morning that would have moved markets
- 0:04Joe Menninger: in a normal news cycle. Quote, wir lassen einfach 30 Milliarden Euro liegen,
- 0:10Joe Menninger: die wir nicht investieren können.
- 0:12Joe Menninger: We simply leave 30 billion euros on the table every year because German pension
- 0:17Joe Menninger: funds and insurers allocate one-tenth of one percent to venture capital while
- 0:23Joe Menninger: their US peers allocate 2%.
- 0:26Joe Menninger: That is the size of the European scale-up gap, in one sentence from the minister herself.
- 0:42Joe Menninger: Hello and welcome everybody. This is Joe Manager, recording from Frankfurter Main, Germany.
- 0:47Joe Menninger: A few hours ago, Startup Radio was invited to attend the online press conference,
- 0:52Joe Menninger: at the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, meaning the Federal Ministry
- 0:57Joe Menninger: for Economics and Energy, where Federal Secretary Katharina Reiche presented
- 1:03Joe Menninger: the federal government's new Startup and Scale-Up Strategy.
- 1:07Joe Menninger: Together with the cabinet resolution, I want to walk you through what she said
- 1:12Joe Menninger: and what the, I hope you sit down, 234-page strategy document contains and,
- 1:19Joe Menninger: as always on the show, what it actually means for founders, investors,
- 1:23Joe Menninger: corporates, policy makers and the European scale-up gap we so frequently talk about.
- 1:28Joe Menninger: Today's argument in one line.
- 1:31Joe Menninger: Germany is no longer asking only how to create more startups.
- 1:35Joe Menninger: It is asking how to finance, procure
- 1:38Joe Menninger: from, scale, and retain strategically important technology companies.
- 1:44Joe Menninger: For years, the German startup debate concentrated on formation.
- 1:50Joe Menninger: How do universities produce more spinoffs? How do founders access seed capital?
- 1:56Joe Menninger: How does incorporation become faster?
- 1:58Joe Menninger: How does Germany create more entrepreneurial ambition?
- 2:02Joe Menninger: Those questions still matter. But the new strategy marks a more consequential shift.
- 2:08Joe Menninger: Germany is moving from startup promotion towards scale-up sovereignty.
- 2:14Joe Menninger: The document contains 152 measures across financing, research transfer,
- 2:21Joe Menninger: security and defense, bureaucracy,
- 2:25Joe Menninger: public procurement, talent, corporate cooperation and internationalization.
- 2:31Joe Menninger: And its stated aim is no longer merely to increase the number of startups.
- 2:37Joe Menninger: It is to help successful companies reach the growth stage, remain in Germany,
- 2:43Joe Menninger: and expand internationally from European base.
- 2:46Joe Menninger: That distinction matters. Germany does not primarily suffer from a lack of innovation,
- 2:52Joe Menninger: research, or company formation.
- 2:54Joe Menninger: It actually suffers from an incomplete conversion chain.
- 2:59Joe Menninger: Research does not reliably become a company.
- 3:03Joe Menninger: A company does not reliably become a scale-up, and a scale-up does not reliably remain in Europe.
- 3:11Joe Menninger: The new strategy is the clearest acknowledgement yet that Germany's central
- 3:16Joe Menninger: startup problem is now the European scale-up gap.
- 3:20Joe Menninger: A short note on where this comes from, because context matters.
- 3:24Joe Menninger: Startupway.io has followed the development of Germany's startup architecture
- 3:29Joe Menninger: across several federal governments.
- 3:31Joe Menninger: In 2021.
- 3:33Joe Menninger: We interviewed Thomas Zombeck, then Germany's Commissioner for Digital and Startups,
- 3:40Joe Menninger: about the federal government's 10 billion euro future fund.
- 3:44Joe Menninger: The core model was already visible then. Public capital would not replace private investment.
- 3:50Joe Menninger: It would mobilize it through the European Investment Fund, through KFW Capital,
- 3:56Joe Menninger: through venture funds, through selected direct investment vehicles.
- 4:01Joe Menninger: Yet Tom Beck described the public money as patient capital operating across a 10-year horizon.
- 4:09Joe Menninger: The mission was to multiply the federal commitment through private co-investments,
- 4:15Joe Menninger: not to build a wholly state-directed venture market.
- 4:19Joe Menninger: In 2023, we continued the conversation with Anna Christmann,
- 4:23Joe Menninger: then Germany's Commissioner for Startup and Digital Economy.
- 4:26Joe Menninger: I may add, Anna Christmann was from the Scholz government and Thomas Herzombek
- 4:32Joe Menninger: from the Merkel government.
- 4:34Joe Menninger: Frau Christmann, the first comprehensive federal startup strategy,
- 4:38Joe Menninger: added a broader institutional agenda. Funding.
- 4:43Joe Menninger: Employee ownership, female entrepreneurship, public procurement,
- 4:48Joe Menninger: resource spinoffs, regulatory sandboxes, access to data.
- 4:53Joe Menninger: At that point, the strategy had already moved beyond seed stage promotion.
- 4:57Joe Menninger: The 1 billion euro deep tech and climate fund addressed companies with longer
- 5:03Joe Menninger: development cycles. The European Tech Champions Initiative targeted Europe's
- 5:08Joe Menninger: shortage of later stage growth capital.
- 5:10Joe Menninger: The 2026 strategy does not replace that architecture. It actually extends it.
- 5:17Joe Menninger: The line running through all these three phases is clear. Germany has spent
- 5:22Joe Menninger: the past five years building the individual components of a startup financing
- 5:27Joe Menninger: system, what I also call the financing stack.
- 5:30Joe Menninger: It is now trying to make those components operate as an integrated scale-up system.
- 5:37Joe Menninger: That is real difference and it changes how we should read the new document.
- 5:43Joe Menninger: The numbers show both progress and the unresolved problems.
- 5:49Joe Menninger: Let me get into the data. The government presents a German startup ecosystem with real momentum.
- 5:57Joe Menninger: I mean, guys, you know, we'll talk about it frequently.
- 6:01Joe Menninger: 3053 startups founded in the first half of 2026, almost as many as in an entire
- 6:08Joe Menninger: 2025, which totaled around 5300.
- 6:14Joe Menninger: As Minister Reiche puts it in her opening remarks, ein Sprung um 51% nach oben,
- 6:20Joe Menninger: a 51% jump over the same half of 2025.
- 6:26Joe Menninger: Start-up and scale-up employment reached roughly 522,000 people in 2024.
- 6:34Joe Menninger: German startups attracted 7.2 billion euros in venture capital in 2025,
- 6:41Joe Menninger: and Germany now counts 36 unicorns, up from 32 the year before.
- 6:48Joe Menninger: Reiche also highlighted a pool of capital that already exists in Germany,
- 6:52Joe Menninger: Kapitalsammelstellen in German, like pension funds and serious foundations.
- 6:58Joe Menninger: They manage 2.8 trillion, yes, with a T, euros in assets. Private wealth totals roughly 10 trillion.
- 7:06Joe Menninger: Talent is not the constraint.
- 7:09Joe Menninger: Capital is not the constraint. So what is it?
- 7:13Joe Menninger: Her own answer in one line, Venture capital Investition in Deutschland liegen
- 7:18Joe Menninger: bei 0,5% des Bruttoinlandsprodukts.
- 7:22Joe Menninger: In den USA sind es fast 2%, which means we see investments in Germany sit at 0.15% of GDP.
- 7:31Joe Menninger: So let's say a half percentage point. In the US it's closer to 2%, meaning fourfold.
- 7:37Joe Menninger: The strategy itself acknowledges that large financing rounds are still frequently
- 7:42Joe Menninger: led by international investors.
- 7:44Joe Menninger: The IPOs remain rare. That 92% of German startup exits take place through company
- 7:51Joe Menninger: sales, not stock market listings.
- 7:54Joe Menninger: Reicher framed the growth stage problem directly.
- 7:58Joe Menninger: In größeren Finanzierungsrunden verliert dann Europa Anteil und Unternehmen
- 8:03Joe Menninger: wandern für große Finanzierungen in die Vereinigten Staaten nach Amerika.
- 8:07Joe Menninger: That's what we actually say in the startup scale-up gap.
- 8:11Joe Menninger: In larger financing rounds, Europe loses shares,
- 8:14Joe Menninger: and companies migrate to the US for capital.
- 8:19Joe Menninger: This is why a startup strategy based only on creating more companies would be insufficient.
- 8:25Joe Menninger: A country does not secure technology sovereignty by continuing incorporations.
- 8:30Joe Menninger: It actually secures technological sovereignty by retaining their ownership capabilities,
- 8:38Joe Menninger: IP production and decision-making as those companies scale.
- 8:43Joe Menninger: So, the venture market has to be assessed across the entire capital cycle,
- 8:47Joe Menninger: fundraising, entry valuations, view flow, follow-on financing,
- 8:52Joe Menninger: exits, taxation, availability of institutional capital.
- 8:56Joe Menninger: That is why we at Startup Radio have consistently treated KFW's research,
- 9:01Joe Menninger: venture capital and private equity indicators, as essential market infrastructure,
- 9:06Joe Menninger: not just as another quarterly report.
- 9:09Joe Menninger: The KFW Barometer draws on roughly 450 investors and tracks business conditions,
- 9:16Joe Menninger: expectations, fundraising, investment activity, valuations, and exit opportunities.
- 9:22Joe Menninger: That is the readout you need if
- 9:25Joe Menninger: you want to know whether the political architecture is actually working.
- 9:29Joe Menninger: Political announcements matter. Capital market conditions determine whether they work.
- 9:35Joe Menninger: And here's a line from this morning's press conference that I think may become
- 9:39Joe Menninger: the most quoted number from the whole event.
- 9:42Joe Menninger: Asked by newspaper Tagesspiegel Daily Mirror about the private pension pillar,
- 9:47Joe Menninger: Reiche produced this calculation.
- 9:49Joe Menninger: If German institutional investors allocate venture capital at 2% of assets like their US peers.
- 9:58Joe Menninger: That delta alone would produce a 30 billion euro annual investment.
- 10:05Joe Menninger: Her exact words, wir lassen einfach 30 Milliarden Euro liegen,
- 10:08Joe Menninger: die wir investieren könnten.
- 10:10Joe Menninger: We are simply leaving 30 billion euros on the table that we could invest.
- 10:15Joe Menninger: Her comparison to the mechanism out, during pension funds average,
- 10:20Joe Menninger: a minus 0.6% real return.
- 10:23Joe Menninger: Minus 0.6% real return. Swedish and Danish equivalents that invests in venture
- 10:30Joe Menninger: and public equities run at 7 to 11% plus
- 10:34Joe Menninger: a pension fund that invests in venture capital performs better and secures pension
- 10:39Joe Menninger: better than one that does not.
- 10:44Joe Menninger: Part three, the financing architecture is becoming more direct.
- 10:51Joe Menninger: The most important change in this strategy is not that more programs are being announced.
- 10:56Joe Menninger: It is that the government is becoming more willing to intervene across different
- 11:01Joe Menninger: layers of the capital stack.
- 11:04Joe Menninger: Here is what a strategy commits to. Extending the future fund beyond 2030,
- 11:09Joe Menninger: creating scale-up direct through KFW,
- 11:13Joe Menninger: a direct investment vehicle, investing up to 300 million euros in funds that
- 11:19Joe Menninger: finance first-of-kind industrial projects,
- 11:22Joe Menninger: launching HTGF5, the fifth generation of high-tech Grunnerfonds, in 2027,
- 11:29Joe Menninger: creating Wachstumsfonds No.
- 11:31Joe Menninger: 2, expanding the European Tech Champions initiative,
- 11:35Joe Menninger: mobilizing more than 25 billion euros in private commitments through the WIN
- 11:40Joe Menninger: initiative, we talked about this frequently, improving secondary markets and exit conditions, and,
- 11:47Joe Menninger: expanding financing for strategic fields including deep tech,
- 11:51Joe Menninger: AI, biotechnology, and defense tech.
- 11:56Joe Menninger: Why does this matter? Because different companies fail at different points.
- 12:02Joe Menninger: A software startup may need seed funding, product market fit,
- 12:06Joe Menninger: and commercial distribution, a fusion company, a quantum company,
- 12:10Joe Menninger: a biotechnology company, and an advanced manufacturing company.
- 12:14Joe Menninger: Those need laboratories, demonstrating facilities, regulatory approval,
- 12:20Joe Menninger: project finance, venture debt, years of technical validation before meaningful revenues emerge.
- 12:26Joe Menninger: The strategy recognizes this.
- 12:29Joe Menninger: It proposes financing for first-of-kind projects.
- 12:33Joe Menninger: It commits to milestone-based support for fusion startups through Sprint,
- 12:38Joe Menninger: a German agency for disruptive innovation, including potential co-financing
- 12:43Joe Menninger: of technology demonstrators for magnetic and laser fusion.
- 12:48Joe Menninger: Here's the sentence I want you to hold on to. Deep tech cannot be financed,
- 12:54Joe Menninger: as if it were SaaS with a laboratory attached.
- 12:58Joe Menninger: That is the frame that should guide how investors and policymakers read the entire document.
- 13:05Joe Menninger: Germany's economic strength lies in complex industrial systems,
- 13:09Joe Menninger: scientific research, engineering, specialized manufacturing, and regulated markets.
- 13:16Joe Menninger: A credible German startup strategy therefore cannot simply replicate Silicon
- 13:20Joe Menninger: Valley's preferred company and capital model.
- 13:23Joe Menninger: It has to finance the companies that Germany is structurally capable of producing.
- 13:29Joe Menninger: That is what the strategy is trying to do.
- 13:33Joe Menninger: Chapter 4. Germany is building its own industrial reality.
- 13:39Joe Menninger: This is consistent with what we found in our 2026 analysis of Germany's digital
- 13:44Joe Menninger: hub and startup factories.
- 13:46Joe Menninger: Germany's startup ecosystem is decentralized because its economy is also decentralized.
- 13:53Joe Menninger: Industrial capabilities are distributed across Munich, Berlin,
- 13:57Joe Menninger: Frankfurt, Hamburg, Dresden, North and Westphalia and many specialized regional clusters.
- 14:03Joe Menninger: The digital hubs coordinate market-facing ecosystems, the start-up factories
- 14:08Joe Menninger: increase university spin-off formation, private capital acts as an early validation
- 14:14Joe Menninger: mechanism, not a late-stage afterthought.
- 14:17Joe Menninger: This is not a single-city hyperscaler model.
- 14:21Joe Menninger: It reflects Germany's tradition of research institutions, industrial clusters,
- 14:26Joe Menninger: Mittelstand companies and hidden champions.
- 14:29Joe Menninger: The new strategy also reinforces this layered architecture.
- 14:34Joe Menninger: Exist set of factories address venture formation.
- 14:38Joe Menninger: A planned Exist Academy should professionalize university entrepreneurship support.
- 14:44Joe Menninger: A national intellectual property strategy, standardized spin-off contracts,
- 14:49Joe Menninger: an IP toolkit, and an IP deal database, all aim at reducing friction in technology transfer.
- 14:59Joe Menninger: Real labore and experimentation clauses are designed to bring regulated innovation
- 15:05Joe Menninger: closer to market deployment.
- 15:07Joe Menninger: But, and this is critical, startup
- 15:10Joe Menninger: factories can increase the number of companies leaving universities.
- 15:15Joe Menninger: They cannot by themselves create the capital, the customers,
- 15:19Joe Menninger: and the exit markets required to turn those companies into global category leaders.
- 15:26Joe Menninger: That is where the scale-up strategy begins. Part 5.
- 15:30Joe Menninger: Public procurement may matter more than another funding program.
- 15:37Joe Menninger: Let me point out what I think is the single most economically important measure in this whole document.
- 15:43Joe Menninger: It received far less attention than the new financing vehicles.
- 15:48Joe Menninger: Only 7% of German startups had public sector customers in 2025. 7%!
- 15:54Joe Menninger: The strategy responds by introducing a special direct award threshold of 100,000
- 16:02Joe Menninger: euros for federal procurement from innovative startups.
- 16:06Joe Menninger: The related rules enter into force in the first half of July 2026.
- 16:12Joe Menninger: They are intended to make bilateral negotiation awards easier,
- 16:17Joe Menninger: reduce excessive eligibility requirements, and accelerate payments.
- 16:23Joe Menninger: This addresses one of Europe's deepest contradictions. European governments
- 16:28Joe Menninger: frequently subsidize innovation and then purchase established foreign technology. They fund the supply.
- 16:35Joe Menninger: They fail to create the demand.
- 16:38Joe Menninger: So here's the line, Europe does not only have a venture capital gap,
- 16:42Joe Menninger: it has a venture client gap.
- 16:45Joe Menninger: For B2B startups, for GovTech cybersecurity, AI, defense and industrial technology
- 16:51Joe Menninger: companies, a credible, really credible first customer can be more valuable than yet another grant.
- 16:59Joe Menninger: Public procurement provides revenue, validation, references.
- 17:05Joe Menninger: A route towards scale. It can also reduce dependence on international investors
- 17:12Joe Menninger: by improving the underlying commercial quality of European companies.
- 17:17Joe Menninger: The decisive question is therefore not whether procurement law technically permits
- 17:22Joe Menninger: public authorities to buy from startups, that is now settled.
- 17:26Joe Menninger: The decisive question is actually whether procurement officials will actually
- 17:31Joe Menninger: use these new instruments.
- 17:34Joe Menninger: Because 100,000 euro direct award threshold that nobody in the ministry knows
- 17:41Joe Menninger: about how to use is not a scale-up strategy, it's a footnote.
- 17:47Joe Menninger: Port 6, Defense Tech is a clear signal of the policy shift.
- 17:52Joe Menninger: The most politically visible section of the strategy is the dedicated feel for security and defense.
- 17:59Joe Menninger: Germany plans to establish a federal direct investment vehicle for startups
- 18:04Joe Menninger: and scale-up producing clearly military-used products and services,
- 18:08Joe Menninger: including products converted by Germany's war weapons control framework.
- 18:14Joe Menninger: It also plans dedicated investments in defense-focused venture funds and a stronger
- 18:20Joe Menninger: use of Sprint instruments for security and defense technology.
- 18:25Joe Menninger: This shift reflects an existing market reality.
- 18:29Joe Menninger: German defense tech startups and scale-ups attracted one.
- 18:34Joe Menninger: 0.16 billion euros in venture capital in 2025.
- 18:39Joe Menninger: That is more than half of European defense tech venture investments.
- 18:45Joe Menninger: Defense represents approximately 17% of the German venture market compared with about 4% globally.
- 18:54Joe Menninger: And almost one quarter of German startups reportedly develop some form of dual-use products.
- 19:01Joe Menninger: 17% versus 4% globally.
- 19:05Joe Menninger: That number should stop you. This is why Helsing matters more than as an isolated unicorn story.
- 19:14Joe Menninger: Helsing represents the convergence of AI, defense procurement,
- 19:18Joe Menninger: strategic autonomy, software-defined military systems and the European growth capital.
- 19:25Joe Menninger: It is precisely the kind of company a new strategy is designed to support, retain and reproduce.
- 19:31Joe Menninger: This policy shift is broader than the often used headline that Germany will
- 19:36Joe Menninger: now fund weapon startups.
- 19:38Joe Menninger: The real shift is that Germany has begun treating selected startups as strategic infrastructure.
- 19:46Joe Menninger: This also explains the government's focus on faster Bundeswehr,
- 19:51Joe Menninger: procurement, on SVI Connect and the Defense Alliance in Munich,
- 19:56Joe Menninger: on NATO Diana and the NATO Innovation Fund, on the Bundeswehr own,
- 20:01Joe Menninger: innovation structures, and on more predictable export control processes.
- 20:08Joe Menninger: DefenseTech is not separate from new startup strategy, it is the sharpest expression of it.
- 20:14Joe Menninger: Part 7. Startup Germany and the Friction Between Layers.
- 20:21Joe Menninger: The government also plans to expand Startup Germany into national umbrella brand
- 20:26Joe Menninger: and network connecting federal, state, and regional programs.
- 20:30Joe Menninger: The stated objectives include improving transparency, helping startups identifying support programs
- 20:36Joe Menninger: and international partners, strengthening the cooperation with established companies,
- 20:41Joe Menninger: and marketing Germany more effectively to investors, founders, and talent.
- 20:46Joe Menninger: Branding alone will not solve the scale-up gap, but current positioning matters
- 20:52Joe Menninger: in an ecosystem that international investors often find fragmented and difficult to navigate.
- 20:58Joe Menninger: Fortunately, there is Startup Radio, of course.
- 21:01Joe Menninger: An international investor may understand Berlin Software or Munich Mobility
- 21:07Joe Menninger: or Frankfurt Fintech, but they may not automatically see how German research
- 21:12Joe Menninger: institutions, federal programs, state-level agencies,
- 21:15Joe Menninger: the partners from Mittelstand digital hubs, and startup factories all fit together.
- 21:21Joe Menninger: Startup Germany can be useful when it makes that system legible.
- 21:25Joe Menninger: But let me be clear, Germany does not need another slogan for entrepreneurship.
- 21:30Joe Menninger: It needs a navigable market architecture.
- 21:35Joe Menninger: Because the deeper problem, and this is the thesis of this whole episode, is this.
- 21:41Joe Menninger: Feud separately, Germany already has many other required components.
- 21:46Joe Menninger: Public Venture Commitments, KfW Capital, the European Investment Fund,
- 21:52Joe Menninger: the German ATGF, the Deep Tech Climate Fund, Sprint, the Exist Programmes,
- 21:57Joe Menninger: Startup Factories, Digital Hubs,
- 21:59Joe Menninger: universities, and applied research institutions, strong industrial customers,
- 22:04Joe Menninger: a large SME, Mittelstands-based, world-class engineering, a grown population
- 22:10Joe Menninger: of venture-backed technology companies.
- 22:12Joe Menninger: The unresolved problem is the handover between the layers. Research must reach founders.
- 22:19Joe Menninger: Founders must reach investors. Investors must fund forlorn rounds.
- 22:24Joe Menninger: Startups must reach the Customers and public institutions must become the venture clients.
- 22:32Joe Menninger: Scale-ups must access the industrial infrastructure.
- 22:36Joe Menninger: And European capital markets must eventually provide liquidity.
- 22:41Joe Menninger: Germany's challenge is not the absence of building blocks. It is the friction between them.
- 22:49Joe Menninger: Closing remarks and the benchmark that matters. So, the final assessment.
- 22:53Joe Menninger: Germany's new startup strategy is directionally stronger than its title suggests.
- 23:00Joe Menninger: It is also financing strategy.
- 23:04Joe Menninger: It is a research commercialization strategy, and it is also a procurement strategy.
- 23:10Joe Menninger: It is a defense tech strategy.
- 23:12Joe Menninger: It is an industrial policy strategy.
- 23:16Joe Menninger: And above all, it is an attempt to close the German and European scale-up gap.
- 23:22Joe Menninger: But the strategy's success will not be determined by the number of programs it announces.
- 23:28Joe Menninger: It will be determined by whether Germany can turn scientific excellence
- 23:33Joe Menninger: into investable companies, investable companies into scalable businesses and
- 23:38Joe Menninger: scalable businesses into enduring European technology leaders.
- 23:44Joe Menninger: Germany has learned how to support startups. It must now prove it can help build scale-ups.
- 23:52Joe Menninger: That is the benchmark. And this time, the market should judge the strategy not
- 23:57Joe Menninger: by its intentions, but by the companies that remain, scale, and win.
- 24:04Joe Menninger: This is Johan Menninger for Startup Radio, Europe's voice on startups,
- 24:08Joe Menninger: venture capital, and innovation.
- 24:10Joe Menninger: I'll be back soon. Until then.