Welcome to This Month in German, Swiss, and Austrian (GSA) Startups in October 2022 by Startuprad.io with Chris from Essen, Germany, and Joe from Frankfurt. We recorded this news episode on Thursday, October 20th, 2022.

Our Highlights:

Another one of our former guests gets a Snoop Dog investment. Quick delivery startup Gorillas seems to sell itself to competitor Getir, according to Bloomberg, despite an earlier announcement they are looking for more investments. Gadget rental service Grover adds 270 m € in venture debt, getting it close to 2 billion €. Our former guest Nuri (formerly Bitwala) had to file for insolvency, now investors jump ship and the company is wound down this year. Volocopter is sued by early crowdfunding backers, Home24 has a takeover offer from a brick-and-mortar furniture retailer and BioNTech takes on cancer. Also, Munich-based travel tech Holidu raises 100 m € in a combination of 75 m equity and 25 m debt funding.

Let’s talk startups:

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This show was made possible by Hessen Trade and Invest with their brand Invest-in-Hessen. You can learn more about them here (https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/). We also run a dedicated sub-podcast with all interviews and news in cooperation with them. Find it all here:

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Top News

Europe’s largest cannabis funding to date: Snoop Dogg-backed German cannabis startup gets $37.6M Series B led by British American Tobacco

learn more about the Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 (German Startup Awards) founder Finn Age Hänsel in our interview

Delivery Startup Getir in Advanced Talks to Buy Gorillas (Bloomberg). They write:

• “Proposed deal for Gorillas would be a mix of cash and equity
• The combination would give Getir, which is backed by Mubadala Investment Co. and Sequoia Capital, scale in key European markets including the UK and Germany.
• Gorillas had previously held talks with a number of competitors about the prospects for a merger or sale of its business, people familiar with the matter said previously.
• Chief Executive Officer Kagan Sumer said earlier this year that he planned to look for new financing to recalibrate the company to work toward profitability.”

As consumer spending tightens, yet appetites for tech remain the same, Berlin-based Grover sees an uptick in rental interest and is now bringing its debt funding to close to €2 billion to meet demand. Grover takes on more debt funding, this time €270 million from London-based M&G

Will be wound down. Despite seeing interest from investors, they could not get one to sign up. So the company will be shut down until the end of the year. The last day one can use a Nuri account is in mid-December. Neobank Vivid makes all former Nuri customers a good offer.

• Insolvency administrator of crypto startup Nuri sees interest in the platform and fintech sales capacities
• After the crypto markets did not turn positive, two potential investors in Nuri jumped ship, so the company will not emerge from insolvency but be wound down

German unicorn Volocopter was sued by 177 former crowd backers, who feel they should have gotten “a fair participation”, especially since they backed the company very early

Now they stand alone time may be over. We talked in the past about lowering forecasts and the tough environments. Now XXXLutz — a traditional brick-and-mortar furniture store — made an offer to buy Home24

First, they took on Corona with their widely successful vaccine. Now the doctors are hopeful it could lead to new treatments for melanoma, bowel cancer, and other tumor types. The mRNA technology being used works by ...

Our highlights:

Germany is preparing for a potentially rough winter, in many ways. Now Environmental Action Germany (Deutsche Umwelthilfe): Asked Germans not to put up any Christmas lights this season. Startups in GSA keep laying off staff, but also raising significant funds. We have our usually shortened list a bit longer this month, to show that it is not all gloom and doom here. You will also notice that the M&A activity is up, totaling 55 bn US$ in summer 2022 (for all of Europe), and is still going strong.

Let’s talk startups:

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This show was made possible by Hessen Trade and Invest with their brand Invest-in-Hessen. You can learn more about them here (https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/). We also run a dedicated sub-podcast with all interviews and news in cooperation with them. Find it all here:

Tech Startups Germany

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Blog Post

Find all links, news and show notes here: https://medium.com/@startuprad_io/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-gsa-startups-september-2022-53339fae6ca7

Top News

Everphone started with their first fundraising for Series C in December 2021 and now make an additional closing of 32 mn Euros, which totals — according to PitchBook 232 m US$ Series C for their device-as-a-service model

European crypto app downloads have almost halved from 2021 amongst the biggest drops are Blockchain.com and unicorn Bitpanda.

Sifted writes “Beleaguered Austrian crypto trading platform Bitpanda saw a 65% decrease in app downloads from 563k in H1 2021 to 197k in H1 2022. In June, the company laid off a third of its employees, admitting that it had hired too fast and needed to cut back expenditure amid the crypto market rout.” VCs keep an eye on their investments and the app downloads are a proxy for growth here for them.

Yes, they are not startups, but it gives you a great overview of the current environment, also for the startups

• Automotive supplier Dr. Schneider has to file for insolvency with 4000 people employed there
• Shoe retailer Ludwig Görtz is a staple in German shopping streets founded in 1875 with their big stores and 1.800 employees, now they have to file for insolvency
• German toilet paper producer Hakle is a household staple in Germany. Now they have to file for insolvency, due to high costs of raw materials, energy, and transportation
• Traditional Austrian lighting company Kolarz, founded in 1918, has to file for insolvency

Lots of mergers in monetizing podcasts, the first Julep from Munich was bought by Libsyn and now London-based Auddy buys Vienna-based Audiomy

Keep in mind here, that most startups are likely not in financial trouble, but they rather try to extend the money they have already raised. The consensus seems to be cutting 15–20% of the workforce for most startups.

• Berlin-based escooter company Tier fires 16% of employees and freezes new hiring they are firing around 180 people
• Berlin-based Artnight organizes DIY art events across Germany. They are impacted by Corona and let 1/3rd of their staff go
• Infarm lays off staff as energy prices bite and recession looms
• Tiger-backed startup Pitch lays off 30% of staff
• Urban Sports Club lets go 15% (55 people) of their workforce
• Expense management via credit card is the topic of startup Moss. They have to let go of 70 employees (~ 15% of their workforce)

FSIS Issues Public Health Alert For Specific Ground Beef In HelloFresh Meal Kits Due to Possible E. Coli O157:H7 Contamination | Food Safety and Inspection Service

Germans refer sometimes to cars as Germany’s most loved child, but the current situation is also hitting the used car market: Auto1 competitor Cazoo leaves the German market...

This Month in German Startups - November 2020

Welcome to This Month in German Startups by Startuprad.io - in a transatlantic news recording with Chris in New York City.

Today we are wrapping up November 2020 for you with an update on German startups working on corona vaccines, Flixbus, Finleap, Rocket Internet’s ongoing delisting, and a potential digital Euro

Enabler

This recording was made possible by (Hessen Trade and Invest). Learn more about our enabler here: https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/

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Tech Startups Germany by Startuprad.io - Audio PodcastiTunes https://apple.co/2Z17bflSpotify https://spoti.fi/3kCcgoB

Housekeeping - Time to brag

We have only one thing to say: Stay safe everybody! Be grateful for what you have!

Affiliated Links

Why not learn from entrepreneurs and executives who are open to sharing their favorite books. We skimmed through some recommendations and that is what we found.

· Recommended by: Bill Gates

“Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker” https://amzn.to/2XAENlB

· Recommended by: Jeff Bezos

“Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras” https://amzn.to/2RGKGKe

· Recommended by: Elon Musk

“Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel” https://amzn.to/2REbHhw

· Recommended by: Tony Hsieh

“Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan” https://amzn.to/34KgraQ

· Recommended by: Warren Buffet

“Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales From the World of Wall Street by John Brooks” https://amzn.to/2K92z06

· Recommended by: Tim Cook

“Competing Against Time by George Stalk and Thomas Hout” https://amzn.to/3cjMMYn

Show Notes, Links and more reading

https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-november-2020/

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HoHoHo Welcome to This Month in German Startups in December 2021 by Startuprad.io - in a news recording with Chris from New York City and me Joe, from Frankfurt am Main.

We recorded this new episode on Monday, December 20th. All news not included here will be published in our next news episode. There will also be our annual Fintech Review on December 25th and we will be back with an AI startup interview on January 13th. So we take a few weeks off around the holidays. Happy Holidays!

We are not there yet, so let's get started:

Today we bring you another new unicorn, a monster funding of 266 mn US$ at Mambu, Volocopter calls off its SPAC IPO and gets a backlash from its early crowd investors, also Jokr is now the 3rd quick delivery unicorn - in record time - and we have an update on Sono Motors. We also take a look at the State of European Tech survey by Atomico and several news pieces on the German Venture Capital Market, as well as VC in general.

Let's talk startups:

Subscribe Here

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Enablers Invest-in-Hessen

This show was made possible by Hessen Trade and Invest with their brand Invest-in-Hessen. You can learn more about them here (https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/). We also run a dedicated sub-podcast with all interviews and news in cooperation with them. Find it all here: https://anchor.fm/techstartupsgermany

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Find all links and extensive show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-december-2021/

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Welcome to our summer 2023 wrap-up with vital news from the startup scenes in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in around 30 minutes sometimes less 🙂.

This time we wrap up July and August. We came up with the summer news because the September news has always been very long, overcrowded, and covered 3 months. That was a bit too much of a break and too much news in one piece. So we looked to wrap up summer and since the US is an important market and Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer it seems like a good fit.

This summer has been a bit different and there has been a lot of news, so we focus more on the most recent ones and we have cut a lot of news here.

For everybody in the US who celebrates it: Happy Labor Day!

Find all links to the quoted news on our Medium blog: https://medium.com/startuprad-io/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-gsa-startups-summer-2023-july-august-episode-fdb709d89fbd

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Our Highlights:

Binance has not - yet - gotten permission to operate in Germany from BaFin, Nextwind raises 750 m US$, Bitpanda surpasses 1 M customers in Germany and Germany sets a new record in new founders. We also shared that SAP wants to invest in Aleph Alpha, they confirmed this and two more.

Germany's law for legalizing cannabis falls short of the expectations of cannabis entrepreneurs. Europe dominates climate fintech funding and the overall fintech funding shows a sign of life. Bafin also stopped mini VC investments - trashing the business model of some fintechs - AND we found newly closed VC funds in excess of 2.8 bn US$ that are open to European founders.

Our Enablers

This recording is supported by HTAI and the Enterprise Europe Network Hessen

Look for our dedicated sub-podcast in partnership with them: Tech Startups Germany on our https://linktr.ee/startupradio

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Top News

Du kommst hier ned rein 🙂 Is the usual saying in Frankfurt if a Bouncer won't let you in a Club

Fintech blog Finance Forward reports German finance oversight BaFin signals no license for Binance for Germany. So they can neither advertise nor expand in Germany. To be clear, this is not a final NO, but rather a "Binance keeps trying, but BaFin signaled a No"

750 M US$ for Wind Energy

Wind Energy in Germany: StartUp Nextwind raises 750 M US$ Venture Capital investors include Sandbrook Capital, Canadian funds Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), and Imco

Bitpanda - The Austrian Unicorn

Surpasses 1 million customers in Germany alone https://buff.ly/44mMyKP it is not sure how many of them are really active, but that is always a tough question, even for the startups. But the question is important since one only makes money with active users.

Germany Sets a New Record in Founders

Despite the current economic situation, Germany has the highest share of founders in 24 years!!! According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Germany had a larger than 9% founder quota, meaning people from 18–64 who (co) founded a new business within the last 3,5 years (Young Entrepreneurs). The highest value since 1999 when the monitoring started.

Immigrants are especially willing to start new businesses. The founder quota of immigrants in Germany is 20% compared to 1,7% of non-immigrants.

The founder quota of women (7,1%) is overall lower than the one for men (11%).

SAP Invests in AI Startups

We have shared before that German software giant SAP is rumored to be interested in investing in Aleph Alpha, now they confirmed the investment in three AI startups https://buff.ly/45OC6Nb This is quite a new strategy for SAP, in the past, they wrote their own code. Now they intend to work with partnerships

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Chapters:

00:00:00 Introducing Startup Red Dot IO, your go-to for German tech

00:00:18 Introduction and Recap of Summer News

00:02:53 Highlights: NEN's Cryptocurrency Platform, Bit Panda Milestone, NextWind Funding

00:03:18 Exploring the challenges and success stories ...