How Competitive Are Startups in Germany?

Fabian Theis leaves a small doubt on the exact ranking and still puts Munich, at least in continental Europe, as the prime place now for VC capital and for deep tech, with bio and defense really exploding. Startup creation and implementation in Germany is more than competitive versus Europe.

The institutes hold university affiliations without undergraduate teaching. They work with PhD students and postdocs and stay close to the universities and the clinics so the science can move into translation. The model is similar to NIH-type setups in the US, spread across the country rather than gathered in one place. Government in Germany is realizing the country needs a much stronger transfer component, not only into universities but into value creation outside academia, meaning startups. Boston has long been a key example. On a recent Bay Area visit, he is unsure whether the stop was Genentech or colleagues. A waiter at a restaurant asked whether the table was talking about AI and bio and said he was interested too. Startup ideas are widespread there, and PhD students in his group are doing more of the startup work.

Germany is quite bureaucratic, and processes are far from as digital as in other places. The US is not his picture of fully digitized processes, but things are definitely faster there. People have realized the gap, and startup creation and implementation is more than competitive in Germany versus Europe.