Germany dominates Europe as its largest and strongest economy. Last year, it ranked not only as Europe’s first economic power but also as fourth worldwide with a nominal GDP of $3.68 trillion, behind Japan’s $4.87 trillion.
A number of factors explain this. First, the country benefits from strong industrial activity, which last year accounted for around 23% of GDP. Sectors such as automotive manufacturing, chemicals, electrical engineering and industrial machinery have traditionally been leading the pool. With around €1.28 trillion ($1.45 trillion) of exported goods in 2017, Germany is also one of the biggest exporting countries globally.
Consisting of 16 distinct states, called länder, Germany is home to a fairly decentralised power, distributed between the federal and state governments, respectively headed by federal ministers and by the chancellor – currently Angela Merkel – who is head of state. Certain regions and cities are incidentally reputed for their specialisation in a particular field. By way of example, Munich is often called “the high-tech region”, while Frankfurt is considered a financial hub and Berlin a startup and innovation hotbed.
But most of all, Germany would most certainly not be what it is now without the precious contribution of what is often described as the engine and “backbone” of its economy – the Mittelstand. Literally translating as “medium estate”, the Mittelstand designates Germany’s 3.7 million small and medium-sized family-owned businesses that employ between 50 and 500 people each and individually generate up to €50m of annual revenues. At present, the Mittelstand is said to provide no fewer than 70% of jobs in Germany with an estimated 31 million employees, and generates 35% of the country’s corporate revenues. Could the Mittelstand be the main factor in Germany’s near-full employment?
Often praised for the quality of their management, Mittelstand companies seem to have understood the pressing need to modernise and open up to new growth avenues in the face of a changing world. As the government’s Industrie 4.0 initiative – aiming to move the nation from centralised to decentralised smart manufacturing – runs its own course, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of the Mittelstand try to navigate their way through disruption.
Corporate venturing
A recent study by the Federation of German Industries (BDI) in association with Deutsche Bank showed that the Mittelstand has a growing interest in collaborating with startups. Two-thirds of 250 polled companies, which were among Germany’s 4,700 largest family businesses, said they were, for example, willing to receive support in initiating contacts with startups. Some 54% of the surveyed groups also expressed their interest in developing common work and new technologies.
According to the BDI, almost half the country’s largest family companies are already collaborating with startups, with 70% of them saying they are satisfied or very satisfied with the cooperation. Holger Lösch, deputy director general of the BDI, said: “It is a strong signal that large family businesses specifically seek exchange with startups. Working with them is a good way to keep up with development. The goal must be to turn startups into tomorrow’s medium-sized businesses and to support established family businesses to remain fit for the future.”
As of 2016, one in three mid-sized German companies had used digital technologies in their sales and distribution, according to the BDI, while one in five had already digitised their production. “Mittelstand 4.0 holds tremendous opportunities, especially on the international level,” the BDI report read. It added: “One thing is clear – those who do not swim the tide of digital transformation today will miss out on the market opportunities of tomorrow”.
Conversely, for startups, gaining access to local Mittelstand funding is a precious financial resource, particularly in times when growth-stage funding is hard to get. According to financial publication Handelsblatt, last year the Mittelstand represented no less than €1 trillion in cumulative turnover.
Judging from the numbers, collaboration between Mittelstand and startups has so far been fruitful. The volume of corporate-backed deals since 2011 has been growing consistently, with 29 deals reported in 2011 compared with just under 80 last year. Last year also featured growth in the value of the German corporate venture capital market. After years of contraction from 2014 to 2016, values started picking up again, with $1.06bn in 2017 and $1.09bn last year. In spite of this small resurgence, values are still failing to reach the $2.04bn recorded during 2014.
Bernhard Mohr, who heads Evonik Venture Capital, CVC arm of speciality chemicals company Evonik, said: “We had a really strong trend around the 2000s. Twenty years ago, many large corporates in Germany had a CVC fund or activity. Then the bubble burst with the financial crisis, with many corporates leaving the VC market. A revival, however, seems to have occurred over the past five to six years, with new entities entering the market and existing ones significantly increasing their funds. Investment structures and teams have also been professionalised.”
Last year, Germany ranked seventh worldwide in terms of CVC deal volume, behind countries such as Japan (83), Israel (89) or the UK (152). In terms of value, Germany came much further down the list, ranking 12th between Japan’s $1.17bn and France’s $1.05bn. This points to an issue that has been fairly persistent on the German market – the difficulty in gathering larger rounds at growth stage.
For Alexander Thees, managing director at the new initiative KfW Capital, a public venture unit created by state promotional bank KfW, said this was where the German venture market needed fixing. He said: “Looking at figures, we are convinced that companies need to grow significantly faster than 20 years ago. But to support their growth phase, there has to be sufficient capital. At the moment, the growth space is where the danger to fail is the biggest for startups, so that is the space we want to be in.”
As one issue is often linked to another, a direct consequence of this is the relative absence of behemoths in Germany compared with other countries involved in corporate venturing. Alexander von Frankenberg, managing director at the public-private early-stage VC firm High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), said: “If you look at what the German ecosystem was like 14 years ago, almost nothing was shaped yet. Today, you have multibillion-dollar startups, successful IPOs and more and more CVC players initiating new programs. Overall, the ecosystem is maturing quite rapidly and the trend is very positive.
“What we are still missing though, are the huge successes – the Googles, Facebooks and Amazons of Germany, or some companies exceeding a $100bn valuation. This is quite difficult to change, as it requires, for instance, more opportunities to go public, and the courage not to sell companies too early. But mainly, it requires larger funding rounds, and larger funds.”
The situation has improved compared with a decade ago, said von Frankenberg, when rounds above €10m were still scarce in Germany, but the change is still too small compared with what is happening elsewhere.
In a European context, while Germany is still behind the UK in terms of both deal value and volume, it exceeds France. Last year, the UK was home to 154 CVC deals while France hosted a mere 47. The former, however, experienced a depreciation in deal values, as the total dropped from $3.09bn in 2017 to $2.96bn, while the opposite could be observed in France, where the total value of corporate investments jumped from $799 to $1.05bn from one year to the next, signifying a major upgrade in round sizes.
Although like elsewhere in Europe, the German market progressively opened itself up to foreign investors over the years, the ecosystem is still essentially Germany-centric. Among the top 25 backers since 2011, at least 18 were German. The five most significant investors over the same period were German, too. These were publishing company Georg von Holtzbrinck with 48 deals, e-commerce group Rocket Internet (38), retail holding Tengelmann (37), telecoms group Deutsche Telekom (32), and energy company RWE Innogy (13).
Of the top five investment rounds closed in Germany in 2018, four were to the benefit of Berlin-based companies – mobile banking company N26, used-car marketplace Frontier Car Group, and fintech groups SolarisBank and FinLeap. Evonik’s Mohr said: “People always talk about Berlin, and it is indeed a big hub in particular for digital opportunities, but the German venture scene cannot be reduced to that. Innovation and startup founding takes places in a broader context, with regions or cities of the likes of North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf or Munich also playing a big part.”
Some industry players have also started taking measures to counter this Berlin-centricity. Sebastian Borek, CEO and co-founder at non-profit ecosystem building organisation Founders Foundation, is one of them. “What we are aiming to do is build a startup ecosystem in the heart of Germany, as opposed to the state capital cities, where an ecosystem usually shapes up organically,” said Borek.
Passionate about helping young entrepreneurs find their way and succeed in more remote parts of Germany, Borek co-founded the foundation just over three years ago in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Bielefeld, home to a population of 342,000 people. He said: “I am a strong believer that we need to initiate entrepreneurship from people who have the talent to create something new, and something that paves the way for the future. The region we have chosen to focus on – Ostwestfalen-Lippe – is a place where old industry still exists, and where there are good universities and education but no infrastructure to help startups grow, no possibility for young entrepreneurs to share and develop their ideas.”
Based on this concept, Borek and his team have worked to develop an ecosystem in the region, offering three types of service – networking events and hackathons such as Founders Hack, educational programs, and a six-month accelerator program helping founders develop their business in the areas of business-to-business (B2B), software-as-a-service, robotics and the internet of things. Since inception, Founders Foundation has helped to launch of 18 companies.
According to Borek, the top nine companies have garnered over €6m of total funding and now have cumulated revenues of around €10m. He added: “This area of Germany is not very well known on the international scene, but its 60 largest companies have a cumulative revenue of €70bn. These are the so-called hidden champions of the German economy, but they are also world champions. We created our platform here so that the new generation of local entrepreneurs can thrive in a perfect environment, taking advantage of all the available resources.”
But in spite of all these efforts and of a slight increase in corporate venturing activity in Germany over the past two years, some aspects of the ecosystem remain improvable. Ingo Ramesohl, managing director at industrial goods company Robert Bosch’s venturing unit Robert Bosch Venture Capital – which has now fully invested its third €150m fund and is looking at an expansion into China – said: “There is a sort of seeder-feeder mechanism that has to be followed in order to create a successful ecosystem with large exits. One of the key elements, alongside having a high-end educational system – a seeder – solid government back-up and decently-sized funds – both feeders – is having an entrepreneurial mindset and culture.”
This, some local players argue, is an aspect that still needs work in Germany. Philipp Thurn und Taxis, CEO and founder of Constantia New Business, investment arm of diversified industrial group Constantia Industries, said: “The teams that we come across are usually very good on the technical side, with highly-qualified engineers, but often miss the commercial skillset that should come with it. This has to do with the European and German DNA [as opposed to the US one].
“It is a cultural thing – we like to build things, but we do not like to sell things, as that bears a somewhat negative connotation for young engineers. We need to change that image culturally, as a good business founder is also a good salesman.”
At Founders Foundation, Borek shares the sentiment. “Germany ranks well in terms of scientific research, and German engineering is used at large in other countries. But what we often lack is the ambition to build businesses out of our knowledge and research. This might be one of our greatest challenges – in most fields, we are very good at execution, but not so good at sales. While most countries would test a product on the market before bringing it to full completion, a German engineer or entrepreneur would prefer working on it extensively first, making sure that it is absolutely perfect and fully functional.”
He said arguably, from a business point of view this tactic was not the most strategic. “I believe this way of functioning would be very hard to break. It is embedded in our culture, in the way we behave. In Germany, we are brought up with the idea that it is better to build things and to have them in substance, rather than making broken promises.”
Government venturing
Government venturing is no new element to the German ecosystem. Asked when the state had understood the key role VC could play in the country’s economic development, HTGF’s Alexander von Frankenberg said: “I think they already got that in the early 1990s, when they started setting up programs supporting high-tech funds. Those early programs were only moderately successful, with some of them actually losing most of their money. But once the bubble burst in the 2000s, it became very obvious that there was a funding gap, especially in the seed segment, as startups were struggling to even get initial funding.”
The creation of HTFG in 2005 was one answer. Initiated by former chancellor Gerhard Schröder and resulting from a collaboration between the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and three corporates – BASF, Deutsche Telekom and Siemens – the entity was set up as an independent public-private VC firm.
Von Frankenberg recalled: “There was a lot of research coming out of research institutes and universities at the time, but very few high-tech startups were being financed. Around the years 2004-05, only around 20 startups had managed to get seed financing. So eventually, a team of experts came up with a proposal to set up a dedicated fund for high-tech startups.”
Focusing on seed and early-stage investments, the Bonn-based firm targets high-potential tech-driven startups with investments and co-investments of up to €1m in the first round and up to €3m in total. To date, HTGF has invested about €892.5m through three funds, including HTGF I (€272m) and HTGF II (€304m), and claims to have helped incept 500 startups. The fund also reports injections totalling €1.5bn into its portfolio companies from external investors through follow-on rounds, as well as 90 exits.
Other public investors in HTGF include KfW and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (the Fraunhofer Society), a German research organisation involving 72 institutes. But what started out as a government vehicle is now practically a public-private partnership functioning similarly to a CVC fund, according to von Frankenberg.
He said: “There have always been commitments coming from the industry, but the government was to be the majority shareholder from the beginning. In the first fund, we had corporate commitments of €17m – a fairly small share for a €272m fund. But the industry share now comes up to about 34% in HTGF III.”
Last year, HTGF closed its third fund at €316.5m, above its €310m target, with participation from 32 companies in the industrial and economic sectors. Some of the big names included pharmaceutical groups Boehringer Ingelheim, Bayer and B Braun, as well as Evonik, BASF, Robert Bosch and retail group Schwarz.
Von Frankenberg added: “Some of them already have their own CVC activity, but for those who have limited resources, HTGF can be a great help. Through us, they can outsource some of their investment activity, and we can provide them with access to deals, technology and industry trends. Meanwhile, for the government, we provide a precious insight into the ecosystem.”
HTGF’s contribution to the German ecosystem has reportedly helped create 10,000 jobs and generate significant tax revenues.
While HTGF may be the government’s biggest contribution to the ecosystem to date, other state-backed funding sources exist. For example, Coparion was set up jointly by KfW and the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in 2016, aiming to support growth-stage startups within the technology and fintech sectors. With an investment capacity of €225m, the structure invests mostly alongside private players. Companies can receive up to €10m, usually through several financing rounds ranging between €500,000 and €3m. Speaking to KfW about the group’s investment strategy, Coparion managing director Christian Stein said: “There is no set list of criteria to tick off, but recipients should have some sort of initial success. This could be in the form of an innovative technology, or of reliable customer relations or sales.”
A number of state-backed vehicles also exist at regional level.
Despite these contributions, some industry players agree that government support is weak in some areas. Evonik’s Mohr said: “Germany has always been great at academia and at birthing smart ideas and individuals, and with support coming from the state we have managed to stabilise early-stage funding sources. But when it comes to writing bigger cheques, we just do not have the firepower at this stage.”
Launched at the end of last year, KfW’s venture investment vehicle KfW Capital has vowed to try to fix this problem. The bank said: “The creation of the subsidiary and the expansion of the group’s investment business were based on an idea to enhance the market for VC financing as a driving force for the German economy.”
It also resulted from a resolution passed by the German parliament in March last year that gave the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, KfW and the Ministry of Finance a mandate to encourage more company founders in Germany. At the time, official reports estimated the growth financing segment to be short of €500m to €600m a year. The goal was also to double KfW’s investment in venture capital and debt to reach €200m a year by 2020. This was to be achieved with financial support from the European Recovery Program (ERP) Special Fund, created in the aftermath of the Marshall Plan launched after World War II.
Structured as a fund of funds, KfW Capital investments range from follow-on funds run by experienced fund management companies to first-time funds, with the condition that any vehicle receiving support must invest at least the same sum in German tech companies at a further stage. KfW Capital aims to invest €2bn over the next 10 years, with a maximum of €25m per German or European venture capital or debt fund. Alexander Thees, who co-heads the new structure, said: “The launch of KfW Capital was about expanding our activity and making it more visible through an independent entity, but it was also a way to streamline processes and decision-making to be more in line with the VC industry.”
This is not KfW’s first shot at venture investment. In 2015, the group launched the ERP Venture Capital Fund Investment program, which has since committed a total of €265m to 18 VC funds. “KfW Capital makes investments pari passu with private investors, contributing a maximum of 19.99% to a fund’s capital,” Thees said. “In a sense, KfW Capital builds on what KfW restarted four years ago with the ERP Venture Capital Fund. As a whole, KfW has been engaged in VC fund investment for almost 20 years In the late 1990s, we witnessed our first significant investment boost, but we subsequently withdrew from the market following the recession.” KfW Capital, which is now also responsible for the ERP Venture Capital Fund investments, will close its first investment this year.
University venturing
According to the German Centre for Research and Innovation, which in line with the government’s wish to internationalise science and research has established subsidiaries in Brazil, Japan, Russia, the US and India, a large number of organisations participate in the development of innovation in Germany. Among these are the technology transfer departments within scientific organisations and universities, development agencies for innovation and technology parks. SMEs, the centre says, also play an important part in creating new products and services.
To help kickstart the Mittelstand’s development in the 1940s, the Fraunhofer Society was created as a partnership between universities and companies that would ease the process of applying research. Now consisting of 72 German institutions and focused on various sectors, the society is one of Europe’s largest applied research and development institutions, with 25,000 employees and an annual research budget of €2.3bn. While the state partly backs the institutes, 70% of their funding is earned through contract work for government-sponsored projects and companies.
Max Planck Society for the Advance of Science consists of 84 institutes conducting research in the natural, life and social sciences, and humanities. Max Planck Innovation is the unit in charge of commercialising inventions and technologies coming out of the institutes. A team within the organisation also helps researchers create of business models.
Other organisations include the German Association of Innovation, Technology and Business Incubation Centres, nurturing 150 incubators, innovation, technology and business centres as well as scientific technology parks, which are now home to 5,800 companies and 46,000 employees and which claim to have contributed to the formation of 17,400 new businesses.
Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres is another innovation cluster, distributing funding from the Ministry of Education and Research to 19 autonomous research centres and evaluating their effectiveness against international standards. As part of the association, Hemholtz Institutes provide strategic partnerships between Helmholtz centres and universities within specific areas of research. Each institute can receive institutional funding of €3m to €5m a year. The group’s technology transfer department is in charge of applying research results.
Leibniz Association, which connects 89 independent research centres and focuses on social, economic and ecological issues, offers collaboration with universities through the Leibniz Science Campi program. Founders Foundation’s Borek said: “Germany has a long tradition of producing groundbreaking technology and innovation. Universities are heavily involved int research too, although as opposed to what is done in other countries they do not tend to make direct investments in spin-offs.”
Founders Foundation has developed its own initiative to collaborate with universities – Science-to-Business Lab. The program offers half-day workshops to students and researchers to help them commercialise ideas.
Institutions producing most spin-offs include the technical universities RWTH Aachen and Dresden University of Technology, and public research university Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. University of Stuttgart and Frankfurt’s Goethe University also have tech transfer offices, with the latter placing a focus on biotech. HTGF’s von Frankenberg said: “Universities are now much more open to supporting students and researchers in setting up their company. I would say you can find great deals all over Germany, as each region has its own strength, but a big focus is generally placed on high-tech and biotech.”
Among all German universities, the champion is Technical University of Munich (TUM) and its Centre for Innovation and Business Creation. More commonly known as UnternehmerTUM, the centre employs 200 people to offer incubation services and educating students on entrepreneurship and venture. It has also launched its own venture fund, Unternehmertum Venture Capital Partners backing European B2B-focused startups with tickets ranging between €500,000 and €3m.
Meanwhile, the TUMentrepreneurship project, endowed with €2.7m from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, encourages the creation of spin-offs in the fields of information and communication technology, medtech, cleantech and life sciences.
Established in 2010 by private patrons and business owners, TUM University Foundation is another TUM entity set up as a non-profit organisation with a €20m endowment to attract talent and support promising young scientists. TUM claims to be helping the creation of an average of 70 companies a year and to be one of Germany’s three most active universities in the field of patents.
Overall, German universities “are advancing quite nicely”, as von Frankenberg put it. Last year, the Ministry of Education and Research announced it would award funding to 48 institutions, including 35 universities of applied sciences and 12 universities and colleges of education. The funding was to be given through the Innovative Hochschule program set up in May 2016, targeting small to medium-sized universities and institutes of technology. The program is set to provide a total of €550m by 2027 to boost technology transfer capabilities and support partnerships with local industry, with the overall effect of bolstering regional ecosystems. “But there is still some way to go,” von Frankenberg added.
Industry players agree more could be done to incentivise business creation and popularise the entrepreneurial path within schools and universities. “The issue,” said Founders Foundation’s Borek, “is that in Germany, most universities are publicly funded, which means they do not have the same financial resources as US or UK-based universities. What we have learnt through our exchanges with students is that there seems to be very little motivation for researchers to engage in business creation, as there are no substantial financial incentives for doing that.”
In a set of recommendations published in 2016, the Federation of German Industries emphasised the key role played by education in developing the ecosystem, saying “schools and universities must vigorously inform their students about the opportunities and challenges of going into business and actively encourage them to go into vocational training”.
The organisation also highlighted the necessity of introducing tax benefits for research as “an instrument to promote research and innovation in a broad and open way”. The report went on: “All large, and the majority of small, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries have such incentives – only Germany does not. It is high time that tax incentives for research are established in this country too – only then can the Mittelstand grow more strongly, and with it, the German economy.”