Berlin DeepTech Landscape

Germany is much less centralized than every other bigger Western economy in every aspect including (deep tech) startups. Some German deep tech companies that come into my mind:

- DeepL, Cologne - Cylib,Aachen - German Bionic, Augsburg - Customcells, Itzehoe (Schleswig-Holstein) - IQM (party German, Munich) - Aleph Alpha, Heidelberg - aedifion, Cologne - Quantum-Systems, Gilching (Bavaria) - Helsing, Munich - Lilium, Weßling/Oberpfaffenhofen (Bavaria) - Proxima Fusion, Munich

But yes, not one is from Berlin that I can think of.

Don’t forget Garching with SAP/Siemens.

A 100% this. Germany is a country where you either are born rich or you work for someone else. Nothing in between. Everything is institutinalised. There is no room for founders, entrepreneurs.

> 210k Startup employees

I mean, not the main employer in the region, but also not very indicative of "no-startup culture".

>You don’t have the hacker mindset in Germany.

Wrong. Look at things like the CCC, there is a lot of hacker culture in Germany, just the hackers are the exact opposite of entrepreneurs.

>Zalando a clone of Amazon.

Zalando was actually a clone of Zappos. In this case the clone was more successful than the original.

The data seems to come from Dealroom (https://knowledge.dealroom.co/knowledge/how-dealroom-collect...), so with a bit of work maybe!

It's pretty easy to look up similar companies in different countries, so it's clearly not manually collected data.

10m venture fund? That‘s one series B financing for some startups, isn‘t it?

Having tried the whole startup thing in Berlin.. then comparing financing opportunities in say.. London… honestly I don’t think there’s much in favor of deep tech startups in Berlin other than .. a lot of universities being physically present in Berlin. The business mindset is just.. too narrow. The only path I could think of is a phd thesis turn company via private investment… and I fail to see how Berlin is different than say .. Freiburg on that regard. IMHO, what you get in Berlin is a lot of little copycats of successful American companies on the consumer level .. with recent graduates being paid poorly because that is what berlin allows.. low pay.. low tech.. low risk startups.. or just people attracted to the “cool” vibe of the city.. hardly an incentive for deep tech. To me, the perfect case study is Rocket Internet. There is no way any deep tech startup would come from there. To get a deep tech startup to work you need to pay good wages to highly specialized people working on a project for a few years and there’s nothing special about berlin to enable that… except a lot of universities. But then again.. you could do the same thing in any other German city and it wouldn’t be any different.

EONs ago I've been to some start-up founding/marketing/schooling event in Berlin, and left early, having to suppress my urge to laugh out loud very hard.

Another typical thing for that 'scene' comes to mind, wherein some dudes got a price for a thing shaped like a pyramid with maybe 35 to 45 cm side length, intended to work as a Home/Soho NAS, with very underpowered COTS innards, and shitty software/crappy UI, lacking general functionality.

Intended sales price? 5000EUR!

Yay!

But painted very industrial looking orange. Phew! Hardcore!

That may be over-generalized, there may be some hidden champions there, but they rarely make a public impression.

Hm. Maybe AVM, considering their market share in the DACH area. I don't like them, but they are less trashy than most other stuff in that market segment, and mostly do work reliably. Just not in ways I'd have liked ;>

This will require filing a notarized 150 page petition entitled "Antrag auf Änderung von Website-Funktionen, die nicht im letzten vom Bundesministerium für Digitales und Verkehr und allen zuständigen Behörden genehmigten Design enthalten waren, wie in der Veröffentlichung der Regeln und Vorschriften zur Website-Änderung Nr. 41234 beschrieben" with the Office of Map Readjustments at the Branch of Map Software at the Department of Software Features at the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport. You must have this petition signed by the website's manager as well as the head of the Office of Website Alterations at the Branch of Internet Affairs at the Department of Digital Technologies of the State of Berlin. Additionally, form 8 of the petition's 2025.g.5 annex must include approval from all users registered under the "Gesetz zur Regelung des Zugriffs auf Web-APIs und zur Registrierung offizieller Benutzer".

If any competing petitions are approved before yours, yours will be rejected, and you will need to submit a new petition that accounts for those changes specified in those approved petitions as described in annex 2024.j.21, and all new signatures and approvals subject to these cumulative approved changes. If any party refuses to sign your petition, you may appeal to the Office of Research of the Cumulative Effects of Software Changes at the Branch of Software Changes at the Department of Software Features at the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport to complete a study of the refusing signer's rationale for refusing to sign your petition. This process will take between 3-10 years, depending on the backlog. If the Office finds the rationale sound, your petition will be denied. If the rationale is found unsound, you will need to resubmit your application with the findings of the Office with an additional signature from the previously refusing signer to confirm that he has read the findings of the Office. If the signer rejects the findings of the Office, he must provide the reasons for his rejection if you would like to resubmit his reasons for rejection to the Office a second time.

I'm pretty sure this is some website two people threw together. Not exactly a well-known jobs board.

How are industrial giants "startups"?

Why would Bosch show up in a list of companies in Berlin?