Startup Community insights – Stuttgart and the region (2015)

Startup Community insights – Stuttgart

and the region Kathleen Fritzsche

Accelerate Stuttgart & StartUp StuttgartTwitter: @kathl_fritzsche

Hey, I‘m Kathleen

• 2010: First Startup Weekend• 2011: Co-founded StartUp Stuttgart• 2012: Co-Founded Accelerate Stuttgart• 2013: Startup Weekend Facilitator

A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value.

(Steve Blank, What‘s a startup? First principles.)

What‘s a startup in the first place?

www.accelerate-stuttgart.de

Startup Communities (Brad Feld)

Feeders• Politics• Universities• Investors• Mentors• Service Providers• Corporates

Leaders• Entrepreneurs• Members

Photo: © Marcin Ryczek

• Strong automotive sectors & industries• Big corporations & SMEs• Traditional engineering know-how• Hardware/ Internet of Things initiatives• Strong Health/ Pharma research

Southwest Germany has…


• Stuttgart (600.000 inhab.)• Karlsruhe (300.000 inhab.)• Mannheim/ Heidelberg

(300.000/ 150.000)• Heilbronn (120.000 inhab.)

Startup communities


• 2010 – First Startup Weekend Stuttgart• 2011 – Launch of StartUp Stuttgart• 2012 – Accelerate Stuttgart• 2013 – Startup Weekend B2B• 2014 – 2 Startup Weekends, Startup Stuttgart e.V.• 2015 – 2 Startup Weekends,

First accelerator program by Accelerate Stuttgart

Stuttgart community – The story

• Writing about our startups & startup ecosystem• Organising events for entrepreneurs• Connecting people & building a community

What StartUp Stuttgart is doing

www.startup-stuttgart.de

• ~ 100 active startups• Our Blog: 5000 unique visits/month• Biggest Events– Startup Weekend: ca. 100-120 attendees– Founders‘ BBQ: ca. 100 attendees (monthly)– Startup Lunch, Hardware Meetup, Leancamp...

Our community in numbers


A few startup examples


• 2013: – Regiohelden (? by Bertelsmann, Mountain Super

Angel, netSTART Venture)• 2014: – Simpleshow ($5.4m by Japanese investors)– Smoope (€ 500.000 by HTGF)– Mauz & Wauz (? by private investors)– Abusix (Karlsruhe) (? by TargetPartners)

Investments (examples)


• 2013: – edelight exited to Burda (undisclosed)

• 2014: – Teamviewer exited to Permira ($1.1b)– HockeyApp exited to Microsoft (undisclosed)

• 2015: – Autonetzer exited to Drivy (undisclosed)– RegioHelden exited to Ströer (undisclosed)

Exits (examples)


• Local patriotism ties people to their cities and communities

• Some good initiatives by institutions to attract talent to entrepreneurship

• Lots of money involved in Southwest Germany (needs to find its way to the startups)

• Close-tied network • A lot can be done with a few bottom-up

initiatives

Advantages of a small community


• Students and employees are more interested in entrepreneurship but orienting towards bigger cities (e.g. Berlin, Hamburg, Munich)

• Corporates want to get involved but will take more time Berlin first

• Institutions try to maintain their ‚power‘ • Very traditional funding structure

big money is in bigger cities

Struggles of a small community


Startup Community insights – Stuttgart

and the region Kathleen Fritzsche

Accelerate Stuttgart & StartUp StuttgartTwitter: @kathl_fritzsche


Startup Community insights – Stuttgart and the region (2015)

Education

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