Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Last year, as the German economy stagnated, an unlikely trend emerged among its start-ups: the amount of overall funding, year over year, increased by about \u20ac1bn, to \u20ac7bn. However, there were 12 per cent fewer funding rounds than in 2023, meaning the average deal size went up.\u00a0\u201cMost funding rounds above \u20ac20mn or \u20ac30mn are led by foreign investors,\u201d who have not been as affected by the German recession, explains Thomas Pr\u00fcver, author of EY\u2019s Start-up Barometer for Germany report.\u2028\u201cI\u2019d say 90 per cent plus.\u201dWhile there was an increase in funding in 2024, the \u20ac7bn in investment is still a far cry from the 2021 peak of more than \u20ac17bn, when money poured into high-profile consumer start-ups. \u201c2021 was almost solely driven by huge funding rounds in B2C companies \u2014 quick commerce, ecommerce,\u201d Pr\u00fcver says. \u201cNow, it turns out those business models are not that robust, and investors are reluctant to invest in them.\u201dEric Weber, chief executive and founder of Leipzig-based incubator SpinLab, agrees: \u201cYou used to be able to raise millions with a nice slide deck. Now, if you don\u2019t have traction, investors aren\u2019t interested.\u201dAs the German consumer has become more cost-sensitive and B2C start-ups have struggled to become profitable, investment has shifted away from B2C and towards B2B start-ups, often ones that have industrial and manufacturing applications. \u201cSome say software eats the world, but hardware keeps it running,\u201d Weber says, \u201cand that is where Germany excels.\u201dThis shift has favoured Bavaria, in southern Germany \u2014 a natural home for B2B start-ups because of its strong industrial base, according to Carsten Rudolph, of Bay Start-ups, a regional incubator based in Nuremberg. Berlin, meanwhile, has traditionally preferred consumer start-ups. Last year, for the first time, Bavaria narrowly overtook the capital region in terms of the total investment value.These trends have converged in the case of Isar Aerospace, a Bavaria-based company founded in 2018. Isar is developing rockets that bring up to 1,000kg of cargo, such as satellites, to lower-earth orbit. Germany is well suited to compete in this niche market, largely because of its expertise in high-tech, automated precision manufacturing, according to Bulent Altan, Isar\u2019s first angel investor and a former vice-president at SpaceX.\u201cIt\u2019s cheaper to operate in Germany than in Silicon Valley or Los Angeles,\u201d he says. \u201cIf I think about SpaceX and the 100 hour work week, year after year after year \u2014 sure, that comes with a certain amount of efficiency. But it comes at the cost of lower employee loyalty and a much more competitive market, higher salaries and a certain amount of burnout culture.\u201dIsar was incubated by Munich-based start-up lab UnternehmerTUM and benefited from its vast partner network that includes the European Space Agency (ESA). \u201cI often use Isar as an example of a smart collaboration between a young start-up and a traditional space agency,\u201d says G\u00e9raldine Naja, the ESA\u2019s director of commercialisation, industry and competitiveness.Isar successfully leveraged the agency\u2019s support, by securing significant contracts and, in turn, using them to attract further private funding, she explains. But they needn\u2019t be dependent on the ESA long term: \u201cI certainly hope that eventually Isar will become totally self-sustainable. It\u2019s like raising kids \u2014 you support them, but eventually, they have to fly on their own.\u201dAcross Germany, while large investment rounds increased last year, the decrease in small deals means that fewer start-ups are getting early-stage funding. \u201cNot a good sign,\u201d says EY\u2019s Pr\u00fcver, because \u201cearly-stage companies fuel the pipeline for later-stage funding.\u201d This development has dissuaded young Germans from pursuing entrepreneurial projects, says Volker Hofmann, who runs Humboldt-Innovation, a subsidiary of Berlin\u2019s eponymous university that aims to connect science with business. \u201cGermany has lost 60 per cent of its founders in the past two decades. If we don\u2019t reverse this, it won\u2019t matter how much funding we have \u2014 we won\u2019t have enough entrepreneurs to invest in.\u201d\u00a0\u201cWe need a new mindset,\u201d Hofmann says, attributing the decline to Europe\u2019s excessive bureaucracy and a cultural aversion to risk. \u201cIn Asia and the US, becoming an entrepreneur is seen as a great ambition. In Germany, we have too many barriers \u2014 legal, financial, and cultural \u2014 that discourage people from starting companies.\u201dHelmut Sch\u00f6nenberger, UnternehmerTUM co-founder and CEO, sees things in a more positive light, highlighting how far Germany\u2019s start-up scene has matured since he co-founded the educational institution in 2002: \u201cTwenty years ago, we stood outside [the university food hall] handing out flyers for a business plan course. Now, billionaires and global investors come to us.\u201d Sch\u00f6nenberger agrees challenges exist, but points to how the start-up ecosystem can push for change at the city and state levels. UnternehmerTUM, he says, is proactive in working with the city of Munich when it comes to securing start-up visas, test site approvals and government-backed funding.UnternehmerTUM topped the Financial Times-Statista 2025 ranking of Europe\u2019s leading start-up hubs for the second year running.Back in Berlin, Hofmann points out that Germany has multiple thriving start-up hubs. However, they are in effect siloed. He believes they need to collaborate more to compete internationally. \u201cOur ecosystems in Germany are too fragmented. We don\u2019t join our forces the way we should \u2014 whether it\u2019s between universities, industries or even regions,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not a competition between regions; it\u2019s about making Germany and Europe better as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Last year, as the German economy stagnated, an unlikely trend emerged among its start-ups: the amount of overall funding, year over year, increased by about \u20ac1bn, to \u20ac7bn. However, there were 12 per cent fewer funding rounds than in 2023, meaning the average deal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-238774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}