This Month in German, Swiss, and Austrian (GSA) Startups - Summer 2023 (July/ August) | Startupradio Episode #393

Fintech Germany - Startups and Venture Capital

Welcome to our summer 2023 wrap-up with vital news from the startup scenes in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in around 30 minutes sometimes less 🙂.

This time we wrap up July and August. We came up with the summer news because the September news has always been very long, overcrowded, and covered 3 months. That was a bit too much of a break and too much news in one piece. So we looked to wrap up summer and since the US is an important market and Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer it seems like a good fit.

This summer has been a bit different and there has been a lot of news, so we focus more on the most recent ones and we have cut a lot of news here.

For everybody in the US who celebrates it: Happy Labor Day!

Find all links to the quoted news on our Medium blog: https://medium.com/startuprad-io/this-month-in-german-swiss-and-austrian-gsa-startups-summer-2023-july-august-episode-fdb709d89fbd

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Our Highlights:

Binance has not - yet - gotten permission to operate in Germany from BaFin, Nextwind raises 750 m US$, Bitpanda surpasses 1 M customers in Germany and Germany sets a new record in new founders. We also shared that SAP wants to invest in Aleph Alpha, they confirmed this and two more.

Germany's law for legalizing cannabis falls short of the expectations of cannabis entrepreneurs. Europe dominates climate fintech funding and the overall fintech funding shows a sign of life. Bafin also stopped mini VC investments - trashing the business model of some fintechs - AND we found newly closed VC funds in excess of 2.8 bn US$ that are open to European founders.

Our Enablers

This recording is supported by HTAI and the Enterprise Europe Network Hessen

Look for our dedicated sub-podcast in partnership with them: Tech Startups Germany on our https://linktr.ee/startupradio

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Top News

Du kommst hier ned rein 🙂 Is the usual saying in Frankfurt if a Bouncer won't let you in a Club

Fintech blog Finance Forward reports German finance oversight BaFin signals no license for Binance for Germany. So they can neither advertise nor expand in Germany. To be clear, this is not a final NO, but rather a "Binance keeps trying, but BaFin signaled a No"

750 M US$ for Wind Energy

Wind Energy in Germany: StartUp Nextwind raises 750 M US$ Venture Capital investors include Sandbrook Capital, Canadian funds Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), and Imco

Bitpanda - The Austrian Unicorn

Surpasses 1 million customers in Germany alone https://buff.ly/44mMyKP it is not sure how many of them are really active, but that is always a tough question, even for the startups. But the question is important since one only makes money with active users.

Germany Sets a New Record in Founders

Despite the current economic situation, Germany has the highest share of founders in 24 years!!! According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Germany had a larger than 9% founder quota, meaning people from 18–64 who (co) founded a new business within the last 3,5 years (Young Entrepreneurs). The highest value since 1999 when the monitoring started.

Immigrants are especially willing to start new businesses. The founder quota of immigrants in Germany is 20% compared to 1,7% of non-immigrants.

The founder quota of women (7,1%) is overall lower than the one for men (11%).

SAP Invests in AI Startups

We have shared before that German software giant SAP is rumored to be interested in investing in Aleph Alpha, now they confirmed the investment in three AI startups https://buff.ly/45OC6Nb This is quite a new strategy for SAP, in the past, they wrote their own code. Now they intend to work with partnerships

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Chapters:

00:00:00 Introducing Startup Red Dot IO, your go-to for German tech

00:00:18 Introduction and Recap of Summer News

00:02:53 Highlights: NEN's Cryptocurrency Platform, Bit Panda Milestone, NextWind Funding

00:03:18 Exploring the challenges and success stories of German entrepreneurs

00:13:38 Vertical farming struggles with profitability and high energy costs

00:16:35 Challenges faced by Swiss fintech funding and German cannabis startups

00:19:07 Germans Finance of us halt VC investment for small investors

00:21:46 Highlights from the startup scene in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

00:24:25 General news: VC funds and investments in GSA startups

00:27:20 Fintech market updates and Auxmoney's takeover

00:29:09 Discussion on creative destruction and insolvency opportunities

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