Berlin is no longer Europe’s start-up capital – FAZ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Berlin has lost in the first half of the current year the title of the start-up capital of Europe, but could maintain its prominent position within Germany. Berlin startups could combine an investment of 520 million euros in the first half year. London (1.3 billion euros), Stockholm (1.0 billion euros) and Paris (€ 673 million) be the German capital significantly behind.

Author: Carsten Knop, editor in charge of business news and company. Follow

In the first half 2015 Berlin led with a total investment of 1.5 billion euros still clearly ahead of London (1.0 billion euros). At that time, especially the impact of major investments of Internet investee Rocket Internet were felt.

But not only Berlin has fallen. Even Germany’s total start-ups have taken in the first half 2016, significantly less money by financing rounds than in the same period of the previous year. The total value has fallen by almost 2 billion euros to 957 million euros, more than half.

“At first glance, the numbers are alarming”

At the same time the number is financing rounds increased significantly, by 60 percent to 249. the results are the “start-up barometer” of the auditing and consulting company EY (Ernst & amp; Young). The study is based on an analysis of venture capital investment in Europe.

“At first glance, the numbers are alarming,” said Peter Lennartz, a partner at EY talking to the F.A.Z. “But a second look shows a positive picture: More and more German startups have good networking opportunities, more and more established companies set up their own accelerators, more and more start-ups receive fresh capital, there are more and more medium-sized financing rounds

This shows that German start-up company for investors are more attractive than ever before. “in addition, the Rocket Internet effect was slightly distorted view of the risk capital market.

A sound basis for sustainable growth

Without these one-off effects in the previous year, the total investment actually increased in 2016 in Germany. “The bottom line current figures show that the start-up scene has grown up in Germany and stands on a broader scale than ever before. The ecosystem for startups evolve in Germany very positively “. Lennartz believes

And that with the decline in total investment also increased the number of investments, Lennartz evaluates also as a good sign,” This is a proof that the number of smaller early-stage financing has significantly increased and thus a sound basis for future, sustainable growth has been laid. Although always

must be expected that many start-ups do not survive. More about

But the more ups and the more funding be made in Seedbereich, the greater the chance that will evolve in startups to healthy SMEs or even Unicorns and therefore jobs are created in the digital domain in particular “.

Same but different: the entrepreneurial culture in Germany versus America

From the first to third place dropped

Unicorn (Unicorn) are startups called, are the billion dollars or are worth. In later, larger rounds German investors are, however, usually no longer there.

Looking at the whole of Europe, the changes were already less impressive: the total value of venture capital investments fell by only 4 percent of nearly 7 billion euros to 6.4 billion euros. The number of rounds of financing, rose by 40 percent to 1113th