Germany is one of the leading startup powerhouses in Europe, attracting $4.8 billion in venture capital funding in 2019. The Sifted team has chosen a list of startups to follow in 2020. AIN.TECH publishes the second part of 20.
Founded: In 2016 by Aleksandar Orlic, Igor Kuschnir, Jessica Holzbach, Lav Odorovic, Luka Ivicevic, Matteo Concas, and Sir Gabriel Holbach
Valuation: €32-€48M
Penta is a digital business bank platform designed to help startups and SMEs save time and money on banking. It automates bank accounts and invoices, offers online cashless banking services, and helps to open an online banking account in minutes, enabling consumers to manage their cash flows easily
Founded: In 2016 by Alexander Baatz, Catharina Bruns, Christopher Plantener, Madison Bell, Sebastian Galonska, and Sophie Pester
Valuation: €4-€6M
Kontist provides the banking services for freelancers, making finances easy. The company believes they are shaping the future of work, challenging corporate structures, embracing individuality and building successful businesses.
Founded: In 2016 by Aiga Senftleben, Artem Demchenkov, Christian Grobe, and Matthias Knecht
Valuation: €120-€180M
Billie is a fintech startup with a mission to reinvent working capital management for SMEs by offering innovative lending products. It is solving the order-to-cash problem through a fully automated invoice financing solution tailored to small businesses.
Founded: In 2017 by David Pflugpeil, Magnus Langanke, Patrick Haede, Sebastian Hade, Sebastian Haede, and Tobi Schnorpfeil
Valuation: €4-€5M
Berlin-based company Mapify is a social marketplace for travel experiences that connects travellers around the world through past and ongoing journeys. By developing a website and app, it has attracted users worldwide to share trips and spots in more than 160 countries.
Founded: In 2013 by Cornelius Frey, Max Meran, and Pia Frey
Valuation: €12-€18M
Opinary is a Berlin-based startup that established a new way for users to share their opinion in online content. Its technology helps 84 million monthly users to share their view with a tap and understand opinion trends at a glance. The Times, HuffPost, NBC, Toyota and Mastercard are already among the startup’s clients.
Founded: In 2015 by Michael Cassau
Valuation: €150-€250M
Grover is a company that enables people to subscribe to tech products monthly instead of buying them. It allows private customers, as well as businesses, to get access to a wide assortment of over 1500 tech products such as smartphones, laptops, VR gear.
Founded: In 2014 by Oliver Schimek
Valuation: €140-€210M
CrossLend is a fintech that develops a European digital debt marketplace. It enables originators such as banks, savings banks, cooperative banks, special credit institutions offer their assets to institutional investors from all over Europe for purchase via a single central platform.
Founded: In 2016 Marcin Rudolf and Zoe Adamovicz
Valuation: €40-€60M
Neufund is blockchain-based asset tokenization and equity investment platform. The company’s technology enables virtually any incorporated entity worldwide to conduct a public offering on blockchain.
Founded: In 2015 by Julian Teicke
Valuation: €1.55B
Berlin-based insurtech startup Wefox functions with brokers, insurance agencies, and individuals via a digital platform. The company facilitates simple and personalised consultations for different types of insurance.
Founded: In 2014 by Christoph Lange and Till Janczukowicz
Valuation: €40-€60M
IDAGIO is a streaming service specifically designed for classical music. It has subscribers in over 130 countries including the US and Canada. Since the startup’s launch, IDAGIO has been downloaded over 500,000 times.
Founded: In 2016 by Doreen Huber
Valuation: €24-€36M
Berlin-based startup Lemoncat is an online marketplace for high-quality business catering. Since its establishment, the company has spread to 80 cities in Germany with 450 caterers, making Lemoncat the largest online catering platform in the country.
Founded: In 2013 by Martin Ramsin and Raffaela Rein
Valuation: €18-€27M
CareerFoundry is a career accelerator for vocational tech skills. The startup builds online programs delivered by expert mentors to bring complete beginners up to employable standards in technology.
Founded: In 2012 by Benjamin Roth and Moritz Kreppel
Valuation: €40-€60M
Urban Sports Club offers a flexible sports flat rate. The mission is to help people lead a more healthy and active lifestyle. Club members can choose from more than 50 types of sports and more than 10,000 partner venues in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Belgium.
Founded: In 2011 by Artur Hasselbach, Bastian Schmidtke, Jakob Schreyer, and Patrick Brienen-Lucius
Valuation: €55M
orderbird is a cloud provider of iPad and Android POS system for the hospitality industry and the SMB Market. Over 5,000 customers including restaurants, cafes, clubs, ice cream shops and beer gardens in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland are already using the orderbird POS system.
Founded: In 2012 by Christian Henschel, Manuel Kniep, and Paul Müller
Valuation: €818M
Adjust is an app marketing platform. It includes measurement, fraud prevention, cybersecurity, and marketing automation products. The company now has 16 offices around the world.
Founded: In 2014
Valuation: €145-€218M
Personio offers cloud-based HR management and recruiting solutions and software for startups, and small- and medium-sized enterprises. The company enables its customers to store and manage all employee data and HR processes in one place.
Founded: In 2008 by Bahman Nedaei and Zahir Dehnadi
Valuation: €40-€60M
navabi is a plus-size fashion retailer. It offers a huge assortment of brands for plus sizes globally, as well as clothes of their own brands. The pages of navabi feature weekly fashion editorial, weekly updated products and video presentations for each collection with style recommendations.
Founded: In 2006 by Elizabeth Parsons Morgan and Olaf Lenzmann
Valuation: €180-€270M
Market Logic is a venture-financed corporation that provides marketing information systems to the marketing and research teams. Its clients include global brands from FMCG/CPG, healthcare, retail, high-tech, finance and communications sectors, and over 600 research agencies.
- Forto (previously FreightHub)
Founded: In 2016 by Erik Muttersbach, Fabian Heilemann, Ferry Heilemann, and Michael Wax
Valuation: €109-€164M
Forto develops digital logistics technology and services that go beyond transportation from point A to point B. The easy to use and intuitive platform allows their customers to optimize and, therefore, own their entire global supply chain processes.
Founded: In 2014 by Alexander Grots, Jonas Girardet, Manuel Boenisch, Paul Günther, and Thomas Kirchner
Valuation: €144-€216M
ProGlove develops industrial wearables that enable manufacturing and logistics staff to work faster, safer, and easier. Through its wearable barcode scanning solutions, process steps can be documented hands-free, giving instant feedback to the user.
