Well, not that I want to defend German start-ups, really I don't. But WeWork is just office space, so...

Point being, a lot unicorns are just VC pushed marketing machines. And I have no idea why Auto1 even exists...

Edit: Softbank invested in Auto1 as well. I start to see a pattern here...

Oh, I'm in total agreement - a lot of unicorns are just "normal companies" with VC cash behind them. But a lot of unicorns actually do something really cool. SpaceX, DJI, Ginkgo Bioworks, etc. Then there are a bunch that started great but went off course, like Vice and Reddit...

But Germany really perplexes me.

For the first five decades of the prize's existence, Germany literally had the majority (!) of the world's Nobel laureates. Germans invented the computer, modern telecommunication, the x-ray, the printing press... they discovered everything from testosterone to continental drift to nuclear fission!

It's not like innovation stopped since WW2 either (which I see people say occasionally) - just since the 80s they've discovered six (!) elements, created the first genetically modified animal, the SIM card, SMS, MP3, the scanning tunneling microscope...

They have money, they have an educated population - but in this new world of startups they don't seem to be getting anywhere. Why?

I think it comes down to the German attitude towards risk and entrepreneurship. Failure is still seen as a permanent mark on your CV here instead of something that gave you experience. German VCs are risk averse, so they are not taking big chances regularly which could create unicorns. The few newer VCs that think and act more "American" are to small to fund unicorns.

Recent example: a young guy did his PhD, invented couple cool algorithms in video processing area and got Million Euro grant to commercialize the project. The algorithms were cool, but the clients the PhD guy targeted didn’t care about price at all. The guy spent all the money and failed.

Inventing is one thing, commercializing invention - totally different. Population doing inventions has no clue how to make business even with money. Regarding funding, it’s just not there. What is seed stage in Germany, is series A or even B in USA. If founder can bootstrap until series B size, he probably will not take money from outside anymore.

Do you have a link for this story? Sounds interesting. With h.265, VP9, VC1 etc it seems there's demand for better video codecs.

No link, only local stories in Munich. That wasn’t about video codecs, but rather SLAM. They were my direct competition. The clients were not interested in saving couple €, they need stability long term for their installations. I have same problem, so I need to do this part differently.