Nobody says SAP is not a good example but the problem is that it's only 1(one) company in such a huge and wealthy country.

Smaller countries like Sweden or The Netherlands host more successful unicorns than Germany.

As I said I think the problem is more that most people from IT just tend to ignore companies that don’t fit into their worldview. There are plenty of highly successful technology companies in Germany, just not so many in software.

Pharma and mechanical engineering companies need IT people, too, even if their core business is not IT.

Sure, but there is a huge difference in pay, career prospects and respect between being the IT guy at a non tech company and being the IT guy at a company who's main focus is tech.

That's the problem Germany has, it's full of successful companies that aren't IT related so people who want good jobs in IT are forced to either leave to SV/CH/London or stay and be "the IT guy" at a non tech company where you get treated as a cost center.

Funny, I know a lot of people that work in software development in Germany, and most of them seem to be quite happy. They don't make SV style salaries of course but are well paid. And let's not forget about the difference in cost of living and work-life balance in Germany as compared to the US (or London), especially for people that have a family.

Of course if you think that only SV-style software companies are worth working for then Germany isn't the place to be.

SAP is a solid business, but have you used their software? Once? It's atrocious and the developer experience is even worse, ABAP gives me shudders to this day. Not to mention that somehow, whenever a big IT project in government or private industry crashes, SAP seems always to be lurking.

SAP is not "modern" in any sense and certainly not "innovative". Unicorn companies generally are both.

It’s enterprise software, so by definition it “sucks” to the average developer due to its complexity and accumulated tech debt. Show me one software tool that has as much functionality as SAP and does not suck by your standards. Unicorns like Slack have better UI/UX because they solve a conceptually much simpler problem. Maybe you could say it’s better to find a large market that can be addressed with a simple tool, but being in a large market with an incredibly complex product also has its benefits. I doubt for example that SAP will be disrupted by a unicorn with better UI because the upfront cost of building the same functionality that SAP offers (and which is not superfluous) is horrendously high. Regarding Slack I can absolutely imagine that it will be disrupted in the near future, because it’s conceptually a much simpler product.

SAP is a behemoth and a success story, but you are missing the point. by the same logic you could even put Oracle in the category. but they are hardly described as a unicorn, or a startup by most people.