For some reason, I struggle to see Berlin as a deep-tech hub. Most startups there seem to focus on consumer-facing products—like Zalando, Flink, and HelloFresh. In contrast, Munich is clearly leading the way in deep-tech within Germany. The investments raised by companies like Helsing and Isar likely surpass the combined funding of all the startups listed on that page. Munich also benefits from strong technical universities and the presence of major R&D offices from companies like Apple and NVIDIA.

Don’t forget Garching with SAP/Siemens.

Germany is much less centralized than every other bigger Western economy in every aspect including (deep tech) startups. Some German deep tech companies that come into my mind:

- DeepL, Cologne - Cylib,Aachen - German Bionic, Augsburg - Customcells, Itzehoe (Schleswig-Holstein) - IQM (party German, Munich) - Aleph Alpha, Heidelberg - aedifion, Cologne - Quantum-Systems, Gilching (Bavaria) - Helsing, Munich - Lilium, Weßling/Oberpfaffenhofen (Bavaria) - Proxima Fusion, Munich

But yes, not one is from Berlin that I can think of.

>"161 job openings"

Why even bother? Even the website is broken on mobile.

There is no "German startup culture" and there won't ever be, unless very drastic changes are made to labor and corporate laws. Germany does not want start-ups to exist.

A 100% this. Germany is a country where you either are born rich or you work for someone else. Nothing in between. Everything is institutinalised. There is no room for founders, entrepreneurs.

> 210k Startup employees

I mean, not the main employer in the region, but also not very indicative of "no-startup culture".

German „VC“ funds like: „Has this concept ever been implemented? Yes? Was it successful? Yes? Then let’s talk. Leading to endless clones/copycats, only few original ideas.

studiVZ was a clone of Facebook. Zalando a clone of Amazon. The Samwer brothers were very successful with this strategy. And there is an endless list of clones.

There was an attempt at recreating YC in Germany, failed miserably.

You don’t have the hacker mindset in Germany. Neither do you have many investors taking very high risks and bets.

Btw: You should avoid getting financed by IBB. They will demand shitloads of paperwork from you for small amounts of investments

>You don’t have the hacker mindset in Germany.

Wrong. Look at things like the CCC, there is a lot of hacker culture in Germany, just the hackers are the exact opposite of entrepreneurs.

They had a lot of anarchy and counter culture, particularly amongst East German Engineers, simply as part of the social fabric and societal makeup of East/West Germany pre-Unification.

Unfortunately the basis of 'startup culture' in 21st Century America is 'move fast, break things' and 'scale first, apologise later' which is anathema in a highly regulated and bureaucratic culture like present day Germanys'.

Give that their post-WW2 success came from regulated financial services provisioning, and high-precision machining and engineering products shipped out of the Rhine river basin, it's not hard to understand why Berlin's mindset is distinctively not that of the American Pioneer in the West.

Hacker in the sense of „I am not an engineer, but I love hacking around and creating stuff“, in that sense.

Yes. That is what I meant.

>Zalando a clone of Amazon.

Zalando was actually a clone of Zappos. In this case the clone was more successful than the original.

Can it be done automatically for every city using some open version of crunchbase? Would be interesting to compare with SF, NYC, London, Zurich

The data seems to come from Dealroom (https://knowledge.dealroom.co/knowledge/how-dealroom-collect...), so with a bit of work maybe!

It's pretty easy to look up similar companies in different countries, so it's clearly not manually collected data.

Related to a just announced 10M€ venture fund by IBB Ventures: https://www.berlin.de/sen/web/presse/pressemitteilungen/2025... (German)

10m venture fund? That‘s one series B financing for some startups, isn‘t it?

It's effectively seed funding for early stage startups: > Geplant ist die Finanzierung von 50 Startups über Wandeldarlehen zwischen 100.000 und 300.000 Euro mit einer Laufzeit von ein bis zwei Jahren, die dann in eine offene Beteiligung gewandelt werden

The idea is to fund ~50 startups with 100k - 300k€ each

And with 100k you can even have a single developer working full time for a year! That will surely lead to groundbreaking new solutions, rivaling US tech giants.

lol 100k at at startup?

I know that what the company has higher cost that the gross salary, but e.g. the EXIST founder's stipend will pay you 2500€/month if you have a university degree (30k/year), the rates at privately funded companies aren't much higher.

https://exist.de/programm/exist-gruendungsstipendium/

lol do you think an employer just needs to pay salary for an employee?

I think that this was a sarcastic remark about the grant being very low

Yes it is

For one city it might be enough, but that sounds more like seed money than anything (especially for Deep-tech startups which seem to be the focus)

This site does not display well on mobile.

Wow. Lot's of salty people in this thread. I mean, this is HN, so what do you expect, but damn.

Seems to mostly be people not from Berlin/Germany complaining how much the startup scene in Berlin sucks.

Having tried the whole startup thing in Berlin.. then comparing financing opportunities in say.. London… honestly I don’t think there’s much in favor of deep tech startups in Berlin other than .. a lot of universities being physically present in Berlin. The business mindset is just.. too narrow. The only path I could think of is a phd thesis turn company via private investment… and I fail to see how Berlin is different than say .. Freiburg on that regard. IMHO, what you get in Berlin is a lot of little copycats of successful American companies on the consumer level .. with recent graduates being paid poorly because that is what berlin allows.. low pay.. low tech.. low risk startups.. or just people attracted to the “cool” vibe of the city.. hardly an incentive for deep tech. To me, the perfect case study is Rocket Internet. There is no way any deep tech startup would come from there. To get a deep tech startup to work you need to pay good wages to highly specialized people working on a project for a few years and there’s nothing special about berlin to enable that… except a lot of universities. But then again.. you could do the same thing in any other German city and it wouldn’t be any different.

EONs ago I've been to some start-up founding/marketing/schooling event in Berlin, and left early, having to suppress my urge to laugh out loud very hard.

Another typical thing for that 'scene' comes to mind, wherein some dudes got a price for a thing shaped like a pyramid with maybe 35 to 45 cm side length, intended to work as a Home/Soho NAS, with very underpowered COTS innards, and shitty software/crappy UI, lacking general functionality.

Intended sales price? 5000EUR!

Yay!

But painted very industrial looking orange. Phew! Hardcore!

That may be over-generalized, there may be some hidden champions there, but they rarely make a public impression.

Hm. Maybe AVM, considering their market share in the DACH area. I don't like them, but they are less trashy than most other stuff in that market segment, and mostly do work reliably. Just not in ways I'd have liked ;>

the real story abut the berlin "deep tech landscape" can be seen on the job section featuring a single position.

I'm pretty sure this is some website two people threw together. Not exactly a well-known jobs board.

I guess this is only small startups?

I'd think Siemens and Bosch would show up in a lot of those categories, otherwise.

How are industrial giants "startups"?

Why would Bosch show up in a list of companies in Berlin?

That's why I said "I guess this is only small startups."

Yes, they are industrial giants. I suspect Bosch has offices everywhere.

Siemens and Bosch are also not "large startups" because they aren't startups.

Not sure why you mentioned Bosch. Siemens at least was founded in Berlin.

Bosch is not a startup.

This is true. I apologize for my wording. It appears that I was misunderstood, due to my unclear writing.

Can I see all of them on actual map?

When I go to a single one I can see its location.

This will require filing a notarized 150 page petition entitled "Antrag auf Änderung von Website-Funktionen, die nicht im letzten vom Bundesministerium für Digitales und Verkehr und allen zuständigen Behörden genehmigten Design enthalten waren, wie in der Veröffentlichung der Regeln und Vorschriften zur Website-Änderung Nr. 41234 beschrieben" with the Office of Map Readjustments at the Branch of Map Software at the Department of Software Features at the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport. You must have this petition signed by the website's manager as well as the head of the Office of Website Alterations at the Branch of Internet Affairs at the Department of Digital Technologies of the State of Berlin. Additionally, form 8 of the petition's 2025.g.5 annex must include approval from all users registered under the "Gesetz zur Regelung des Zugriffs auf Web-APIs und zur Registrierung offizieller Benutzer".

If any competing petitions are approved before yours, yours will be rejected, and you will need to submit a new petition that accounts for those changes specified in those approved petitions as described in annex 2024.j.21, and all new signatures and approvals subject to these cumulative approved changes. If any party refuses to sign your petition, you may appeal to the Office of Research of the Cumulative Effects of Software Changes at the Branch of Software Changes at the Department of Software Features at the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport to complete a study of the refusing signer's rationale for refusing to sign your petition. This process will take between 3-10 years, depending on the backlog. If the Office finds the rationale sound, your petition will be denied. If the rationale is found unsound, you will need to resubmit your application with the findings of the Office with an additional signature from the previously refusing signer to confirm that he has read the findings of the Office. If the signer rejects the findings of the Office, he must provide the reasons for his rejection if you would like to resubmit his reasons for rejection to the Office a second time.

Excellent AMTSDEUTSCH! Can I have that printed out, 'in dreifacher Ausfertigung' and stamped?