Fintech Germany - By Startuprad.io

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Today I welcome our guests:

• Janis Dust - A young fintech entrepreneur, co-founder and CMO of epap (https://de.linkedin.com/in/jannisdust)
• Paolo Sironi - A fintech entrepreneur, turned global research leader in banking and financial markets as well as a book author (Website: https://www.thepsironi.com/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/thepsironi/)You can buy his newest book here: https://amzn.to/30MLgOy
  
• Frank Schwab - Co-founder of Fintech Forum (http://fintechforum.de/) and multiple board member (https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankschwab/)
• Oliver Oster - Fintech entrepreneur, founding partner AQVC, founder and COO OptioPay (https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-oster-37611063/)

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This show was made possible by Hessen Trade and Invest with their brand Invest-in-Hessen. You can learn more about them here (https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/). We also run a dedicated sub-podcast with all interviews and news in cooperation with them. Find it all here: https://anchor.fm/techstartupsgermany

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Find all links and extensive show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-december-2021/

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The Survey

Hey guys, this is Joe from Startuprad.io. Today we bring you an audio-only episode. We know this is uncommon, but there is a special occasion for this. The most comprehensive startup survey is Germany was published, so we wanted to bring you some highlights. This extensive survey is conducted by the German Startup Association in cooperation with partners annually since 2013.

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The Host

This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him: LinkedIn Twitter Email

Find all links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/germanys-most-extensive-annual-startup-survey/

Find all links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-november-2021/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: https://linktr.ee/startupradio

This show was made possible by Hessen Trade and Invest with their brand Invest-in-Hessen. You can learn more about them here (https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/). We also run a dedicated sub-podcast with all interviews and news in cooperation with them. Find it all here: https://anchor.fm/techstartupsgermany

The best way to identify investors and cooperation partners for early-stage startups. Sign up for early access here: https://startupraven.com/

Find all links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-november-2021/

This interview was made possible by Hessen Trade and Invest with their brand Invest-in-Hessen. You can learn more about them here (https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/). We also run a dedicated sub-podcast with all interviews and news in cooperation with them. Find it all here: https://anchor.fm/techstartupsgermany

In this interview, we talk to one of the most experienced fintech founders in the greater Frankfurt area. René Maudrich (https://www.linkedin.com/in/renemaudrich/) is the CEO and founder of Frankfurt-based accounting and invoicing fintech Fastbill. They have been bought by Toronto, Canada-based, fintech unicorn Freshbooks (https://www.freshbooks.com/). He now holds the position of managing director of FreshBooks Germany.

Get scouted by us, when we a have matching mandate and enroll your startup in our database: https://forms.gle/DmPtBKJH7MMmJoYo8 We don’t sell your data or spam you. We will even reach out to you before we include you in a scouting mandate.

Fastbill (https://www.fastbill.com/) was one of the early fintech startups, that have been around, before fintech was a thing. They help small companies and freelancers with their invoicing and accounting. They are a top 3 provider for this kind of software in Germany. You can learn more about them here:

Also, Mario (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahachemer/), the CTO of Fastbill has been a frequent guest. Mario is also part of the frequent crew of our annual fintech review. You can learn more about the company, him, and René in our interviews linked below.

FreshBooks already knew Fastbill from events. FreshBooks was interested in purchasing a stake in Fastbill with their next investment round. During the conversation, they decided on an outright takeover. FreshBooks now owns all equity in Fastbill and the core team with René, Mario and Benjamin stay on board. All former Fastbill shareholders are now FreshBooks shareholders.

The Fastbill team is not permitted to speak about the transaction price. We can make estimates about the price range:

In 2019 they had approx. 2.5 mn Euros revenue (according to estimates in several databases). Assuming a growth to 3 or even 5 mn Euros annualized revenue in 2021 one can estimate the range of the transaction volume with normal multiples from 45 mn Euros at the low end to 110 mn € at the higher end, adding an “earn-out clause” of approx. 10% over the next few years.

Find all links, show notes and further readings here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/fastbills-exit-to-canada-based-unicorn-freshbooks/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

Get scouted by us, when we have a matching mandate and enroll your startup in our database: https://forms.gle/DmPtBKJH7MMmJoYo8

We don’t sell your data or spam you. We will even reach out to you before we include you in a scouting mandate.

In this interview, we talk to Jörg Wiemer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joerg-wiemer/) the co-founder, former CEO and current CSO (Chief Strategy Officer) of the grown-up tech company TIS (https://www.tis.biz/). Jörg had already an extensive corporate background with stops at Deutsche Bank and Douglas Holding (a beauty retailer). Was Senior Vice President and Head of Global Treasury at SAP, where he saw an opportunity and took a leap into entrepreneurship. In 2010 he co-founded TIS.

Joe always wanted to interview them, because they have been an important early success story that made startups sexy again. Also, any current or aspiring entrepreneur can learn a lot from Jörg in the interview.

Jörg has a lot of good advice from his early times starting TIS. You will find it in the last 1/3rd of the interview.

TIS has been part of FT 100 Europe’s fastest-growing companies in 2019, 2020, and 2021.

TIS stands for Treasury Intelligence Solutions (https://www.tis.biz/) and is headquartered in Walldorf. Yes, the Walldorf is also home to SAP. The company has routes within SAP but is by now an independent grown tech company with more than 200 employees worldwide and a strong presence in Europe and North America. Startuprad.io always aims to bring you interesting founder stories, so it was about time to bring you the founder of a successful tech company.

This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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Find all links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/meet-tis-the-worlds-leading-saas-b2b-outbound-payment-platform/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

Get scouted by us, when we have a matching mandate and enroll your startup in our database: https://forms.gle/DmPtBKJH7MMmJoYo8 We don’t sell your data or spam you. We will even reach out to you before we include you in a scouting mandate.

Find all the links to our sources and the show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/gsa-unicorn-tracker-october-2021/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: https://linktr.ee/startupradio

Get scouted by us, when we have a matching mandate and enroll your startup in our database: https://forms.gle/DmPtBKJH7MMmJoYo8

We don’t sell your data or spam you. We will even reach out to you before we include you in a scouting mandate.

Find our extensive collection of links, sources and the whole show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-october-2021/

Get scouted by us, when we have a matching mandate and enroll your startup in our database: https://forms.gle/DmPtBKJH7MMmJoYo8 We don’t sell your data or spam you. We will even reach out to you before we include you in a scouting mandate. Find all links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-september-2021-unicorn-tracker-bonus/

Get scouted by us, when we have a matching mandate and enroll your startup in our database: https://forms.gle/DmPtBKJH7MMmJoYo8 We don’t sell your data or spam you. We will even reach out to you before we include you in a scouting mandate. 

Find all links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-summer-wrap-up-july-august-september-2021/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

This is one of our interviews, covering a startup from Tirol, Austria, the fintech Monkee (https://monkee.rocks/). We have Martin Granig (https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-granig-52775054/) in the interview, CEO and co-founder of the fintech. Martin is an engineer by training, having worked more than a decade at Swarovski, in his last position he was leading the global innovation department. He is also currently working on a Ph.D. in savings behavior. It may not surprise you now that Monkee is a startup helping you to save money and with vouchers on the spending as well. During his studies, he also attended 北大 BeiDa (Peking University), Fudan University 復旦大學, London Business School, SDA Bocconi, Ashridge Business School and many more.

The startup Monkee is based in Tyrol, one of the states of Austria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrol). The goal of Monkee is to improve the financial well-being of its clients. The app works with small nodes in order to help you save money, either for your rainy-day fund or towards an actual goal like a vacation, a laptop or another large purchase.

The Monkee-App also helps with (retail)-partners to save money with discounts to get your actual savings goals cheaper. They are also in the process of getting partners for daily necessities.

What really differentiates Monkee from other fintechs is that they have 84% women as active clients. That turns the normal client base of fintechs upside down. On the other hand, their female clients also like to interact more frequently with the app.

Apples App Store

Google Play Store

Monkee is currently raising a new round of venture capital, they are currently planning to close the round end of 2021.

Find all the links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/meet-austria-based-monkee-a-fintech-with-more-than-80-female-clients/

Michelle Tsing (https://www.linkedin.com/in/laptopradio/) is an investor and entrepreneur. She hosts a weekly show on the Stanford University Campus radio, called Laptop Radio. She used to work at PayPal, Samsung, Cisco, and eBay. She is also a podcast host at Starting Y, based in Silicon Valley. In addition to that Michelle works with several startups as an advisor. She shares in our 6th episode of entrepreneur tools her thoughts about company culture and how to start thinking about it. Company culture is a very complex topic and we are just scratching the surface here, but it is a good point to start.

1. Start with a self-assessment, good places to start are for example the book “The Four Agreements “
2. Look around examples for values

• Paypal – Practise detachment
• Ebay – Humans are basically good
• Google - Don’t do evil
• Zappos your culture is your brand – Pursuit of happiness https://www.huffpost.com/entry/zappos-founder-tony-hsieh_1_b_783333

• The Four Agreements https://amzn.to/3B8B3bD
• The Gift of Imperfection https://amzn.to/2WfTj3I
• Daring Greatly https://amzn.to/2Wnie5h

https://www.startuprad.io/blog/entrepreneur-tools-6-how-to-start-thinking-about-your-corporate-culture/

Reach out to us, here is our audience survey, to give us feedback, suggest topics, interview partners or just to say “Hallo!” https://forms.gle/mLV6mVKwGwKuut8BA

This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him: LinkedIn Twitter Email

Olaf Zeitnitz is also kind of a returning interview guest (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-olaf-zeitnitz-722b0a1b/). He was part of our Robo Advisor talk, dating back to October 2016, when not every video was turned into an audio podcast. VisualVest is not an average Robo Advisor, it is a white-label company, integrated into a much larger group of cooperative banks in Germany. Olaf studied physics and his Ph.D. studies took him to the CERN particle accelerator, where he was one of the first users of the newly invented internet. He also attended the first www conference.

VisualVest (https://www.visualvest.de/) is part of the cooperative banking group, a group of independent banks – known as Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken - (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VolksbankenundRaiffeisenbanken), working closely together on many services, including asset management. Their asset manager is called Union Investment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Investment) and VisualVest is a corporate startup of Union Investment and the DZ Bank, the central bank of the cooperative banks in Germany.

VisualVest is a SaaS platform. They are basically a toolbox where the different banks within the group can choose their features to create their own robo advisor.

Olaf has been a guest in our robo advisor talk back in 2016, together with other returning guests. You can find it here:

https://youtu.be/akCaXmFfgMQ

This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him: LinkedIn Twitter Email

Here is our publication calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=MDEyaTI3YWs1MjVxaTNzbWdqbDh2OXRiaW9AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

Find all the links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/meet-visualvest-the-white-label-robo-advisor-with-e-2-6-bn-client-assets-under-management/

Roman Rittweger (https://www.linkedin.com/in/romanrittweger/) is the CEO and Founder of ottonova, not an insurtech, but a fully licensed insurer (https://www.ottonova.de/).

Roman had a long and successful career, before founding ottonova. As he says in the interview, in insurance everything takes longer.

Roman is a doctor by training, with a Ph.D. in medicine, as well as an MBA from INSEAD. He also served as Platoon Leader in the German mountain troopers and was a consultant with ATKearney and McKinsey, before starting his own companies. He is also a member of the supervisory board of naontek AG, a corporate startup offering digital services to health professionals.

So far ottonova has raised more than 90 mn US$ up to Series D (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ottonova-holding-ag) and is a licensed health (re-) insurer in Germany. ottonova will start new talks for a growth equity talks end of 2021.

The original interview – the first English interview of ottonova – was published on September 14th, 2017.

https://www.startuprad.io/interviews/exclusive-first-english-interview-newly-founded-digital-health-insurer-ottonova/

Find all links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/follow-up-with-the-all-digital-health-insurer-ottonova/

In this interview we talk to Thomas Jarzombek (https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-jarzombek-a4227183/) a member of the German Parliament Bundestag, also the Commissioner for Digital and Startups of Germany and in charge of the newly started 10 bn startup program. Thomas is a member of the CDU, Christian Democratic Union, the party of chancellor Merkel.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Democratic_Union_of_Germany). Thomas has also been an entrepreneur before he was an elected official. He started out with implementing Windows 95.

Note: In the name tag in the YouTube video, we shorted this to “Digital commissioner”, due to the available space.

The new investment program is looking to invest 50% together with private investors, who also chip in the other half.

The program will invest in European VCs, focusing on Germany. They are looking for VCs, investing in Germany approx. the money they receive from the program.

The largest single investment will be as LP of the European Investment Fund, which will get 3 bn Euros (https://www.eif.org/).

HTGF will start the 4th fund with money from the program. Look in our show notes below for the interview with the CEO of HTGF. They raise funds with half of the money coming from the Government and half from private investors, which include already household names like Bosch, BASF, B. Braun, Boehringer, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Post DHL, Lanxess, RWE, SAP, and many others. You can learn more about HTGF in our interview, see links below.

The Deep Tech Future Fund (https://deeptech-future-fonds.de/) is aiming to commercialize innovations from Germany. They are even investing in startups directly, who do not have a business model yet, for example working in quantum computing.

2 bn Euros will be managed by KfW in discretionary accounts to set up specific investment vehicles and their subsidiary Coparion (https://www.coparion.vc/). Part of the money will be managed in discretionary accounts. These vehicles can invest directly in startups.

https://www.startuprad.io/blog/meet-the-person-in-charge-of-germanys-e10-bn-startup-program/

This is another bonus episode, where we cover interesting – behind the scenes – development in the larger German-speaking tech space. Recently there was a wave of excitement sweeping across the crypto blogs, due to an update in the German Investment Law (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/kagb/). The reason: Investments of German institutional funds, since they could – theoretically – invest up to 20% in cryptocurrencies, starting on August 2nd, 2021. Joe gets together with Marco; a specialist lawyer and they talk about what is realistic. Instead of a large wave (theoretical max of ~400 bn €), as many blogs forecast, there may be only a small trickle (likely only millions over time).

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

Marco Zingler (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marco-zingler-14b2a390/) is a seasoned lawyer, with almost 10 years of experience in capital markets legislation. He also holds a degree in Finance. He, therefore, spent most of his career as a specialist for regulatory and investment law, covering for example the changes to the new German investment Law.

• Try the account of our Affiliate Partner Penta: http://bit.ly/3bdHX3d

This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him: LinkedIn Twitter Email

Here is our publication calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0?cid=MDEyaTI3YWs1MjVxaTNzbWdqbDh2OXRiaW9AZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ

Find all the links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/bonus-the-german-institutional-funds-will-not-invest-big-bugs-in-cryptocurrencies/

Munich Startup is the official startup portal for Munich and the surrounding region. It was developed by the City of Munich, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Munich and Upper Bavaria and the four entrepreneurship centers of the Munich universities within the framework of the Entrepreneurship Strategy Munich. You can learn more here: https://en.munich-startup.de/

This time we have a rarity on our channel because Andreas Bodczek (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasbodczek/) is not a founder, but an early investor in the company, which became later the CEO of IDnow. Andreas has been an early business angel, investing in IDnow. So he has been involved in the company for quite some time before he took the job as external CEO.

Andreas has been with Bertelsmann, where he worked with dial-up internet connections, building one of the broadest platforms for broadband and Voice-over-IP services in Germany. He later moved to become the CEO of Telefonica Germany (https://www.telefonica.de/) and co-founded Fyber (https://www.fyber.com/ ), which they build up in Germany, the US, and several more companies. They sold the company in 2014.

Andreas is also a board partner with Point Nine Capital (https://www.pointnine.com/), a Berlin-based VC fund focused on platforms and SaaS.

IDnow (https://www.idnow.io/products/idnow-videoident/) is an online identification service provider, that helps banks, insurance companies, and other companies to verify the identity of their clients remotely. This has not always been the case in Germany, but IDnow was one of the early companies providing this service.

Today IDnow has amongst their clients some well-known names like N26, Solaris Bank or Sixt, Western Union, Tier Mobility, and WeFox.

The startup grew early with a strong focus on financial services companies, starting when the German regulator moved to allow so-called “video idents.”

Now IDnow extends its services across industries, products, and countries. The acquisition of France-based Ariadnext (https://www.ariadnext.com/) fits in the category of extending in countries, to expand their footprint in France.

From our conversation, we took that IDnow has SPAC offers at hand, still evaluating their options.

Find all links and show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/exclusive-idnow-talks-about-their-acquisition-of-ariadnext/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Linkhttps://linktr.ee/startupradio

Find all links, texts, and show notes here on our blog post: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-june-2021/

Find all links and show notes on our blog post here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/bonus-this-month-in-german-startups-unicorn-stampede/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

Start in 2015 - at comdirect Startup Garage

The story of Trade Republic starts with the comdirect startup garage. comdirect is Commerzbank’s online broker, founded during the late 1990s. Commerzbank again is Germany’s 2nd largest listed bank.

So, the founding team Christian Hecker, Thomas Pischke, and Marco Cancellieri started out with the idea of a German RobinHood Trading app (What is today called a neobroker). The Garage helped at the start in 2015 but did back out at funding the startup. The team did not receive funding from comdirect Garage, because one million Euros was too much to invest in a company at a seed stage

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Find the whole story here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/bonus-episode-trade-republic-becomes-germanys-most-valuable-startup-with-5-3-bn-us-valuation/

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Top News

Trade Republic is now Germany’s most valuable startup with 5.3 bn US$

SPACs

In the US the largest wave of SPAC IPOs is already behind us, but in Europe, it is just gaining speed. Frankfurt Stock Exchange expects up to 20 SPAC IPOs in 2021. In all of Europe, they expect more than 30 https://buff.ly/3h0mMqS

Amazon Shops are still HOT

Berlin’s Razor Group raises $400M to buy and scale Amazon Marketplace merchants – TechCrunch https://buff.ly/2PVJULY

Germany rumored to open flood gates to Crypto Investments - Think again

'Damn Huge': Germany Opens Up to Institutional Crypto Funds - Decrypt https://buff.ly/3vvX3dU

Joe will talk about this soon - as soon as he gets to it - but the main point one has to understand in German institutional funds is that the investors are regulated and not so much the vehicles.

3bn Shots are coming

Corona vaccine producer BioNTech is looking to produce 3bn shots https://buff.ly/2RHzXlA

We just passed a small moment in History

80 years ago, on May 11th, 1941 german inventor Konrad Zuse started his Z3. This was one of today's first - maybe The first - modern-day computer. He developed it, to take over statistical calculation he found tiresome https://buff.ly/3eEJ3sB

Find all other show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-may-2021/

You can learn more here: https://linktr.ee/startupradio 

This recording was made possible by (Hessen Trade and Invest). Learn more about our enabler here: https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/

In this interview, we are talking to Marcus Laube (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-laube/) , the founder and CEO of one of the largest fintech exits this year. He sold the company, he founded in 2007 in 2021 for 100 mn Euros to Unifiedpost Group from Belgium (https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210411005030/en/Unifiedpost-Group-and-Crossinx-Join-Forces-to-Create-a-Unique-European-Business-Network).

Marcus has been the chairman of the European Fintech Alliance (https://eufintechs.com/) and the co-chairman of the European E-Invoice Service Provider Association (EESPA https://eespa.eu/)

The story of Marcus as an entrepreneur is totally fascinating: He was helping one of Lufthansa’s businesses (AirPlus) to get their first website and digitize Germany’s Flag Carrier. This brought him in contact with lots of electronic business ideas, with which he ventured out on his own. His first company was sliding into insolvency. He bought the company out of insolvency and this company stayed afloat by selling chairs and tables. This company was bought later by a company from Finland. This Finnish company stopped their business in Germany and Marcus decided to start over again with founding crossinx in 2007. He now sold this company in a 100 mn Euro plus deal (the deal includes a clause of up to 13 mn € further conditional earn-out payments according to the press statement).

Tune in to our exclusive content.

• Learn how to grow your business using the numbers in your profit and loss and balance sheet: https://www.learndesk.us/class/5571076509663232/growth-by-the-numbers-real-small-business-finance-for-real-small-business-owners use our promo code: Access

crossinx (https://www.crossinx.com/en/) is the leading provider of e-invoicing based service solutions in Germany, working with the largest companies and institutions, such as Nestle, Bayer, TNT, Sixt and the German national government. The company was founded back in 2007 by Marcus Laube.

On April 12 Unifiedpost Group announced to acquire crossinx for 100 mn Euros (up to 113 mn €): https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210411005030/en/Unifiedpost-Group-and-Crossinx-Join-Forces-to-Create-a-Unique-European-Business-Network

The connection came from Marcu’s work in EESPA, where he met Unifiedpost. There has been interest to acquire crossinx 3 years before, but the deal was sealed after the IPO of Unifiedpost at Euronext (Euronext: UPG).

https://www.startuprad.io/blog/meet-the-fintech-behind-the-100-mn-e-exit-nobody-talks-about/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

We talk to a former guest, Jamal El Mallouki (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamalelmallouki/), Managing Director (MD) and Co-Founder of Crowdfunding SaaS tech company CrowdDesk. He is also chairman of the board of directors of Germany’s Crowdfunding Association (https://www.bundesverband-crowdfunding.de/about-the-german-crowdfunding-association-bundesverband-crowdfunding-ev/).

He talks with us about the upcoming rules, which will harmonize crowdfunding for startups across the European Union.

• Learn how to grow your business using the numbers in your profit and loss and balance sheet: https://www.learndesk.us/class/5571076509663232/growth-by-the-numbers-real-small-business-finance-for-real-small-business-owners use our promo code: Access

Currently, Germany has national rules, getting retail investors without any prospectus to invest in startups. Each retail investor can invest up to 25.000 € in total. This limit does not exist for professional investors.  A startup can now raise up to 6 million Euros with crowdfunding.

These rules are about to change with upcoming EU rules. You can dig deeper in the rules with the links below. The main points are:

• Crowdfunding campaigns can now target retail investors across the EU. They can now scale up to the whole EU market.
• (Crowd)Fundraising startups can now target directly online retail investors across the EU
• Crowdlending in Germany is now possible, directly via the crowdfunding platform, the need for an intermediate bank is gone.
  This also means that crowdfunding is competing with classical bank credit here.
• EU Startups, running a crowdfunding campaign can now raise funds in the German market, the largest in the EU with 6.7 trn € (8.14 trn US$) in private household wealth (according to Bundesbank, as the end of 2020).
• Fundraising without prospectus is possible, up to 5 mn Euros

• Is your startup in need of a bank account in Germany? Try our partner affiliate Penta http://bit.ly/3bdHX3d
• Looking to open a bank account to shift between crypto and fiat? Try our partner Bitwala with this affiliate link here http://bit.ly/2w01Zye

Find all the links and further show notes here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/how-crowdfunding-for-eu-startups-will-change-this-fall/

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• Startuprad.io is working tirelessly towards our internet radio station. Now we could onboard Laptop Radio, a Stanford Campus Radio Show covering bleeding edge technology, as well as Radio Free Enterprise.
  
• Our friends from IBGR have also completed their show syndication for our internet radio called AgileRad.io
  
• Tune in to our radio station to learn more:
  

• Learn how to grow your business using the numbers in your profit and loss and balance sheet: https://www.learndesk.us/class/5571076509663232/growth-by-the-numbers-real-small-business-finance-for-real-small-business-owners use our promo code: Access
  

All Links and show notes this way please: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-april-2021/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

"We thought video ident is great but let us put in some AI magic."

Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT

We talk to Hamburg-based Founder Benny Bennet Jürgens (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennybennet/), the CEO and Co-Founder of NECT (https://nect.com/de/) Germany’s most downloaded self-identification app in 2020. Benny has a past history with insurance companies and found their need for self-identification – required by law – to be a major pain point for them. So he set out to provide a convenient solution, which turned out to be NECT.

"My co-founder and I pushed our children in strollers, and we talked about what is next in life for us."
Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT

• Learn how to grow your business using the numbers in your profit and loss and balance sheet: https://www.learndesk.us/class/5571076509663232/growth-by-the-numbers-real-small-business-finance-for-real-small-business-owners use our promo code: Access
  

"We got accepted at Insurrect Accelerator Munich and we had to start two weeks later, which did not give us a lot of time to think twice."
Benny Bennet Jürgens, CEO & Co-Founder NECT

https://www.startuprad.io/blog/meet-nect-germanys-most-downloaded-self-identification-app/

This time we talk to Sebastian Wuerz (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastianwuerz/) the founder and CEO of the co-living startup homefully (https://homeful.ly/), a proptech headquartered in Frankfurt, offering furnished apartments across Germany and Switzerland. This trend is called co-living and offers a convenient way for ex-pats to relocate to a new city and have instant social connections. Sebastian graduated with an international MBA, which took him to Warsaw University, DUFE (Dongbei University of Finance and Economics 东北财经大学), and the University of North Florida.

Before starting homefully Sebastian also had stints in wealth management in Singapore and investment banking in Frankfurt.

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

This recording was made possible by (Hessen Trade and Invest). Learn more about our enabler here: https://www.invest-in-hessen.com/
You can also find the podcast we run together here:

https://www.startuprad.io/blog/homefully-offers-co-living-in-germany-and-switzerland-and-is-looking-to-expand/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

In this interview, we walk to Alessandro Avagliano, the Head of Security and Infrastructure at Berlin-based crypto challenger bank Bitwala (https://www.linkedin.com/in/aavagliano/). Allesandro has been with companies like Sun Microsystems, Oracle, or Rocket Internet before, but joined Bitwala 2019 as head of security.

• Looking to open a bank account to shift between crypto and fiat? Try our partner Bitwala with this affiliate link here http://bit.ly/2w01Zye
  

In this interview, we are talking about best practices on how to keep your cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets safe as a private investor. We talk about different levels of safekeeping and even have an idea how Elon Musk could keep his cryptos safe. You can learn more in the blog post here: https://www.bitwala.com/blog/knowledge/

We already published our interview with Bitwala’s founder in April 2020. We talk to Benjamin about his life, the idea behind Bitwala, and solve the secret behind its name. Learn more in this interview here:

https://www.startuprad.io/blog/meet-berlin-based-cryptocurrency-challenger-bank-bitwala/

Find all options to subscribe to our newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel or listen to our internet radio station here: Link https://linktr.ee/startupradio

This is one of our Subject Matter Expert interviews, where we try to bring you some specialized knowledge. Christian Flasshoff (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-flasshoff/)  was a founding member of the International Token Standardization Association (https://itsa.global/). In this interview, we talk to him about what NFTs are and how they may impact the music industry, the art market, and many more aspects of life.

Tune in to learn more … 

https://www.startuprad.io/blog/what-are-non-fungible-tokens-nfts/