Bavaria, the home of digital start-ups

Founders find the ideal conditions to promote their digital business in Bavaria. These are provided, among other things, by the broad ecosystem of investors, the link up with digital expertise at Bavarian universities and the opportunities to work together with companies from all application industries  in the state. The possibility of joining an innovative and creative environment at the numerous Bavarian start-up centres and co-working spaces also gets many ideas onto the market. On the corporate side, various accelerators support the local start-up scene.

Industry and start-ups: a profitable symbiosis

Companies in particular are seeing the growing need that the digital transformation is creating. They’re forming their own start-up units separate to their normal business or are working together with start-ups when they cannot come up with the required resources themselves. The flexibility that young, growing starts-ups bring with them is seen as a crucial advantage by companies in order to be able to respond quickly to changing market conditions.
Two examples illustrate how well the mutual symbiosis between start-ups and companies works in Bavaria: Google opted for Munich when choosing a location for its Engineering Center, not just because the city is a top ICT location but also because young start-up talents are covering the search engine giant’s need for digital innovations. In return, Google is also supporting founders with its own initiatives, for example the Google Launchpad [hier Link zu Perspectives]. From the point of view of the founders, the growing demand throughout industry is an advantage, as the story of ProGlove proves, among others. The start-up’s smart glove is used, for example, in production at BMW.

Various financing and funding opportunities

By the way, Munich’s universities of applied science are outstanding, when it comes to supporting start-ups. A well-networked start-up scene, like the one in Bavaria, contributes considerably to the success of young founders for FinTech, InsurTech, Mobility and many other areas. And that’s not all: the broad investors landscape of venture capitalists, funding institutions like BayStartUP and business plan competitions offer more than enough opportunities to secure financing for your own ideas. And when it comes to getting to know the right people for your own business, Bavaria ranks alongside top international locations. Bits & Pretzels, Cashwalk and the MUST Summit are just three examples of events where the top priority is networking.