STARTUP CITY GUIDE

#openecosystem by

Created by SAFARI UG, in cooperation with our supporters KPMG Smart Start and the Startup Unit of the City of Cologne.

With big support from our community partners STARTPLATZ and PIRATE

SAFARI UG (haftungsbeschränkt)Im Klapperhof 7-2350670 CologneGermany

Managing Director: Till Ohrmann

Email: info@startupsafari.com

STARTUP CITY GUIDE

COLOGNE

2019

#openecosystem

With Startup SAFARI we want to give these ecosystems and their players a platform to open up the world of entrepreneurship to show how they work, what motivates them and inspire people to start their own business. As most startup ecosystems face similar challenges, we believe in the power of connecting to exchange with, learn from and inspire each other locally as well as globally.

In 2018 we are launching 26 new Startup SAFARI cities all around the world. Not only will over 1000 startups open their doors for the events, but will also be connected with stakeholders of flourishing startup ecosystems from all over the world in one powerful global network. With a constantly growing portfolio of services we want to help startups to find Customers, Employees, Capital and Partners and help them to get the recognition they deserve.

The “Startup City Guide Cologne 2019” is a direct result of our deliver locally, scale globally approach. You are holding in your hands one of 5.000 copies of the very first edition of what we hope will soon be a yearly City Guide for many startup ecosystems from around the world. By doing so we will increase visibility and accessibility of the startup ecosystem not only during the event, but also throughout the year. Pass it on, share it with your partners, your customers, your friends and family to give Cologne’s startup ecosystem the recognition it deserves.

Ben PeckruhnCEO Startup SAFARI

Although the impact of innovation is felt globally, innovation is created locally. We believe that startups play a crucial role when it comes to purposeful disruption and innovation. Every city has its own unique startup ecosystem full of passionate people who found, invest and support startups - they are a cornerstone for healthy societies.

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Digitalisation and technology are defining our future more and more. They are shaping our city’s future opportunities in all areas of social life. Which is why we are working systematically with our partners in Cologne so that Cologne can cope with the digital transformation.

In doing so, developing and strengthening a lively startup community, that will allow Cologne to become one of the strongest locations for startups in the digital sector in future, is crucial for our sustainability. In startups I see innovative initiators who are developing the ideas, products, services and processes of the future and actively boosting the economy and Cologne as a business location.

With our 2018-2021 action plan and the Startup Unit, we are going to make Cologne even more attractive for start-ups through capital, outstanding conditions for growth, opportunities to actually work together with companies, its superb educational provision, international events and networks.

The Startup SAFARI Cologne is a great opportunity for students, young entrepreneurs, employees and managers from classic companies but also in particular for Cologne locals to experience the real start-up scene.

Henriette Reker

Mayor of the City of Cologne

© City of Cologne

At KPMG, we have always understood the importance of entrepreneurs working to transform new ideas into thriving companies. Out of this understanding the idea of Smart Start was born in 2013. And even though it was born locally in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne, KPMG’s Smart Start Team today is comprised of a variety of countrywide advisors who can help startups through each stage of their business life cycle, from establishing operations and raising capital to international expansion and complying with regulatory requirements.

Philipp Wüllrich (KPMG Law Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH), Timm Rode and Florian Merkel are three of the founding members of Smart Start in Cologne and are at the same time proud and excited to look back on a startup rollercoaster ride of over five years now.

Founders face significant challenges as they work to bring new ideas to the marketplace while taking on incremental leadership responsibilities. For us at KPMG it has been an experience that we wouldn’t want to miss to accompany and to enable these spirited entrepreneurs.

Therefore, KPMG’s Smart Start Team in Cologne is still strongly connected to the local ecosystem. And since we have become a part of our local ecosystems we are very proud to contribute to and to present the “Startup City Guide Cologne 2019” together with Startup SAFARI and the city of Cologne

Dr. Philipp Wüllrich Timm Rode Florian Merkel

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TABLE OFCONTENT

“How to bootstrap a SaaS application globally” - Alexander Peiniger, quintly

“Building intelligent machines” - Claudio Huyskens, fedger.io

“Making remote work work” - Anna Löw, Giant Swarm

STARTUP DIRECTORY

“Building the place for founders to meet and connect in Cologne” - Lorenz Gräf, Startplatz

“The way to Germany’s most digital innovation space” - Stefanie Weidner, THE SHIP

“Investing in committed and passionate founders in Cologne” - Tim Schumacher, TS Ventures

DIRECTORY OF OTHER ECOSYSTEM PLAYERS

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114

120

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130

Who are you and what do you do? My name is Alex and I’m a co-founder and the CEO of quintly. Together with my brother Frederik, we started our company “quintly” in 2010.

Your startup in one tweet... quintly empowers organizations to use social media successfully by providing analytical solutions to optimize their social media strategy. In easy words it’s like Google Analytics, but for social media channels.

Often startups have a “founding legend”. Do you have one? How did you come up with the idea? Ours is actually pretty simple. We started as a tech agency and wanted to get out of the project based work and build a product that can scale. quintly, which was called “Social.Media.Tracking” back then, was born out of a specific client need and we saw the potential to also offer it to others. It took us about 2 years though to focus 100% on quintly.

You founded the company together with your brother. Would you advise others to found with close family?I don’t like to give general advice, because situations are always different, but I am happy to share my experience. In our case we as brothers are pretty similar so we never had any big disagreements. Things are so much easier if you have a co-founder that you can fully trust and share the challenges with. Over time, we also developed our focus areas so that we

Alexander Peinigerquintly

How to bootstrap a SaaS application globally

don’t need to agree on every little aspect. Speaking from my own point of view I would definitely recommend it, but many people told me over time that they could never imagine this with their siblings. It’s probably best to give it a try :-)

You have an interesting funding history. You had an investor but then you bought back the shares. Can you share some insight into what happened and the motivation for the buy back?When we got a US investor on board in 2011, we had no clue about funding, how to scale and all the other things needed. With our tech background we were just focusing on building a great product for our customers. In the end I believe we were a bit too “German” from a US point of view with the focus on profitable growth. In order to best match the expectations of all parties we decided to buy back the investor shares at the end of 2012. It was definitely a stretch for us, as we needed to invest quite a bit of personal money and even borrow some. But we always believed in our product so there was not a single point in time where we questioned that decision.

Would you advise others to bootstrap their company? What are the pros and cons for you?Bootstrapping is a great way if you have a strong product focus and a market that can create revenue early on. This was the case in our B2B SaaS model, so we decided to go that route. In our case bootstrapping also fits pretty well to our entrepreneurial beliefs, which are focused on profitable growth and building something sustainable. There are definitely business models out there where this will not work and where taking funding is the best way. I admire all the founders that can raise these big funding rounds and create a lot of growth with this, but it’s just not for me personally.

Tell us about your first paying customer. Who was it? When did it happen? How did you acquire them? Do they still use your product?Back in 2010 we were working with HRS in Cologne and we built a very simple prototype that could show Facebook fan numbers over time. In the weeks after we opened the product for other companies we got first agencies onboarded as well. We are really proud of our retention numbers from early customers, so even now after 8 years, two of the first three customers are still with us.

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What were your biggest stumbling blocks when you started?For us as tech founders the biggest learning was that a great product alone is not enough. In the beginning we didn’t want to do marketing and sales and believed that people will just come and buy. It took us about 3 years to understand what we needed to do to get onto the growth track. In the end each of us was sitting there with 10+ calls every day with potential customers to sell our solution. Not only was it a great learning for us personally but it also gave us so much more insights into the needs of the customers. Since then I believe that founders profit from doing everything themselves at least until they understand the mechanics.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are the key metrics you look at?We measure success in a lot of different ways depending on which area of the company you look at. Of course, one of the most central metrics is MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) which shows us the overall resulting growth of the business. But as we want to build a very sustainable company we also focus a lot on churn rates to make sure we serve our customers in the best possible way and that the customer base grows in a healthy way. We are also big believers in long-term success, so all our decisions will be for the long run and not for optimizing numbers to look good.

10. How do you acquire customers? What are your main growth channels? Our main growth channel is content marketing and organic growth through SEO and recommendations. As a bootstrapped startup we didn’t have the resources to just create attention with money, so we needed to find clever ways of growing. That’s probably also the reason why it took us so long to get to a certain size. The good thing about it is that nowadays these organic channels are so strong that we can rely on them as a base without a lot of advertising spend.

The company has grown quite a bit in the last years. What are your learnings “growing up”?The biggest learning for me personally was to focus on the long run and not to be distracted by what you hear in the market. Competitors come and competitors go. Having a great product and focusing 100% on your customers needs is the best protection against losing. At first this sounds

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naive but building this extreme trust with our customers was always one of our strongest assets. I also believe that our sustainability and the trust form big parts of the culture that we have within the quintly team today. It allows to be authentic in any situation inside and outside of the company.

What advice would you give young founders? A few things come to my mind: Stay naive. Stay curious. Don’t be afraid of things you haven’t done before. Don’t believe in all the hype and inflated stories you hear. Don’t treat funding rounds as a success measure. Trust your entrepreneurial gut feeling.

Cologne is for Startups… ...great, because you can focus on your work in an environment that offers lots of opportunities. We are very happy to be in an area where you can still find great talents and where we can work on our products and ideas without being distracted. We managed to build up a better and better startup ecosystem in Cologne and I’m happy to be part of it and share my experiences with other founders.

“Having a great product

and focusing 100% on your

customers needs is the best

protection against losing.”

“Stay naive. Stay curious.

Don’t be afraid of things you

haven’t done before. Don’t

believe in all the hype and

inflated stories you hear.

Don’t treat funding rounds

as a success measure.

Trust your entrepreneurial

gut feeling.”

“In Cologne we can still

find great talents and we

can work on our products

and ideas without being

distracted.”

Learn more about quintly on page 87

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Who are you and what do you do? I am 41 years old with an educational background in management - specifically technology management (PhD). About 15 years ago, I discovered my interest in software development andI went from curiosity to financing my studies as a freelance software developer. Inspired by quantitative research for my PhD, I have since 2008 followed that passion in different fields of application, ranging from quantitative finance to machine learning and artificial intelligence. I am the founder and CEO of fedger.io, a Cologne-based startup providing Machine learning and Artificial intelligence services to businesses.

Why did you become a startup founder? In retrospective, the first touch point with an impact on my personal development in that direction was back in 1994 during a career day in my school in Cleveland, OH. Of all tracks, the entrepreneurial track struck me most, as the narrative of the advocating entrepreneurs was full of initiatives and creativity. That experience probably influenced me, that was when I decided to rather work self-employed to finance my studies.

My PhD advisor and her mantra ‘Do it, don’t just talk about it!’ certainly also motivated me in that direction. I believe many rounds of job interviews with consultancies and media / technological corporates in 2008 probably brought a final confirmation and guided me towards becoming an entrepreneur. Together with

Claudio Huyskensfedger.io

Building intelligent machines

my fedger co-founder, Benedikt, I went through a trial and error phase of founding and shutting down twice, before we started fedger in 2014.

How did you come up with the idea for Fedger? I must admit, there is no surviving ‘founding idea’ in the solution or product sense. I will say we rather built fedger on a broader vision of data accumulation and analysis for better and eventually automated decision making. Starting without a clear product idea definitely made life tougher during the first two years, but it taught us a couple of extremely valuable lessons such as ‘if you cannot pinpoint what pain your solution helps to relieve in one sentence, you can’t build a business on it’. I believe that establishing a defendable startup idea is extremely difficult and rarely seen among early stage startups. In that sense, our painful experience definitely sharpened my focus on clarity of idea. It’s important, though, not to confuse the criticality of the idea component with the fact that idea will also undergo an evolutionary process; any feedback, any experience and any change of the environment needs to be reflected in the continuous revaluation and re-articulation of the business idea.

The product you are offering is a fairly technical product. How would you describe it to someone that doesn’t have a technical background?Customers use fedger AI technology to automate information extraction tasks. In practice, delivery services or POS vendors for example use the fedger menu extraction API in their customer onboarding process to automatically extract the transactional information content from a given restaurant menu card. The service offers them greater flexibility, vastly reduced runtimes at lower cost. As input, the service accepts PDFs or images of restaurant menu cards and returns a structured CSV or JSON file containing categorized items, descriptions, quantities and prices. The service largely automates a process, which used to require manual copy typing. Most people think, the invention of OCR had solved such challenges, but that is not valid for structured documents such as forms or tables where the appropriate semantic type of an information such as price or quantity are necessary elements. Fedger technology works similar to object detection that recognize objects such as a car in a photo.

“If you cannot pinpoint

what pain your solution

helps to relieve in one

sentence, you can’t build a

business on it”

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Who are the founders of Fedger and how did you find each other? I co-founded fedger with my friend Benedikt Knobloch. I met Benedikt back at the University about 15 years ago. We have since then studied together, worked together in academic research, we have even shared an apartment for a short time. We have over time often heard the discussion on founding team composition and I fully agree with the US venture capital research arguing that - beyond complementary skill sets - nature and length of personal relationship is detrimental to startup success. Since founding fedger in 2014, we have been on (and sometimes over) the edge alot and in a startup crisis had an impact far beyond job and professional life. As a founder, you are ‘all in’ and crisis means survival mode. Only a joint track record of a trust relationship helps in keeping things together to jointly spearhead in the same direction.

What are your main responsibilities at Fedger?My role at fedger has undergone some transition over the last two years. I started as CEO / CTO, responsible for product development both conceptually and technically. 18 months ago, we employed a great CTO, to take the technical development and infrastructure to the next level. This also freed capacity on my side to focus more on business and product strategy. Today, I see three main fields of responsibilities in my role: First, extending the core technology to service lines in new market segments as well as driving our core service line deeper into the value chain of our customers. Second, developing the organization to manage growth including process definition, responsibility assignment and partnerships. Third, manifesting a company’s culture and value system serving as DNA, inspiration and reference for new team members and new challenges.

How is Fedger financed? We raised two smaller angel rounds in 2014 and 2016 for a total of about 100k and are currently cash flow positive.

How many people in the team work in tech and how many in business?We currently have a 2:1 ratio between tech and business with 8 fulltime engineers and developers and 4 fulltime business managers. In addition, we have 16 working students, of which 2 support the engineering, 4 support business management and 10 work in ops, i.e. service execution and delivery.

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What tech stack do you guys work with?Language-wise, we try to limit any development to Python. We work with Keras and TensorFlow as Machine Learning development environment and we use Docker containerization and Kubernetes for their orchestration in Google Cloud. For API management, we rely on Kong. Besides, we are largely agnostic and try on a case by case basis to select technology primarily according to task requirements.

Where do you apply AI technology? What are the technological challenges in applying AI?We have developed an AI for information extraction and have first applied it to retrieve the items from restaurant menu cards. We currently evaluate applications to invoices and insurance documents. In all those cases, fedger AI solves the problem of document structure recognition and resolution. The larger the structural variance among documents, the greater the benefits from AI. Having sufficient amounts of training data available marks the greatest technical and procedural challenge in the development of such an AI. Actually, technology is the least among the challenges with regard to AI. Crossing the border from deterministic to probabilistic means a change of paradigm in many senses. For instance, regulatory bodies such as financial service regulation requires a comprehensive functional description of how data input is transformed and what output can be expected - deterministically.

The fact that AI solutions implicitly involve training towards global optimization means applications do not necessarily create equally distributed benefits, in other words, AI discriminates and we may not be able to explain the extreme outcomes. As opposed to opportunistic application development from academic AI research, developing an AI for a certain application purpose brings along what I call the “AI investment paradoxon”. Be it in a corporate or startup context, any funding requires a detailed plan including budgets to be spent and a milestone roadmap outlining expected delivery dates and qualities. Comparable to bringing up a child, AI maturity and problem

“Comparable to bringing

up a child, AI maturity and

problem solution capability

cannot be planned

precisely, which makes

investment decisions

by current standards

impossible”

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solution capability cannot be planned precisely, which thereby makes investment decisions by current standards impossible.

How do you currently measure success? What core metrics do you look at?We measure three dimensions of success, that is, market success, delivery success and developmental success.

Regarding market success, we focus on the number of monthly service subscriptions and even more importantly on the number of monthly API transactions. To us, the ladder KPI provides the best integration of customer growth and growth of customer transactions. Regarding delivery success of our Artificial/Human Intelligence blended service, we focus on transactional KPIs measured against our asynchronous API. Such metrics include round trip duration and net labeling time per transaction respectively. We also track task complexity to determine proper sampling and benchmarking. Towards empirical AI evaluation and assessment, we track the above mentioned runtime metrics across a broader sample over time. Regarding developmental success, we have implemented pretty tough testing requirements throughout, which basically takes out the quality component and reduces success to productivity measurement. For that purpose we use a typical agile story point logic.

What were your biggest stumbling blocks when you started?Two main hurdles stuck out: funding and - for a B2B startup this is extremely important - credibility. This posed a chicken-egg-problem insofar, as reference cases typically provide the credibility you need to convince early customers. Running free-of-charge proof-of-concept projects to provide such a reference, required funding. To even get consideration for a funding, though, Institutional investors required market traction or at least successfully conducted MVPs. We resolved that deadlock, when we convinced Alexander Marten, a startup founder himself, to commit to an Angel round. In retrospective, that investment was clearly idealistic and high-risk.

What are the biggest challenges you are facing today?Growing and managing development capacity under financial resource constraints.

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What advice would you give founders to be? Go out, be open minded, contribute and above all, listen to mentors i.e. people willing to help you with their experience without necessarily benefitting from it.

AI is an exciting technology, which could bring a new wave of significant technological breakthroughs. Some people like Elon Musk warn about the dangers of AI. In which camp are you?Personally, I do not perceive intelligent agents as danger or risk. Many of the end of world scenarios, we can read about in tabloids today are total nonsense and reflect one thing:” It is still a lot easier to scare people away from a development than it is to educate and raise curiosity for the inner workings of a technology and the great potential it offers to solve some of the seemingly unsolvable man-made problems, we are facing today”.Also, I just don’t see the reasoning of a truly intelligent agent to harm mankind. Many of the potential motivations and behaviors described in the press are specifically characteristic of human psychology and sociology and have long been proven to have logically more superior alternatives. So, taking it all into consideration, I am very optimistic about the coexistence of man and machines.

Cologne is for Startups… Cologne is a great, authentic startup hub, offering great and affordable talent, a super open-minded atmosphere and a range of experienced and extremely supportive mentors and angel investors. Early on, we considered moving fedger abroad. As we started growing the business, the benefits of the Cologne/Bonn area played out really well for us.

“I am very optimistic about

the coexistence of man and

machines”.

Learn more about fedger.io on page 49

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Who are you and what do you do? My name is Anna, I live in Cologne and i have worked in tech startups for the past 8 years. I worked as Head of People Operations at Giant Swarm. I’m a trained and certified systemic coach and mediator.

My focus is on international recruiting, remote work, agile leadership, organizational and personnel development. I am also the co-founder of MTL, a peer coaching program for Startup Leaders.

In simple terms, what does Giant Swarm do? We have become a leader in modern software infrastructures enabling businesses to run cloud native projects on-demand and at scale across private data-centres and public clouds. That’s the official explanation.

If I had to explain it to my grandmother, I’d say that Giant Swarm builds a software that helps IT departments of large companies to run their applications easily and in a more modern way.

What are your main responsibilities at Giant Swarm?My job is to take care of people. Currently, my work is distributed over three columns: I support Giant Swarm on how to build a company from scratch, we are an agile, fully remote, internationally distributed and highly transparent company with a high amount of self-organization.

Anna Löw

Giant Swarm

Making remote work work

I am 100% behind all these concepts but obviously, it would be a lie if you were to just implement these concepts and everything runs like clockwork, It is about humans working together.

In addition to that, I support teams and team members on an individual basis. Last but not the least, I take care of the hiring process and put a lot of thoughts into who we need and when to create a successful team that shares certain values.

Giant Swarm works mainly remote. Why did you choose to work that way?That’s an easy one. The best talents with the skills we are looking for are just not located in beautiful Cologne. In addition to that, why force humans to commute or even move housing just because of a job?.

How do you manage and communicate in a remote team? How do you deal with cultural differences and conflict?We communicate a lot. We do tons of video conferences, using Slack and other collaboration tools. For the watercooler effect, we have a coffee-hangout open, have lunch together in front of the screen on Fridays and meet each other as an entire team two times a year for a week.

“Why force humans to

commute or even move

housing just because of a

job?”

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Furthermore we meet each other in conferences from our ecosystem which are important for us as company to be present. Currently, we are all located across Europe and are in a similar filter bubble, so cultural differences are not essential. But of course, people have different realities. At Giant Swarm, appreciation is something we foster and expect from everybody, we accept that everyone is different. The fact that we are aware of differences helps a lot in dealing with conflicts. Furthermore, the team is super experienced in feedback elements like peer feedback and retrospectives.

What would you advise other startups that want to try remote work?Going remote needs to be a strategic decision. For us it is super important that we are a fully remote company and not having a headquarter where ‘things’ happen. All workflows and communication structures are created to be remote. Otherwise, you have the danger of creating first and second class employees. Founders who want to go remote should be aware that trust is essential to be successful in this environment. Furthermore, you have to have the legal stuff ready, and ask for professional help here. Time zone is another issue. You need to decide if ‘worldwide’ is an option.

A lot of people struggle to understand what Giant Swarm does. How do you find the experts you are looking for? Giant Swarm is a Developer Led company. So, especially in the beginning we only hired people with technical background. They all understood what

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we are doing. For the non-technical hires, we now have specially designed workshops and we invest a lot in onboarding so that nobody is afraid of a complex product. Cross functional work is very important for us.

Please describe your recruiting process. Why did you choose to do it that way?When we get an interesting application, we send out a bunch of questions to the candidate which he/she answers in written form. These questions are connected to the concrete job, but should also make the person think about what he/she really wants in the future. After that we do a soft skill interview - biography behavioural based - and people who pass will undergo a 2nd interview where the focus is knowledge and the concrete job. If after that everybody is still happy, we give the candidate a task, which he or she prepares at home. We give feedback upfront - we don’t want to blame people and the candidate presents the task in front of the entire team. This is on one hand a good remote experience - you present and 26 people who have joined the hangout - and on the other hand, give the candidate a chance to meet the team and vice versa. When the candidate has presented, we sit together as a team and with the help of a certain rating score we make the hiring decision together. We know that this is a process where both sides - candidate and team - has to invest a lot of time. But we truly believe that taking the time internally for the hiring process pays off in the end.

Many business founders struggle to find technical co founders or engineering talent. What is your advice to them?That’s a tough one. I think some founders don’t put enough thought into the jobs they create. The well known terms “autonomy, mastery, and purpose” should not be buzzwords but an actual reality. In addition to that, founders should not hesitate to talk to engineers about the working conditions (besides money) they prefer and would like to have implemented.

Cologne is for Startups… … a great place to be located. But nobody should be forced to live here for a company’s success.

Learn more about Giant Swarm on page 57

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STARTUP DIRECTORY

#allbageverything42headbonitasAirpaqAMA Xpert EyeampidoBeluja CoffeeBetterDocBlauarbeit.deblookeryBotReachByndCatch TalentsCheMondisCOUPIEScurassistDepotCityDJAHÉEINHUNDERT EnergieevoparkExtalityeyeoFanQfedgerfitogramFlüssiggas1.deFluxFOND OFfonialFundamental CapitalfurryfitGiant Swarmgoedle.ioGolf PostGreenPocketgridscaleGrowth EuropeHomelikeHonestlyInfluencerDBJobfoxJuicerJustix

KERBHOLZKernwerkKraftlingLattenkreuzMealmatchMelouMOTHERSHIP MarketingmoveriimyDayliveryMySchleppAppNannioNeoDocNext KraftwerkeNOMOO EisOneFIDPBM Personal Business MachinePirate SkillspixolusquintlyRadbonusRausgegangen.deRAYPACK.AIREADYMADErise technologiessapasoSceduleSchmausshareDnCSocial MatchSoundReplySportsbookCloudStorritoSugartrendsSWARM NutritionTagxterTAVLATRINKKOSTubirchUserlikevisidoo eHealth SolutionsWIRECLOUD - DALASONWorld of VRZendri

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100101102103104105106107108109110111

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Industry: E-Commerce

We combine luxury minimalism & sustainability

#allbageverything

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 2

Contact: Lübecker Str. 14Cologne

mail@allbageverything.dewww.allbageverything.de

We make women happy by giving them what they want - a lot of designer bags! We believe our bank account should no longer tell us what to afford. If a girl wants to treat herself, she should do so. That’s why we rent designer bags online. No matter if she just wants to look good for one night or if she is a fashionista from the bottom of her heart that wants to change the bag each month: we have the perfect fit. We share and care on a luxury level.

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Industry: SaaS

Provides web software to improve productivity within small teams

42he

Founding Year: 2011

Headcount: 12

Contact: Marktstrasse 10 Gebäude E8Cologne

+4922129199786 sven.sester@42he.comwww.42he.com

Our goal is to design and build addictively easy to use software that helps our customers to better run their businesses. We think software should be easy and have a nice usability at first. Features are no USP to us. CentralStationCRM helps small teams and SMEs to manage their client and contact relationships. CentralPlanner is made for restaurants to manage and organize their reservations. CentralDesk is a help desk and ticketing software.

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Industries: SaaS, Security, Artificial Intelligence

AI-powered Fraud Prevention For Marketers

adbonitas

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 5

Contact: Eupener Str. 124Cologne

+491772348488 marcus@adbonitas.comwww.adbonitas.com

How much risk is right for your digital marketing investment? Decisioning data made understandable and actionable in real-time. Use our adbonitas security technology for safer and smarter media investments.

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Industry: Fashion

Essential because lifesavers carry more responsibility

Airpaq

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 2

Contact: Im Rabengrund 7Cologne

015770236761adrian@airpaq.dewww.airpaq.de

Airpaq upcycles airbags and seat belts into backpacks. These materials are designed to perform in extreme situations, making Airpaq a sustainable and quality product. By collecting materials from different car models/brands/years we encounter a huge variety of materials, which make each Airpaq through little details unique.

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Industries: AR / VR, Hardware / IoT

Cost & time saving knowledge transfer with smart glasses

AMA Xpert Eye

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 4

Contact: Im Mediapark 8Cologne

(0)221 55405070 contact.de@amaxperteye.comwww.amaxperteye.com

With XpertEye, AMA offers a real time collaboration tool with smart glasses. Our turnkey (hardware + software) and intuitive solution allows e.g. field operators to share their vision while keeping their hands free, and receiving over-distance live guidance (annotation, file sharing, etc.) from off-site experts. XpertEye helps industry and medical companies reduce resolution and travel time, error rate and costs while raising customer satisfaction.

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Industries: Marketplace, Mobile, Proptech

Reduces stress of opening and closing heavy gates, its also danger free.

ampido

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 15

Contact: Bismarckstraße 19Cologne

+492216776911 support@ampido.comwww.ampido.com

ampido.com is a reservation platform for parking lots. Owners of private and commercial parking lots can rent out these flexibly on a hourly, daily or monthly basis. With our cross-system opening technology, car drivers can open barriers and gates via applications.

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Industry: E-Commerce

Consumable coffeebags for customers optimum utility.

Beluja Coffee

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 2

Contact: Uhlandstr. 88Cologne

info@beluja-coffee.comwww.beluja-coffee.com

Using Beluja Coffeebags, hotels can serve their guests with an extraordinary coffee experience in the room. Coffeebags function like tea bags, but just with freshly grounded coffee. You do not need an expensive machine, an electric kettle is enough. Therefore Coffeebag is a better option to show the guests the appreciation they deserve.

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Industries: Data, Health

Data driven recommendations for the best physician

BetterDoc

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 51

Contact: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring 30-32Cologne

+49 221 200 568 0 info@betterdoc.orgwww.betterdoc.org

BetterDoc is Germany’s market leader in the field of second opinion and patient management helping patients to find the right specialist for their individual diagnosis. Specialists are selected through analysis of quality data, expert surveys and ongoing measurements of the actual success of treatment on the patient. Leading health insurance companies in D and CH (e.g. Allianz, AOK Hessen, AXA etc.) cover costs of BetterDoc’s services for their policy holders.

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Industry: Marketplace

Bringing you closer to able and amiable professionals.

Blauarbeit.de

Founding Year: 2004

Headcount: 21

Contact: Brüsselerstr., 89-93Cologne

022139090122 info@blauarbeit.dewww.lauarbeit.de

Blauarbeit.de is a easy and secure way to find contractors. Blauarbeit.de makes it easy to find local professionals who specialize in exactly the type of work you need done.

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Industries: E-Commerce, Artificial Intelligence

Travel made easy: individual trips to a surprise destination

blookery

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 4

Contact: Eupener Straße 124Cologne

post@blookery.dewww.blookery.de

It all started when Kevin organised a blind booking trip for us. Only he knew where we were going. For everyone else, it was a big surprise and most importantly, a stress-free and easy way to decide on a vacation. We soon realised that for most people searching for and deciding on a vacation is a real pain in the ass.With blookery you just answer a couple of questions, what cities you like and we surprise you with an exciting destination. Easy peasy .

36

Industry: SaaS

We create interactive platform for website owners to interact with their customers.

BotReach

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 1

Contact: Im Mediapark 5, c/o STARTPLATZCologne

phil@botreach.cowww.botreach.co

Who likes forms on websites? We don’t. So we created something better. BotReach is an online service that enables you to create simple chatbot conversations for your site in an easy, straightforward way. You get a working chatbot-like experience in a matter of minutes, which you can use to replace any conventional form. Offer your customers something exciting when doing surveys, asking for feedback or if you want to qualify leads.

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Industries: Consumer Internet, Social

One App. All Your Favorite Feeds!

Bynd

Founding Year: 2013

Headcount: 4

Contact: Am Hof 20-26Cologne

+4922129199786 www.byndapp.com

View all relevant content from sources such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Medium and 70+ news channels, in one unified feed.

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Industries: Data, SaaS

Innovative Recruiting with Personality

Catch Talents

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 3

Contact: Ägidiusstr. 14Cologne

(+49) 0221 470-6590 justin.bous@catch-talents.dewww.catch-talents.de

It is our Mission to quickly and easily find employees for medium-sized companies who are really suited to the position on offer in terms of their personality and specialist skills. For the first time, an applicant management system and an associated talent community were linked with the approach of “sharing” applicants.

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Industries: Data, Marketplace

Welcome to CheMondis. The world of chemical business in one.

CheMondis

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 10

Contact: Zeppelinstraße 9Cologne

hello@chemondis.comwww.chemondis.com

We believe that digital won’t stop at the door of the chemical Industry. That’s why we are building the online marketplace for Chemicals - for buyers and its suppliers. For good, we connect suppliers and buyers of chemical products. All companies and all products in a single and trusted marketplace. We combine heritage with technology and we bring a new business model into an established industry. We are putting technology at the service of our customers.

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Industry: Mobile

We give easy access to online coupons to customers giving them easy access to goods a and services with no cash.

COUPIES

Founding Year: 2010

Headcount: 10

Contact: Hohenstaufenring 55Cologne

+4922199040110 tom.engel@coupies.dewww.coupies.de

COUPIES (www.coupies.de) brings discount offers and coupons on your mobile phone - available anytime, anywhere with the COUPIES-App (iPhone and Android). COUPIES is the leading provider for mobile and online cashback-couponing in Germany.

41

Industry: Health

We digitize the nursing profession

curassist

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 11

Contact: Universitätsstraße 3Cologne

+4922129199786 mail@curassist.dewww.curassist.de

Curassist is a startup from the healthcare sector which has been actively involved since 2015 in the further development of the nursing profession for the healthcare specialists. We support nurses who want to become self-employed as free nurses according to their own ideas. We accompany them into freelance work and relieve them of the entire administrative burden.

42

Industries: E-Commerce, Marketplace, SaaS

We provide a better storage facilities for marketplaces and also an assured storage for customer’s goods.

DepotCity

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 5

Contact: Barthelstraße 6Cologne

+49 (0) 157 74748923 tobias@depotcity.dewww.depotcity.de

DepotCity was founded in 2017 in Cologne and provides a platform for easy flexible and scalable warehouse and fulfillment solutions. Our technology digitalizes the entire process of booking, managing and monitoring storage of goods. Through integrations in major Shops systems and Marketplaces the communication between the respective sales channel and storage works seamlessly. The online dashboard allows customers to monitor inventory, orders and costs.

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Industries: Consumer Internet, Health, Marketplace

DJAHÉ is here to give you the best taste of lemonade.

DJAHÉ

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 6

Contact: Venloer Str. 703Cologne

017663063273pam@djahe.comwww.djahe.com

Based on a family recipe, the family owned company DJAHÉ produces organic ginger lemonade. DJAHÉ is composed of the best ingredients. 100 % organic, and 100% vegan. There are three different flavors of the unique ginger lemonade: lemon, passion fruit and rhubarb. The family business was founded in 2015 by Justin, Pam and Bruce.

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Industries: Data, Hardware / IoT

Make billing and payment for electricity digital therefore being consistent.

EINHUNDERT Energie

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 6

Contact: Lichtstraße 24Cologne

info@einhundert-energie.dewww.einhundert-energie.de

Energy services for Germans are completely outdated: paper-based yearly billing, uncertain energy sourcing, intransparent energy consumption and solar power is only accessible for house owners..This is so 2017! Thus, we offer clean energy in a real time service: monthly digital billing, certified green power, databased efficiency services. Furthermore we put solar modules on rooftops to make energy transition accessible and profitable for tenants!

45

Industry: SaaS

We offer digital parking solutions for all cars.

evopark

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 29

Contact: Sedanstraße 31-33Cologne

+49 (0) 221 177 343 – 60nora.flohr@evopark.dewww.evopark.de

evopark started in 2014 with the vision to make parking much easier for drivers. The company has developed a wide range of digital parking solutions for B2B partners such as AXA, Porsche and Daimler. Since 2018 evopark is focusing on digital end-to-end products for car park operators and mobility providers. The portfolio covers solutions for seamless access to and cashless payment within car parks and SaaS products to manage short- and long-term parkers.

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Industries: Enterprise, Gaming, Mobile, AR / VR

Mixed Reality is coming. Are you ready? Let us help you.

Extality

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 9

Contact: Hohenzollernring 58Cologne

hello@extality.comwww.extality.com

With a history of over 60 million app downloads, Extality’s world-class team of dedicated industry professionals has decades of combined experience developing interactive media—delivering innovative, reliable solutions to organizations facing complex AR/VR challenges. We will understand your real needs, brainstorm creative ideas together, and craft reliable software solutions for you.

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Industry: Consumer Internet

Putting you in charge of a fair and profitable web.

eyeo

Founding Year: 2011

Headcount: 130

Contact: Lichtstraße 25Cologne

+49 152 09039150 m.grant@eyeo.comwww.eyeo.com

At eyeo GmbH, we work to make the web better, for everyone. This includes internet users, publishers and advertisers. We make Adblock Plus, the world’s most popular open source browser extension, which allows people to take control of their online experience without jeopardizing revenue for publishers and advertisers.

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Industries: Data, Content, Mobile, Sports, Social

The voting app for all football fans.

FanQ

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 8

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

www.fanq-app.com

FanQ is a social voting platform for football fans where opinions can be shared and discussed. FanQ makes the results of the voting freely accessible in an aggregated form, makes fan opinions transparent and gives the fans a common voice.

49

Industries: Artificial Intelligence, Hardware / IoT, Data

AI-powered Software to substitute costly manual data inputs.

fedger

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 26

Contact: Lichtstr. 25Cologne

www.fedger.co

fedger is a fast growing technology company located in Cologne, Germany. With our proprietary AI-powered solutions, we automate manual and cost intensive work processes. Our focus is on the extraction and delivery of structured information from highly variable documents.

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Industries: Marketplace, SaaS, Sports

Focus 100% on your everyday passion.

fitogram

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 35

Contact: Im Klapperhof 7Cologne

+49 221 22201407 contact@fitogram.dewww.fitogram.de

At fitogram we believe that nothing should stand between people and their passion for sport. That’s why we develop tech solutions to bring fitness into the digital age. Our core product FitogramPro is a cloud based software for fitness providers. We take care of all the “administrative” tasks like customer management, online booking, payments, accounting, ... so that they can focus on what they love to do: providing sports.

51

Industries: Content, Mareketplace

Find a LPG-Company that fits to you!

Flüssiggas1.de

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 2

Contact: Eupener Straße 124Cologne

0221 98651220 info@fluessiggas1.dewww.fluessiggas1.de

The founders Marc Bode as Digital entrepreneur and developer and Johannes Partz as Business developer and sales expert are working to digitize the liquefied gas industry. Flüssiggas1.de focuses on marketing and sales and acts as a digital platform between customers and liquefied gas supply companies. Flüssiggas1.de aims to bring customers in rural areas to switch to low-cost, efficient and low-dust gas solutions.

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Industries: Consumer Internet, Enterprise, Marketplace, Mobile, SaaS, Social

The carpooling app for urban and other short trips.

Flux

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 6

Contact: Ägidiusstraße 14Cologne

+49160 97019332 info@go-flux.dewww.go-flux.de

Using Flux, drivers and passengers can organize their rides within 10 seconds. This makes Flux the most user-friendly and easiest App in the world to organize carpooling. In addition, with every ride, drivers and passengers actively contribute to the reduction of emissions and traffic.With the help of Flux, employers can increase their attractiveness to employees by creating an additional mobility offer and even partially or completely fund the rides.

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Industries: E-Commerce, Fashion

Playful Performance & a team to be FOND OF

FOND OF

Founding Year: 2010

Headcount: 237

Contact: Vogelsanger Str., 78Cologne

+491709245141 presse@fondof.dewww.fondof.de

FOND OF considers itself as a platform for progression, development of potential and personal growth. In 2010 they started the mission to revolutionize the schoolbag market with their first brand ergobag. Since then, seven backpack brands and a fashion label belong to the product portfolio. All brands are characterised by uniqueness in design, product functionality, responsibility in production and - above all - “playful performance” among the team.

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Industry: Enterprise

Sounds better!

fonial

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 20

Contact: Venloer Straße 47-53Cologne

support@fonial.dewww.fonial.de

fonial is a provider of professional telephony solutions for small and medium sized companies. Our cloud pbx system offers more than 100 features for professional business-communication including fax, mobile integration, telephone conferences, voicemail and many more. It’s based on voice-over-ip-technology and therefore future-proof. Our cloud pbx can be booked online and is ready to use within minutes - the only thing you will need is internet connection.

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Industries: Data, Financial Services, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain

Smart Investing by Data.

Fundamental Capital

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 10

Contact: Hildeboldplatz 15-17Cologne

+49 221 423 122 86support@fundamental.capitalwww.undamental.capital

We democratize high-quality investing strategies for private investors and make smart investing easy, transparent and worth it. In just 10 minutes, we build you an investment portfolio based on active hedge fund technologies. We use artificial intelligence and quantitative models to select the best stocks for you. Put your money to work like the world’s smartest investors.

56

Industries: E-Commerce

Track your dog’s health 24/7.

furryfit

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 3

Contact: Hohe Straße 39Cologne

wuff@furryfit.dewww.furryfit.de

As a german pet-tech company we are developing wearable devices for pets. Our first product - we recently launched - is a healthtracker for dogs. This device which is fitted easily to the dog´s collar collects data of dog´s activity. With our own developed algorithms we provide new insights to the life of the owner’s dogs, like for example; the daily activity, the burned calories and the very important sleep and resttimes.

57

Industries: Enterprise, Developer Tools, Security, Hardware / IoT

Managed Cloud Native Platform for the Enterprise

Giant Swarm

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 26

Contact: c/o Startplatz, Im Mediapark 5Cologne

info@giantswarm.iowww.giantswarm.io

Giant Swarm is the premier managed platform for running cloud native projects securely and reliably on-demand and at scale across private data centres and public clouds.

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Industries: Data, Education, Gaming, Mobile, SaaS, Artificial Intelligence

Predicting future user behavior.

goedle.io

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 3

Contact: Am Hof 20-26Cologne

info@goedle.iowww.goedle.io

With the help of AI and machine learning, goedle.io analyzes user data to predict future behavior, provides meaningful insights, and helps to adapt content and communication to improve KPIs. Typical applications are churn, conversion, or LTV prediction in mobile games, education apps, or subscription/SaaS businesses. These predictions are then used to adapt content dynamically, e.g., adjusting the level of difficulty in a mobile game.

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Industries: SaaS

Up-To-Date, Independent & Nearby

Golf Post

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 7

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

+4922197580231team@golfpost.dewww.golfpost.de

Golf Post is the digital home for all golfers. The platform provides information on all golf related topics, from tournament news to equipment content, travel reports about the worlds finest golf destinations and practise tips to improve your game. The Golf Post App invites golfers around the world to share their greatest pictures and memories as well as getting to know new friends on and off the course.

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Industries: Data, SaaS, Artificial Intelligence

Creating added values from smart meter data

GreenPocket

Founding Year: 2009

Headcount: 31

Contact: Schanzenstraße 6-20Cologne

www.greenpocket.de

As an agile startup in the dynamic growth market for energy management software, we support utilities and business customers all over the world in realizing added values from smart meter data by using innovative technologies (AI, Machine Learning, Data Science). With our creative and intuitive software solutions, we are already making a sustainable contribution to the energy transition and to the digitalization of the energy industry.

61

Industries: Enterprise, Artificial Intelligence, Hardware / IoT

Bringing cloud computing to the next level

gridscale

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 23

Contact: Oskar-Jäger-Str. 173Cologne

www.gridscale.io

gridscale is a cloud technology manufacturer and the only European provider of infrastructure and platform services. The company is dedicated to cutting-edge technology, bringing cloud computing to the next level.

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Industries: Consumer Internet, Enterprise, Developer Tools, E-Commerce, Education, SaaS, Bots / Messaging

Germany´s 1st Growth Hacking Academy

Growth Europe

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 2

Contact: Goltsteinstrasse 76Cologne

+492213492085 hendrik@lennarz-consulting.dewww.growtheurope.com

Learn Growth Hacking! We help startups and businesses of any size in leveraging Growth by killing individual weaknesses and strengthen sweat spots. Our learning platform contains several formats from public live bootcamps in your city and individual team bootcamps in your office to 100% online learning courses. Our Growth Hacking process V2.0“ framework serves as step-by-step guide for sustainable Growth for 120+ startup and corporate teams across Europe.

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Industries: Marketplace, Proptech

Helping business travelers finding a home away from home

Homelike

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 80

Contact: Hansaring 97Cologne

+49 221 988 611 88info@thehomelike.comwww.thehomelike.com

Homelike is an online platform for fully furnished business apartments with more than 45,000 units in 100+ cities and four countries. All apartments are tailored to the needs of business travelers who work away from their hometown for one month or more. Homelike digitizes the whole rental process and thus, enables its clients to rent furnished apartments in just a few simple steps : just as conveniently as booking a hotel room.

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Industries: Enterprise, SaaS, Hardware / IoT

Put people first!

Honestly

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 26

Contact: Hansaring 68-70Cologne

+4922164307890 hello@honestly.comwww.honestly.com

We love to implement feedback processes in organizations! People are the central element of any business - still often also the most complicated one. We develop an intuitive Platform to generate employee engagement and customer satisfaction surveys and provide all the channels like feedback terminals, links and mobile apps to distribute the surveys to the relevant audience. We further generate smart dashboards so our customers know where to take action.

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Industries: Enterprise, SaaS

Europe’s leading influencer marketing software

InfluencerDB

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 31

Contact: Im Mediapark 4dCologne

+4925120319064jobs@influencerdb.comwww.influencerdb.com

InfluencerDB is on a mission to make influencer marketing data-driven and transparent so that companies can transform the way they do business to harness the power of digital influencers. Our customers come to us for everything from data-driven software solutions to industry-leading insights to professional education and development. We are Europe’s leading influencer marketing platform, working with brands such as H&M, Asics, CLUSE and Lufthansa.

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Industries: Marketplace, Mobile

Find a job near you in 24hours!

Jobfox

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 3

Contact: Venloer Straße 47-53Cologne

+49 221 64 30 45 61 rafael.gomez@jobfox.cowww.jobfox.co

We revolutionize the way and how people apply for jobs and how local companies hire staffs. Jobfox makes looking for work simple and fast. Browse, apply and chat - all within our app. Every 24 hours we are connecting thousands of restaurants, shops and many many more with suitable candidates. Join our mission and change the way and how people hire and apply in Germany.

67

Industry: SaaS

Showcase your social media content on your website

Juicer

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 5

Contact: Gertrudenstraße 9Cologne

01774855880max@juicer.iowww.juicer.io

Juicer is a simple way to aggregate all of your social media posts into a single beautiful social media feed on your website that looks great on all devices. Juicer automatically pulls in new posts from your social media accounts. Set up filters, moderate posts and analyze your social media engagement.

68

Industry: Legaltech

Building the Future of Legal Services!

Justix

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 32

Contact: Mediapark 4bCologne

+49160987969501jonas.jankus@justix.netwww.justix.net

We are an international company builder for LegalTech businesses. We build companies which combine advanced technological capabilities with in-depth industry expertise, very large data sets and entrepreneurial execution. Our mission is to make legal matters transparent, simple and easy with great technology. We aim to offer transparency and accessibility to lawyers and clients alike.

69

Industry: Fashion

Designed to sustain

KERBHOLZ

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 15

Contact: Wilhelm-Mauser-Strasse 14-16Cologne

+49 221 177 300 00service@kerbholz.comwww.kerbholz.com

Since 2012, the Cologne-based company KERBHOLZ has stood for accessories made of natural, sustainable and innovative materials such as acetate, wood, slate and marble. The reduced, minimalist design of the products creates extraordinary design products for every day. KERBHOLZ acts according to the motto: “Designed to sustain” -we design to preserve. We stand for a conscious handling of the resources of this planet and with each other -and the fun in it.

70

Industries: Data, Health, Sports

No1 in Custom Training

Kernwerk

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 9

Contact: Mediapark 5, STARTPLATZCologne

www.kernwerk.de

There are hundreds of fitness apps - and all of them work with off-the-shelf workouts. These standard workouts are inappropriate and inflexible.KERNWERK’s proprietary R.E.S.T. algorithm can split any workout into individual components, evaluate them and adapt each individual exercise perfectly to the user. The correct exercise variant, the optimal number of repetitions and the appropriate weight are determined and delivered to the smartphone.

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Industries: Food and Beverage, E-Commerce, Health

The trusted brand for healthy beverages

Kraftling

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 15

Contact: Mannsfelderstrasse 31Cologne

+4915112141443friedrich.kalthoff@kraftlinge.comwww.kraftlinge.com

We believe in the natural kraft of fruits and vegetables. The industry has been processed the natural ingredients to a degree which we no longer want to take for granted. We entered the market with 3 different types of gingershots to give our customers an understanding of what Kraftling is all about: natural, healthy and non-pasteurised beverages. Apart from revolutionizing the food & bev. Industry we believe that there is one key ingredient : the team!

72

Industries: Consumer Internet, Content, Sports

Latest football news

Lattenkreuz

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 3

Contact: +49 221 97584914Cologne

redaktion@lattenkreuz.dewww.lattenkreuz.de

Since November 2014 Lattenkreuz has been covering all the latest developments in German and European football. Alongside daily news, transfer rumors, game previews / reports and player portraits, we also look at the story offside the field.

73

Industries: Consumer Internet, E-Commerce, Marketplace

Make new friends

Mealmatch

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 8

Contact: Bruehler Street 30Cologne

+49 221 2833654 info@mealmatch.dewww.mealmatch.de

Book meals and meet new people around the world. Mealmatch connects people at a joint Meal – in restaurants, hotels and in private environments. Thus participants can find new friends in their city and dine with nice people on vacation and on business trips. On the social-dining platform, everyone can sign up for free to make new contacts.

74

Industries: E-Commerce

Wish it. Dream it. Do it.

Melou

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 3

Contact: Im Mediapark 4dCologne

+4917670402999 info@melou.dewww.melou.de

Melou isn’t just another jewellery start-up selling beautiful jewels, it’s a brand especially known for its unique identity: Warmth. Aesthetics. Community. The liveliness of feelings & emotions is what makes us special. Since we love the sense of unity, we are building up our own #meloufamily instead of talking about customers. Having each other’s backs & being there for each other are important values for both our #meloufamily and #meloucrew.

75

Industries: Data, Gaming, Mobile

Marketing Agency for the Digital Culture.

MOTHERSHIP Marketing

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 17

Contact: Oskar-Jäger-Straße 173Cologne

contact@mothersh1p.dewww.mothersh1p.de

We strongly believe that the user experience in advertising matters and is essential in contemporary marketing and brand building. That is why we developed our cross-platform Ad-monetization tool for rewarding customers digitally. Our solution enables companies to credit their users for watching videos, installing apps or fulfilling any other objective. Globally and across all gaming and publishing platforms.

76

Industries: Marketplace, Sports

clever sporten - in your city and worldwide!

moverii

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 2

Contact: Heimbacher Straße 12Cologne

+4915170376939 daniel@moverii.dewww.moverii.de

moverii is an online-marketplace for sports classes & workshops in your city and sports journeys worldwide. On our platform users can search, compare and book sports offers specific to their needs and desires. We only publish offers without contracts or monthly base fees and instead with qualified trainers and small training groups. The price is unbeatable and the customer conveniently pays online. In short: with moverii everybody can sport clever.

77

Industries: E-Commerce, Marketplace

We digitize market of courier services

myDaylivery

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 4

Contact: c/o Startplatz, Im Mediapark 5Cologne

+49 221 9758144 -0info@mydaylivery.dewww.mydaylivery.de

myDaylivery is a digital platform where small and medium-sized enterprises can post their urgent and important drop shipments. We will find the right courier nearby or with a similar route in our network. By connecting new orders with existing routes and assigning them to the appropriate couriers, myDaylivery achieves a reduce of empty runs and increase the utilization of couriers.

78

Industries: Marketplace, Mobile

Germany’s fastest towing service

MySchleppApp

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 6

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

08001977552 fhe@myschleppapp.dewww.myschleppapp.de

Your car broke down? No problem! We are connecting you with the closest towing service via our App or Browser Application. MySchleppApp has the largest network of towing companies in Germany, a fully digitalized service and guarantees fast help with transparent prices.

79

Industry: SaaS

The easiest way to reliable child care

Nannio

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 2

Contact: Hamburger Str. 15Cologne

0221 97587-400hallo@nann.iowww.nann.io

Nannio is an online marketplace exclusively for qualified babysitters and pre-examined child minders. Our vision is to build the first well known brand for trustworthy and reliable child care in Europe.

80

Industries: Content, Health, Social

The video gateway for your health

NeoDoc

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 4

Contact: Saarstr. 21Cologne

www.neodoc.de

NeoDoc is the video gateway for patients, relatives and people interested in health. We combine the video communication of clinics, health insurance companies, medical practitioners and the pharmaceutical industry. Germany’s medical specialists talk about symptoms, diagnoses and therapies. Affected people report from their everyday life. Emotional patient stories that move. NeoDoc is the video gateway for your health.

81

Industries: Data, SaaS, Hardware / IoT

The Virtual Power Plant for 100% renewable energy

Next Kraftwerke

Founding Year: 2009

Headcount: 139

Contact: Lichtstraße 43GCologne

+49221820085-0info@next-kraftwerke.dewww.next-kraftwerke.de

Headquartered in Cologne, Next Kraftwerke operates one of the largest Virtual Power Plants in Europe. Awarded for its forward-looking business model, the company digitally connects about 5,500 energy-producing and energy-consuming units. It aggregates a combined capacity which equals two large coal-fired power stations. Next Kraftwerke markets the power on energy exchanges and uses it to help stabilizing the grid, if power supply and demand are out of sync

82

Industry: Food and Beverage

Surprisingly intense

NOMOO Eis

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 2

Contact: Oskar-Jäger-Straße 160Cologne

info@nomoo-icecream.dewww.nomoo-icecream.de

NOMOO means “no cow“ and is known as the first organic vegan ice cream that actually does not taste vegan. The natural and intense taste fascinates everyone. NOMOO proves that ice cream does not have to contain any animal products. This is why NOMOO ice cream is more sustainable, healthier and boost the animal welfare – ice cream 2.0. Currently, NOMOO is available in the supermarkets and selected cafes in 120ml and 450ml cups.

83

Industries: E-Commerce, Fashion, Marketplace, Manufacturing / 3D Printing / Robotics

OneFID is like the Paypal Plug-in for E-Commerce shops.

OneFID

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 20

Contact: Mathias-Brüggen-Strasse 4Cologne

+49 (0) 221 - 9581 7441info@onefid.comwww.onefid.com

The OneFID plug-in provides the end customer with individual fitting suggestions. With the help of modern 3D scanning technology, we collect the scans of feet and thus create a personalized fitting ID for the customer. OneFID acts as a digital assistant for fitting proposals through the AI-driven OneFID Converter. While integrating the plug-in into other E-Commerce shops, OneFID is presenting the benefits of the plug-in on their own E-Commerce platform.

84

Industries: Data, Enterprise, Content, SaaS, Social, Artificial Intelligence, Insurtech

Customer approach for a digital world

PBM Personal Business Machine

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 20

Contact: Ehrenfeldgürtel 82-86Cologne

+49221-4541900info@personal-business-machine.comwww.personal-business-machine.com

The PBM Personal Business Machine AG revolutionizes the customer dialogue through personalized media preparation via all output channels, as well as through the GDPR-compliant transmission and integration of documents including the possibility of e-signatures. The Personal Business Machine is the only platform to provide an individual customer experience for all communication channels - from letters to landing pages, from apps to Alexa skills.

85

Industries: Data, Consumer Internet, E-Commerce, Education, Mobile, Bots / Messaging

Become the Captain of your own Growth

Pirate Skills

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 7

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

+49-176-30543705ben@pirateskills.comwww.pirateskills.com

Join the Pirate Skills crew to level up your growth marketing skills way above the average to make a bigger impact in the world. We host free monthly meetups that help you to learn whats on the cutting edge of marketing, like how to build Messenger bots, whats special about Instagram story ads at the moment or how to build an A/B testable landing page. We don’t have big budgets to throw away and share the secrets to sustainable growth among founders.

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Industries: Data, Mobile, SaaS, Artificial Intelligence, AR / VR, Proptech

Don’t type. Just scan! Tailored mobile vision solutions.

pixolus

Founding Year: 2013

Headcount: 9

Contact: Große Brinkgasse 2bCologne

+49 221 9499920 info@pixolus.dewww.pixolus.de

As experts for image processing we develop tailored camera-based data capture and processing solutions – with a focus on smartphones, tablets and smart glasses. Application-specific algorithms combined with a machine learning approach turn mobile devices into efficient scanners with scalable recognition performance. The result: High quality data for immediate processing, lean handling and lower process costs instead of media breaks and need for corrections.

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Industries: Data, SaaS, Social

Advanced social media analytics, simplified.

quintly

Founding Year: 2011

Headcount: 30

Contact: Neusser Str.93Cologne

+4915125282992julian@quintly.comwww.quintly.com

quintly is a web-based social media analytics tool that helps users track and benchmark their performance against their competitors. In this way customers can steadily optimize their social media strategy.

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Industries: Content, Health, Mobile, Sports, Social

Get Credits for Cycling

Radbonus

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 15

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

022117732990 info@radbonus.comwww.radbonus.com

Cycling is great for human health and relieves the environment. Therefore, it is active climate protection. To promote this, Radbonus created an app, that rewards its users with discounts, bonuses and prices after they cycled a certain amount of kilometers with their bike.

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Industries: E-Commerce, Social

Discover your city with different eyes

Rausgegangen.de

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 12

Contact: Vogelsanger Straße 20Cologne

tim@rausgegangen.dewww.rausgegangen.de

Rausgegangen is one of the biggest platforms for event recommendations in Germany. Since 3 years, we subjectively pick the most exciting tips for going out and thereby we inspire tens of thousands “Rausgeher” for new experiences daily. The ideas are available via App, Newsletter, Website and Facebook. Furthermore, since January, Rausgegangen operates a tool called Abend.net that offers online marketing and ticketing solutions for event organizers.

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Industries: Data, Artificial Intelligence, Manufacturing / 3D Printing / Robotics

Visual Analytics with Artificial Intelligence

RAYPACK.AI

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 5

Contact: Ebertplatz 1Cologne

ann.loehde@aiso-lab.comwww.raypack.ai

RAYPACK.AI revolutionizes AI-based visual analytics. We provide a wide range of applications from quality inspection for manufacturing companies in a ready-to-use format - an AI-based visual quality control solution that runs in the cloud, at the edge or on premise - to the analysis of large media archives. Our AI is able to work with images, video streams as well as thermal images.

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Industries: E-Commerce, Social

The first sharing cycle for furniture in Germany

READYMADE

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 3

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

info@readymade-furniture.dewww.readymade-furniture.de

We offer solid design furniture online for rent, organise the transportation and refine the pieces.The traces of usage will survive and form a new and unique piece of furniture with its own story. This story will be written by the users and their lifestyles. But it will be told by us and the creativity of our carpenters. Perfect for all minimalists, nomads and urbanists who don’t want to own furniture on their own but share it as a community.

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Industries: Data, Enterprise, Mobile, SaaS, AR / VR, Hardware / IoT

Digital Communication for the Industrial Service

rise technologies

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 10

Contact: Zugasse 23Cologne

+49 221 300 633 00 info@rise.techwww.rise.tech

As a dynamic startup we actively drive the Industry 4.0. Our SaaS solution rise is a comprehensive communication platform for the industrial service based on Augmented Reality & Smart Glasses to effectively communicate with field service technicians and support them when they are not able to solve problems themselves. We help our customers e.g. Lanxess to increase the first time fix rate which leads to reduced downtime of machinery and lower service cost.

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Industries: Data, Financial Services, SaaS

Building a full-service platform for recurring payments

sapaso

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 30

Contact: Hohenzollernring 16-18Cologne

www.sapaso.de

sapaso facilitates the processing and handling of recurring payments. As the subscription economy is emerging, more businesses move to offering subscriptions for consumers. Managing dunning processes as well as debt collection is a big hassle and never core competency. Therefore sapaso will provide a payment guarantee and take over the entire value chain of payment handling for its B2B customers, while increasing service level in B2B2C communications.

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Industries: Enterprise, SaaS, Artificial Intelligence

Don’t just schedule meetings. Organize them!

Scedule

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 3

Contact: Reiterstaffelplatz 20Cologne

www.scedule.com

Scedule automates the scheduling and organizing process of business meetings. Scedule’s smart algorithm replaces human intelligence. It identifies date proposals that take into account individual plans of each invitee, automatically integrates the booking of required meeting rooms and conference systems, and automates the ordering of all related services of the company. Integrated into the existing IT infrastrucutre. Whereby privacy is highly protected.

Business Meetings

easily scheduled & organized

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Industries: Marketplace, Mobile, Social

Homemade food from next door

Schmaus

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 5

Contact: Ägidiusstraße 14Cologne

+49 221 4701129info@schmaus.communitywww.schmaus.community

We are building an online community, where people can sell authentic, homemade food. Through our app, users can find, order and pick up tasty dishes in their area, cooked by their neighbors. Thereby, Schmaus provides a tasty, affordable and healthy alternative to fast food for its users while cooks can save money with their hobby. Cologne is the very first city in which Schmaus can be used. Be part of the homemade food revolution!

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Industries: Marketplace, Proptech

Flexible offices for each business

shareDnC

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 22

Contact: Marzellenstraße 43aCologne

www.sharednc.com

shareDnC is Germany’s leading platform for flexible offices and coworking. We offer flexible offices for each business - no matter which size, city or budget. We connect the increasing demand for flexible office space with an unique offer consisting of unused space from “normal” companies, co-working spaces and temporary vacancies from real estate companies.

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Industries: Data, Consumer Internet, Content, E-Commerce

We create and execute powerful influencer strategies

Social Match

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 23

Contact: Marktstrasse 10 Gebäude E8Cologne

+49251 98298015info@social-match.comwww.social-match.com

We believe the power of influencers transforms audiences into brand evangelists. We are convinced that every brand tells a story that can only be conditionally transported using current marketing strategies. People do not just buy products or services, they seek inspiration, identification, stories and magic.

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Industries: Enterprise, SaaS, Artificial Intelligence, AR / VR, Bots / Messaging, Hardware / IoT

Democratizing professional expertise

SoundReply

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 6

Contact: Neue Weyerstr. 2Cologne

hello@soundreply.comwww.soundreply.com

At SoundReply, we are making smart assistants teaching & supporting humans in all kinds of procedural know-how. Therefore, we are automatically turning documented procedures from manuals & checklists into platform-agnostic but voice-first conversational skills featuring all the best traits of a human coach. To make training off- and on-the-job less costly & more effective, unlocking every individual’s full potential.

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Industries: Data, Financial Services, Gaming, Mobile, SaaS, Sports, Insurtech

Massively scalable, high performance sports betting platform

SportsbookCloud

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 18

Contact: Zuelpicherstrasse 81Cologne

491737130733 sales@sportsbookcloud.comwww.sportsbookcloud.com

SportsbookCloud: One Platform - Millions of Bets. SportsbookCloud provides a massively scalable, high performance sports betting platform for a true omni-channel solution across Web, Mobile and Retail offering betting on +60 different sports and +370,000 sport events per year. Rich Product Range: Sportsbetting, Casino, Live casino, ESports, Virtual sports, Financial betting

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Industry: SaaS

400 million daily users are waiting for your Instagram story

Storrito

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 5

Contact: Gertudenstraße 9Cologne

support@storrito.comwww.storrito.com

Instagram’s Stories feature is used by over 400 million daily users. A lot of companies struggle to do marketing via Instagram Stories. Mostly due to the fact that Instagram does not allow to prepare or schedule stories in advance. With Storrito.com social media marketers can prepare Instagram stories in advance and schedule them based on their campaign needs. Storrito supports all goodies which make Instagram stories unique like hash-tags and polls.

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Industries: E-Commerce, Marketplace

Sugartrends - shop like a local

Sugartrends

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 10

Contact: Moltkestraße 123-131Cologne

022167778877contact@sugartrends.comwww.sugartrends.com

At Sugartrends we have two major goals: First, we want to offer our customers an unique selection of products that one cannot find anywhere else. Secondly, we want to provide digital solutions for small boutiques that enable them to compete on a global scale. The Sugartrends stores receive access to hundreds of thousands of international customers. The shopper benefit from an unique shopping experience with a great variety of extraordinary products.

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Industries: Food and Beverage, Sports

Protein Bars with sustainable Protein from Insects

SWARM Nutrition

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 5

Contact: Oskar-Jäger-Straße 160Cologne

www.swarmprotein.com

SWARM Protein developed a Protein bar with high quality and sustainable protein from insects. Crickets contain 70% of protein, all essential amino acids and a high amount of micronutrients. Compared to other protein sources Insects are sustainable since they use less resources, like water, feed and land and produce less greenhouse gases. We have 3 different flavors: Red Berries, Chia Hazelnut and Raw Cacao.

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Industries: SaaS

Digital solutions for your site

Tagxter

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 4

Contact: Eupener Str. 165Cologne

0221/16900523info@tagxter.comwww.tagxter.com

We offer a variety of digital solutions for large sites such as chemical parks, industrial sites, clinics or universities. Our mobile “Site Guide” apps allow site owners to offer their visitors, employees and suppliers a convenient way to inform themselves about the points of interest and to navigate on the site. Unlike other apps, our navigation (vehicles & pedestrians) incorporates private roads, construction zones and other specifics of the site.

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Industry: E-Commerce

Innovative Devices with Touch & Speech Interaction!

TAVLA

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 3

Contact: Im Dau 14Cologne

+49 221 3466 0885 info@tavla.dewww.tavla.de

TAVLA is a company from Cologne (Germany) developing innovative devices with touch & speech interaction. Our first products are large interactive displays for business customers. In 2019 we will also offer a tablet and a smartphone. All devices run our own TAVLA software platform - similar to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant. However, our platform is independent from these large players and runs on the device, not in the Cloud.

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Industries: Food and Beverage, Consumer Internet, Health

organic healthy meal replacement

TRINKKOST

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 4

Contact: Eupener Str. 165Cologne

+4915904232604gennadi@trinkkost.dewww.trinkkost.de

TRINKKOST develops healthy meal replacement shakes, based on whole food ingredients providing proteins, omega-3, 26 vitamins and minerals. No added sugar, no synthetic additives. Only ingredients with a high nutritional value! Fuel the power of nature! We have 3 product lines so far: COMPLETE: healthy meal replacer. ACTIVE: after sport activities or whenever you need extra doses of proteins. SLIM: lose some kilos with our delicious diet shake.

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Industries: Security, Blockchain, Hardware / IoT

Blockchain for Things

ubirch

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 10

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

maurice.beutnagel@ubirch.comwww.ubirch.de

ubirch is a fast-growing technology startup with offices in Berlin and Cologne. We are committed to bringing integrity and trustworthiness to the Internet of Things. Based on cutting-edge cryptography and blockchain technology, we have developed and implemented a protocol, which makes data transfer in the IoT secure from tampering – similar to storing data in a blockchain, but without the power, time and processing power requirements of a full blockchain.

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Industry: SaaS

From instant chat to long-term customer relationship

Userlike

Founding Year: 2011

Headcount: 30

Contact: Probsteigasse 44-46Cologne

+49-221-63060024support@userlike.comwww.userlike.com

Userlike is a customer communication software that combines web chat with mobile messaging. Connect with your customers on the channels they love and turn instant chats into long-term relationships.Whether they’re browsing your site from their desktop, relaxing on a sofa with their tablet, or sitting on the bus with their phone – Userlike guarantees an ideal communication experience.

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Industry: Health

By doctors for doctors

visidoo eHealth Solutions

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 4

Contact: Im Mediapark 5 c/o StartplatzCologne

+492217880380hello@visidoo.dewww.visidoo.de

Visidoo is a Patient-Relationship Management (PRM) tool that is made by experienced doctors for doctors. It solves the biggest administrative problems in doctors’ offices and connects the patients with all their health care providers (HCP): Missed appointments, difficult scheduling, no-shows, low participation rate in prevention programs and the telephone as the bottleneck of communication.

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Industries: Enterprise, Developer Tools, E-Commerce, Marketplace, SaaS

Cloud based next generation communication platform

WIRECLOUD - DALASON

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 7

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

+4922199999936info@wirecloud.dewww.wirecloud.de

WIRECLOUD is the cloud based all-in-one communication platform for SMEs and software developers. We have the basic services as could based telephone system for companies. Soon we will offer this service as a communication platform to integrate into different software and build smooth communication service around your products and software. With our app store you will be able to develop your own communication app and sell them as software to others.

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Industries: Education, Health, AR / VR

Business Solutions for a virtual and augmented world

World of VR

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 10

Contact: Stolberger Strasse 90dCologne

+4922130144460 info@worldofvr.netwww.worldofvr.net

World of VR is dedicated to changing peoples lives with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Virtual training solutions make it possible to learn new skills faster, easier and while having fun doing it! In the industrial space, Augmented Reality solutions help workers do their jobs more efficiently and with less mistakes - affecting bottom lines from SMEs to large corporations. Our community includes names such as Deutsche Telekom, IHK or Rheinenergie.

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Industries: Financial Services, SaaS

Simplifying business processes for companies

Zendri

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 5

Contact: Eupener Str. 165Cologne

info@zendri.comwww.zendri.com

With Zendri, our Cologne-based tech start-up founded in August 2012, we focus on developing web-based fintech and business solutions. Following our vision to enable our partners to focus on their core business, our products streamline complex workflows and eliminate labor-intensive processes. Our product portfolio includes a range of specialized billing solutions, coaching and event management platforms.

Give us a little bit of insight into who you are and your history with startups. At the age of 20, I left my hometown Würzburg and went to Düsseldorf to do civil service. Later on, after a few years of studying in Düsseldorf, Würzburg and Padova (Italy) I finally came to Cologne as a student of Sociology. During that time, around 1980, some of Germany’s best professors in Sociology teached in Cologne and I was lucky to work with Prof. Mayntz and Scheuch. In the late 80s, my research topics were social network analysis, sociology of organisations and social science research. As empirical sociologists, we were privileged and had access to the fastest supercomputer at the local “Rechenzentrum”. So, I learned to handle big data and did some programming with “Fortran” and later on with dbase and clipper.

So basically you were already working with computers well before the consumer internet as we know it started......yes, indeed. And when the WWW started in 1993, I worked as an assistant professor at the “Seminar for Sociology” at University of Cologne. We soon created one of the first web presences for Sociology in Germany and I started to work with a few enthusiastic student on some kind of a sociological exploration group and called it “AG Information Society”. For a few semesters, we gave lectures about all the new topics that we now call “digital transformation” and in 1996 we edited a reader “Soziologie des Internet”.

Dr. Lorenz Gräf

STARTPLATZ

Building the place for founders to meet and connect in Cologne

Parallel to working on the general topic, we started to do work on how to use the internet as means of research and explored the possibilities for doing surveys and experiments over the internet. With a few German colleagues, we edited in 1997 a very influential first reader about this topic “Online Research”, founded the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Online Forschung” and started the conference series “German Online Research (GOR)”. In 1998, I was part of the team that invented the blended learning environment “ILIAS” which is still used at many universities and schools. This was one of the first implementation of the LAMP stack - since PHP and MySQL were still in its early days.

And that was also when you had the idea to found a company around this?Indeed. Based on that experience and the knowledge on doing surveys, I started the software company “Globalpark” in 1999. Globalpark developed software for market research and soon became market leader in Germany and later on expanded to UK and US. With this company, we grew from two people in 1999 up to 150 employers in 2011, when I finally merged this company with “Questback”. Under this name, the company is still doing business in Cologne today.

You have been a successful founder before, why did you decide to found STARTPLATZ? In 2006 I was invited by PHP to give a speech at their yearly conference in San Jose. I spent a few weeks in Silicon Valley and was very impressed by

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the openness of the people and the density and the speed of the network. Back in Cologne, I tried to find similar mindsets but there was nothing.Around the same time, we tried to find expertise about how to build agile companies like Google. It was hard to find any expertise in those days at universities or consulting companies. My conclusion was that the only way to learn how to run startups is to learn from your peers who are running successful startups. And after leaving Globalpark, I couldn’t find any institution in Cologne that cared about startups, so I decided to found STARTPLATZ and created this platform for exchanging knowledge and supporting founders.

What is the idea and vision behind STARTPLATZ?The idea behind STARTPLATZ is simple: I learned from my studies with social network analysis that spin-offs of MIT in Boston that were located within half a mile distance around the campus of MIT were significantly more successful than businesses that started farther away. Similarly, my idea was to create a central hub in the middle of Cologne which makes it easier for ambitious people to meet each other just by grabbing a cup of coffee or by going to a nearby restaurant for having lunch. Our mission is that we provide the best environment for the best startups in Rheinland and therefore maximize the likelihood for them to become the next unicorn. And our vision is that Cologne and the Rheinland will be among the top three startup ecosystems in Germany.

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Why did you choose the MediaPark as the location for STARTPLATZ?We wanted to make it easy for people to connect and meet each other. The MediaPark is centrally located, can be easily reached by public transportation and provides many parking lots. The autobahn running from Düsseldorf to Cologne is literally ending in the parking garage beneath the MediaPark. The building we are in has a human friendly architecture: big windows that can be opened, a beautiful balcony for BBQs and other events, coworking space with noise reduction and air condition in every room.

And last but not the least, MediaPark has one of the best public places in Cologne.

If you could start over what would you have done differently?I would definitely do more marketing and advertising. We started as a typical German startup and believed that others sooner or later would find us and start to make use of the platform we provided. In doing so, we ended up as somewhat hidden champion, well known to the insiders but not famous enough for the press or big companies.

Co-working is a hard business. What is the business model of STARTPLATZ and are you profitable? Wework shows that coworking can be a very attractive business. The business model of STARTPLATZ is dependent on the maturity of the

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startup ecosystem in Rheinland. Right now, our business model is based on renting space, selling education and providing startup experience for corporates. Up to now we have invested a significant 7-digit number in STARTPLATZ. This year we will reach profitability. Once the startup ecosystem is more mature, we will start investing in startups and this should be our target business model in future.

How will coworking look like in five years from now?For STARTPLATZ, coworking is a means to have startups talk to each other. In five years from now, you will find coworking like settings in every company.

STARTPLATZ also has an accelerator program. How does the STARTPLATZ Accelerator work? With the STARTPLATZ Accelerator we try to mimic Y-combinator in Silicon Valley. We are looking for the most ambitious startups in Rheinland. Those companies are typically bootstrapped, ar usually business to business (b2b) oriented and have a scalable business model. Our accelerator is a two stage accelerator. In the first stage, it is all about finding the product-solution fit. This stage normally takes three to nine months, based on the amount of time the team is fully working on its startup and dependent on the focus that the startup gives to real MVPs. Once the startups have sharpened their business model, it is all about gaining traction in order to finally reach a substantially good market-fit. Only after that the startups are investor ready. The overall goal of the STARTPLATZ accelerator is to help startups become fundable startups. STARTPLATZ is exploring right now different possibilities based on blockchain technology to help the accelerator startups get financing and STARTPLATZ will eventually set up a fund to invest in those startups.

Obviously you meet a lot of founders. What advice would you give young founders?The number one advice is to work hard to create as much product you love as possible. You need to have fantastic

“In five years from now

you will find coworking like

settings in every company.“

“You need to have fantastic

customers who loves your

product or service very

much. And in order to get

there you need to build and

ask and build and ask… “

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customers who love your product or service very much. And in order to get there, you need to build and ask and build and ask… German startups often forget to ask their customers or potential customers.

STARTPLATZ has a strong regional focus. Why are incubators like STARTPLATZ important for a city?Startups need a very good ecosystem and in order to achieve that, you need to have many startups. For them, information and know-how must be available and accessible within the local community. And that requires a critical mass of startups. For a city like Cologne, we estimate that number to be more than 1,000.

And founders need to meet each other in informal settings. Of course, you can meet only locally. Therefore it is number one priority that there is a strong local community. Central hubs like STARTPLATZ and big events where people can meet each other are central for good startup ecosystems. It is the reason why the Digital Hubs of the state of NRW are modelled after STARTPLATZ.

If you would meet the minister of economics for NRW, what would you say to him to help grow the startup ecosystem in the Cologne region?Stop creating new government financed agencies like the Digital Hubs. Instead, support the local stakeholders and help them grow bigger. Organize startup to support the new “NRW Gründerstipendium”.

“Startups need a very good

ecosystem. For them the

information and know-

how must be available

and accessible within the

local community. And that

requires a critical mass of

startups.”

Learn more about STARTPLATZ on page 144

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Hi Stefanie, give us a little bit of insight into who you are and your history with the Cologne Startup Scene. Hi, my name is Stefanie and my history with the Cologne Startup Scene started when I opened the first Solution Space at Brüsseler Platz in 2011. During the years, I put more and more time and energy to support the Cologne scene. Not only with the different support programs that were offered by Solution Space and the international partnerships we built, but also by being a mentor for startups, consultant for companies and taking part in several programs like being a contact person of the startup region.koeln program.

With the Solution Space you have been one of the earliest coworking space providers in Cologne? Why did you decide to open a coworking space?My background is Service Design with focus on building Innovations. Some years ago I worked in Maastricht and Berlin for huge Companies like Deutsche Telekom or Deutsche Bank and for Startups as well. On the one hand, the corporates were trying to get in contact with the startup spirit and on the other hand, the startups tried to learn from the corporates.

While working for a startup, I was also sitting in a Coworking Space for the first time in my life. I was excited to see such a great place with so many awesome people working on interesting and innovative topics. However, it was a pity that no one took care of the people and their talents.

Stefanie WeidnerTHE SHIP

The way to Germany’s most digital innovation space

So, I decided to open a Space in Cologne where I could take care of these topics. It was amazing to see what happened, after we connected the right people and cared about them and their projects. That is also the reason why the Solution Space at the Cologne Cathedral was called “Innovationshaus am Dom”.

Unfortunately, Solution Space shut down in August 2018. Can you elaborate a bit on why you had to shut down. From the start in 2014 we knew that we wouldn’t stay there forever. It was the deal that we can rent the building for some years, but it was not clear how long we could stay there. Since 2014, the landlords changed a lot. Nearly every year we had to deal with a new landlord. The latest owner of the building decided to tear down the building. So he quit the contract with us. Due to the fact that I was running the Space for 7 years and started to miss working in the field of innovation, I decided to not rent a new place with this company but close the company in Cologne and go back to my roots.

The brand Solution Space was licensed to a Berlin based company that is also involved in another coworking brand. I helped them in the early stages but now I am going back to my beloved roots and focus on building innovations again.

Is there anything you would do differently if you could start over again?Since I am very happy with my current situation and the things that are right ahead, I will not change anything. In case some small details would not have an effect of my present or future, I would do some things in a different way.

Tell us more about your new role at the SHIP. How did you end up taking this exciting role?From Spaceship to “The Ship”: I am going to build the Corporate Innovation Hub inside The Ship. Oliver Steinki and me were talking about different topics during the last months and when I told him that I don’t want to go on with the Coworking Space anymore, he asked me if I could imagine to build the Hub at The Ship. And of course I said yes .

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What can we expect from THE SHIP when the building will be finished? A lot and even more than you would ever expect. As you know, it is going to be the most digital building in Germany. Inside this digital frame, you are going to find - besides awesome companies - an incredible new working concept.

THE SHIP will also feature a so called “Acceleration Deck” - what does it offer and what startups are you looking for?The Acceleration Deck is where we will host both corporates and startups to fruitfully work side by side. Our aspiration is to inspire actual exchange between both worlds to drive innovation, business model development and growth. So the acceleration deck contains a Corporate Innovation Hub and a Startup Hub and we are not only looking for startups, we are also looking for companies who are interested in developing innovations and want to be part of a very strong innovative business community. In case of the type of Startups we are looking for: Right now, we are looking for startups who already do have a product and are in the stage where the next step needs to be done to get on the next level of growth.

Will THE SHIP have a more regional or a more international focus?Since the topics that we are working on are not only relevant for the locals, we also do have the international focus.

Will it also include a public coworking space and/or an event space? We won’t offer a “normal” public coworking Space because work is not a place anymore. We are going to focus on content, the hot topics that are relevant in the business world, inside the startups and the companies that are part of the community. Of course we will have enough space for events.

We don’t have a lot of female founders in Cologne. Why do you think that this? How can we motivate more women to start a startup?The actuality that there are more male than female founders is not just a circumstance that is limited to Cologne. It is a common situation that is based on different facts of society and culture. To motivate more ladies to start a company or her own project here in Cologne, it would be a great step to communicate about it with and support the successful women who are already existing. We also should show that we are a ecosystem

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that supports and helps each other. An ecosystem that is worth to quit your “old” live, move to Cologne and start a business.

If you would meet the minister of economics for NRW, what would you say to him to help grow the startup ecosystem in the Cologne region? I met the former minister of economics for NRW several times and we were talking about the ecosystem in the Cologne region. To be honest, I did not and again . could not find words, that would help the minister to change things that are the result of developments of the last decades. But in general, it would help a lot if more people would have access to the knowledge that helps you during the time of being a founder. Also we need to deal in a different way with things that don’t develop in the way we planned. You can make a plan, but life tells you another story. This happens all the time. It is a challenge you should grow with and not a mistake you should be blamed for. Having fear of surprises or bad situations is a killer for energy and new ideas.

Cologne is for Startups…. ...a good place to grow. Surrounded by some of the biggest companies in Germany you not only have the chance to find good B2B customers, but also learn from the best. Cologne is the heart of NRW with 80k students, 751k SMEs, 18mn population, 160 mn consumers within 500 km radius. And soon it will be the place with Germany’s most digital office building, “The Ship”.

“It would help a lot, if more

people would have access

to the knowledge that helps

you during the time of being

a founder.“

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Give us a little bit of insight into who you are and your history as founder and business angel.All my life, I’ve been pretty entrepreneurial: From the quintessential lemonade booth as a kid, to learning to code and coding and selling my first pieces of software as a teenager, I have always loved to do business. In 1996, I left my home town for Freiburg to study business at the University of Cologne. In the month of my last exam, we started the domain market place Sedo.com, which I ran as the CEO for over ten years. That was an exciting time, I moved to the U.S. for a few years, came back, took the company public, and eventually sold it to the United Internet.During my final year at Sedo in 2011, but even more after leaving Sedo, I started co-founding and investing in new startups. Some just as business angel, but others, like Eyeo.com, pretty hands-on. So since 2011, I pretty much divide my time between all my various ventures. Why did you become a business angel?After our exit with Sedo, I wanted to give something back to the startup community. To put Sedo on the necessary growth path, we had received a little venture capital ourselves which allowed me to build the company with the right resources and the right talent, but especially profit from great mentors. Therefore, it was a natural next step for me after my exit to start investing in startups and support the founding teams not only with money but also with guidance, contacts and mentorship.

Tim SchumacherTS Ventures

Investing in committed and passionate founders in Cologne

What stage and industry do you invest in?Due to my own personal background, I slightly prefer marketplaces, ad tech and green tech ideas. In terms of stage, I invest from pre-seed to series A.

Team, market, business model, tech, …? What do you look for in an early stage investment opportunity?All of the above! But first and foremost, my investment thesis is that I look for a committed and passionate founder team, who really loves what they

are doing. Team and business model are probably the two things I take the closest look at. It’s pretty much a commonplace in the startup industry to “invest in teams, not in ideas”. Another important thing to me is, that I want to see a personal connection between the founders and the presented business ideas. If the idea is somehow connected to the background of the team, it helps startups to better sustain bad times, that will happen in every startup. That’s what I mean by “passion”. Teams that only professionally analyze markets and business models usually quit faster once things don’t develop as planned.

“My investment thesis is

that I look for a committed

and passionate founder

team, who really loves what

they are doing.“

© Nicole Zimmermann 125

In order to best evaluate the teams and ideas, it helps me a lot to discuss things from different angles. Therefore, I partnered up with my investment partner Stephan Jacquemot, who built the German startup programs at Microsoft. We’ve know each other for many years, since our common times at the University of Cologne. Being able to have a trusted business angel partner to discuss offered projects with, helps me to make better investment decisions. And after we’ve made an investment, it helps a lot to have a partner to coach and support the startups.

From where do you source your dealflow?There are various sources: Inbound mails, conferences and social media. But my preferred source are referrals from my portfolio companies or other business angels. Being introduced through my network is certainly one of the best ways to get in contact with me.

What were your last three investments?My last three investments were UserCentrics.com (GDPR compliance), SevenLanes.com (digital headhunter) and Zolar.com (a platform for solar systems).

“Being introduced through

my network is certainly one

of the best ways to get in

contact with me.”

© Nicole Zimmermann126

How many of your investments are from the region (Cologne area)?Quite a few, e.g. Eyeo.com, Storrito.com, Fitogram.de.

What investment are you most proud of?Eyeo.com would be quite high on that list. From our home town Cologne, we’ve built a company with a global user base, with over 100 million users of our flagship product “Adblock Plus”. We have over 140 employees from over 25 countries. And 90% of our revenues are from outside of Germany.I’m also very proud and happy about Ecosia.org, a green search engine.

It’s essentially a non-profit, but we run it like any other tech business… and use all profits to plant trees around the world to save the climate. So far, we’ve planted over 40,000,000 (yes, 40 million!) trees. Want to help? Go to Ecosia.org and start using it!

What were your biggest stumbling blocks when you started investing?Definitely dealflow! As a new business angel, you have to find a way to be attractive for the best teams out there in the market. Creating a brand and a reputation as a good business angel takes time and certainly doesn’t come overnight.

© Nicole Zimmermann 127

You are also operationally involved in Eyeo. What do you like more: Investing in startups or founding one? Are you planning to be a fulltime founder again?If I had to choose, I would always prefer founding and/or running a company over the pure investment. It’s simply very fulfilling to build something together with your co-founders and your team. So even with some investing on the side, I always consider myself a fulltime founder. What advice would you give young founders who are just starting out?Follow your heart! Find something that is close to you. Something authentic. If you are personally connected to your idea, you will survive the ups and downs far better. Also, founding a startup requires acquiring the right skill-set. As a founder, you need to know so many things. Some of you learn on the fly, while some need to know in advance. So, I strongly encourage all future founders to soak up as much startup knowledge in advance as possible. Start with a job at a successful startup, find a mentor, do online courses and visit dedicated entrepreneurship lectures and conferences. Is Cologne a great location for business angels? What could improve?Yes and no. Yes, because unlike Berlin based startups, the startups here focus more on the business and are not so easily distracted from the overwhelming startup industry. Don’t be the type of founder that just wants to be part of the startup cult. You will fail! It’s 100% guaranteed! As an angel investor, I want to see startups and founders that focus on the things that are crucial for the success of every startup: customer feedback and business model. And no, because the quality of the startups from the Cologne area could still be better. We have a lot of potentially talented startup founders in this area, but still, working for a large corporate seems more compelling to these young talents than founding and running their own startups. We are maybe missing out the role models. Also, the education at universities is not addressing the startup sector in an adequate manner. Too often, a career path towards traditional jobs is far more better propagated than educating people for a career as a startup founder or manager. This needs to be changed rather sooner than later. The digital transformation is real, and it is happening fast, and Cologne still needs to catch-up here.

“It’s simply very fulfilling to

build something together

with your co-founders and

your team.”

128

Cologne is for Startups…… a very attractive city! Despite my critical remarks above, Cologne has some unique features that give startups a very attractive head-start in comparison to other regions. First, there is the access to talent. Unlike Berlin, where it becomes harder and harder to find good tech talent for your early stage startup, Cologne has a great pool of tech and business talent to choose from. Also, the number of former founders that now became potent business angels is increasing significantly. Those smart angels are the best partners for any startup in the starting phase.

And then there’s strong traditional industry in the entire area, desperately looking for smart startups to partner with. So, for B2B startups, Cologne can be a good location for finding your first customers and partners. And finally, Cologne is a very attractive city to live in, which even helps to attract talents from other areas to move to Cologne. I have founded all my startups in Cologne and have personally been very successful with that. And that is for a reason! So, if I can do it, others can do it as well! I would be more than happy to support others that want to follow my example.

Learn more about TS Ventures on page 146

© Nicole Zimmermann 129

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DIRECTORY OF OTHER

ECOSYSTEM PLAYERS

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Capnamic

coparion

Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures

Digital Hub Cologne

Entrepreneurs Club Cologne

GATEWAY

Gründerpokern

hack.institute

InsurLab Germany

KPMG Smart Start

PIRATE.global

Rechtsrheinisches Technologiezentrum

SAFARI

Social Marketing Nerds

STARTPLATZ

Startup Unit Cologne

TS Ventures

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Category: Investor

Supporting founders with passion and capital

Capnamic Ventures

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 9

Contact: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ring 26Cologne

+49 (0)221 6 77 81 93-0 info@capnamic.comwww.capnamic.com

Capnamic is a venture capital firm from Berlin/Cologne doing early-stage investments in outstanding teams in Germany/Austria/Switzerland. The team’s expertise includes 70+ investments, 30+ successful trade sales and 13+ IPOs as well as broad professional experience across various industries and functions. Capnamic unites institutional and corporate investors thus offering its portfolio companies a unique network of sparring partners and customers.

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Category: Investor

coparion provides capital to accelerate momentum and growth

coparion

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 13

Contact: Ottoplatz 6Cologne

www.coparion.vc

With a current active fund of EUR 225 million coparion has the means to do so. coparion supports entrepreneurial vision with know-how, but without intervening in daily business operations. Thanks to in-depth experience in venture capital and in building companies, the coparion team discerns potentials and opens up new perspectives. coparion has the substance, tenacity and creativity required to mutually manage difficult situations successfully.

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Category: Investor

Investing in Europe’s most passionate founders

Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 7

Contact: Agrippinawerft 22Cologne

022193316110deals@dvhventures.dewww.dvhventures.de

DvH Ventures is one of the most active early stage investors in Europe and invests with capital and management expertise in technology-driven startups. Thereby, we are particularly interested in FinTech, InsurTech, Digital Health and E-Learning. We offer strong brands and the extensive reach of Handelsblatt, Wirtschaftswoche, Tagesspiegel and DIE ZEIT. We promote synergies and cooperations with our partners and always act at eye level with the founders.

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Category: Institution

The local platform for innovation and digitization

Digital Hub Cologne

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 8

Contact: Schanzenstraße 6-20Cologne

0221 / 97580840info@digitalhubcologne.de www.digitalhubcologne.de

The Digital Hub Cologne is the local platform for innovation and digitization. We support the Cologne Startup Community by building a strong network of founders and professionals who can help them to start and lead their company to success. Our network becomes visible on our online platform rheinland-startups.de. We also help SME Companies to get a first view at what is possible with new tech. With events like the Coffee Club Cologne we provide a place to connect and exchange for startups and SMEs. In our XR-Lab you get a great overview of the potentials in VR.

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Category: Events

Motivating and linking students with the startup ecosystem

Entrepreneurs Club Cologne

Founding Year: 2014

Headcount: 25

Contact: Agidiusstraße 14Cologne

info@ecc.colognewww.entrepreneurs-club-cologne.de

Our vision at the Entrepreneurs Club Cologne e.V. is to motivate people to found their own company or to join the existing startup ecosystem and its innovative work environment. At our monthly Gründerabend (“founders evening”) for example, you can enjoy the fascinating stories of successful founders. Learn from their fuckups and let them inspire you with essential knowledge and experience for your own startup.

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Category: Space

Gründungsservice der Universität zu Köln

GATEWAY

Founding Year: 2015

Headcount: 8

Contact: Ägidiusstraße 14Cologne

+4915752259789 gateway@verw.uni-koeln.dewww.gateway.uni-koeln.de

The GATEWAY founding service offers students of the University of Cologne and the hgnc network (a network which entails most of Cologne’s universities and universities of applied sciences) who are thiking about creating their own start-up or becomming a freelancer free consulting, co-working spaces, workshops and networking events. Its partners are the Enactus students association, IHK Cologne, NUK e.V., Digital Hub Cologne and ECC.

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Category: Event

Connecting funders, founders and doers in a playful way

Gründerpokern

Founding Year: 2010

Headcount: 5

Contact: Brüsselerstr. 92Cologne

info@gruenderpokern.dewww.gruenderpokern.de

„Gründerpokern“ links an exciting poker game to interesting conversations and unconstrained talks. Investors will meet founders and founders will meet founders through the random allocation of seats at the poker tables. Even those losing the game, can still gain some valuable contacts for the future. Participants will only be invited by a personal invitation, a recommendation through already existing players or through a prior application on the website.

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Category: Spaces

Connecting Communities and Corporations

hack.institute

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 3

Contact: Neue Weyerstraße 2Cologne

49 1520 421 3584jan@hack.institutewww.hack.institute

hack.institute @ HEADQUARTER[s] Downtown. Doing digital transformation together. Our specialty: events & workshops for and with communities. We help companies to increase their visibility at potential employees, to generate impulses for their products and processes or to benefit from methods and technologies internally. Therefore we do not just organise individual hackathons, Design Sprints or meetup series but also offer the right space for such events.

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Category: Institution

Networking the insurance industry

InsurLab Germany

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 5

Contact: Schanzenstraße 6-20, Gebäude 3.09, 51063 KölnCologne

+49 221 986 52 920 info@insurlab-germany.comwww.insurlab-germany.com

InsurLab Germany is a platform for connecting insurers with startups that develop digital products for the insurance industry (so-called InsurTechs). This is achieved through individual match-making, events, an accelerator program and the InsurLab Germany Campus – a co-working space for members of the initiative and startups in Cologne. InsurLab Germany is part of the digital hub initiative “de:hub” set up by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy.

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Category: Professional Services

Ampere was the Newton of electricity

KPMG Smart Start

Contact: Barbarossaplatz 1aCologne

www.kpmg.de/smartstart

KPMG’s Smart Start program works with startups “from seed to speed,” meaning we will help you in all the areas of KPMG competence, including audit, tax and legal advice, whereas the legal advice is being provided by KPMG Law Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH. Our program comprises four phases: starting, growing, strengthening and transitioning. During each of the different phases we will deliver the service you need: At the very beginning will challenge your business plan, sort out your ownership structure and figure out what to do with any IP you might have. Then, when you’re ready, we will help you scale. KPMG is one of the leading financial audit and advisory services firms in the world. Its international network makes it possible for KPMG to offer clients clear and consistent solutions locally thanks to cross-border know-how. KPMG operates in 154 countries, collectively employing more than 200,000 professionals working in member firms around the world.

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Category: Event

Creating meaningful connections.

PIRATE.global

Founding Year: 2010

Headcount: 15

Contact: Im Klapperhof 7-23Cologne

+49 221 1689 1147info@pirate.globalwww.@pirate.global

Our mission is to create meaningful connections and grow the startup ecosystem. We celebrate true entrepreneurship and the startup culture and are known for our curated, authentic and somewhat different approach to events. Essentially we – being a startup ourselves – build events we’d also love to attend. ARRR!

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Category: Space

Time and Space for Startups

Rechtsrheinisches Technologiezentrum

Founding Year: 1998

Headcount: 5

Contact: +49 221 839110Cologne

info@rtz.dewww.rtz.de

The Rechtsrheinisches Technologiezentrum Köln (RTZ) located at hagen_campus provides entrepreneurs and technology startups with 4,000 m² of multifunctional space with state-of-the-art equipment and a comprehensive range of consulting and assistance services. There is the FOUNDERS Club where startups can attend workshops and coachings and meet coworkers as well. We arrange networking with corporates and realize communication by our own startup magazine.

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Category: Event

Opening up the world of true entrepreneurship

SAFARI

Founding Year: 2017

Headcount: 4

Contact: Im Klapperhof 7-23Cologne

info@startupsafari.comwww.startupsafari.com

Startup SAFARI is a global platform of local startup ecosystems. We aim to connect ecosystems from all over the world and bring great products to startups and those who work on evolve their startup scene. Our main product “Startup SAFARI” is an open-door event that already takes place in over 25 cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne, Dubai and Sao Paulo. Our other products focus on the areas: Deals, Funding, Education and Recruiting

145

Category: Service Provider

Performance Marketing for the next level

Social Marketing Nerds

Founding Year: 2016

Headcount: 5

Contact: Gereonshof 49Cologne

0160/7892976 info@smnerds.dewww.smnerds.de

Social Marekting Nerds is a counseling with the focus on Performance Marketing, founded in 2016. We advise and support companies from various industries in their social marketing activities. Our focus is on the development of in-house skills in the form of workshops and training in order to make the best possible use of Facebook as a performance channel. Furthermore we organize the Europe’s biggest Facebook conference Facebook Ads Camp, based in Cologne.

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Category: Space

Startup Incubator & Accelerator

STARTPLATZ

Founding Year: 2012

Headcount: 14

Contact: Im Mediapark 5Cologne

+49221 975 802 00info@startplatz.dewww.startplatz.de

STARTPLATZ is a startup incubator and accelerator with branches in Cologne and Düsseldorf and functions as a hub for the local founders’ scene. On approximately 4.500 square meters in Cologne Mediapark and 1.900 square meters in Düsseldorf’s MedienHafen, an ecosystem was created that offers aspiring startups and innovative companies space for growth, advice & coaching, workshops & events as well as a connection to the large network.

147

Category: Institution

Cologne the better place for startups

Startup Unit Cologne

Founding Year: 2018

Headcount: 4

Contact: Willy-Brandt-Platz 2Cologne

0221 /221 29180 frank.risse@stadt-koeln.de

We’ve been working intensively on strengthening and developing Cologne’s startup ecosystem over the last two years. Key initiatives, such as Digital Hub Cologne and Insurlab Germany, have been successfully launched. Also, the international network is developing fruitfully for both sides.The Startup Unit Cologne is the city’s central coordination unit and contact to (inter-)nationally strengthen the startup ecosystem in Cologne. Its work is based on the 2018-2021 action plan.

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Category: Investor

Investments / Business Angel

TS Ventures

Founding Year: 2011

Headcount: 1

Contact: Lichtstrasse 25, c/o Eyeo GmbHCologne

tim@schumacher.mewww.schumacher.me

In 2001, I co-founded Sedo.com, the world’s largest domain market place. Since selling the company, I’m active as an Entrepreneur and/or Investor in various start-ups, for example Eyeo (makers of Adblock Plus), Ecosia, Hitfox, Aklamio, Miomente, PiwikPro, BasicThinking, Home, Zolar, Joblift, SaaS.group and others. Mostly Internet stuff, especially online marketing and market places. TS Ventures GmbH is my investment vehicle.

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