Recorded on April 26th 2016. Tune in to get smarter on your daily commute.

 

House Keeping:

Our new format: Roadtrip went live  https://www.startuprad.io//interviews/roadtrip-season-1-startuprad-io-goes-sxsw-intro/

 

We have two new Episodes of our Roadtrip to SXSW online

 

We also have an additional interview for you with CoModule, who produces the Android for LEV (electric scooters and bycicles), as well as an autonomous bycicle. Interview with CoModule:  http://ow.ly/4n1O89

 

 

Ecosystem

 There is right now a bit of a hangover in the VC / Funding market.

One hint is the article from CB Insights (a US bases research company) “Party’s Over: $100M+ Mega-Rounds And Unicorn Creation Slow To A Crawl  http://ow.ly/4mZx0G“.  We also found the investment behemoth US based Fidelity wrote down the value of corporate software startups discovered by Bloomberg. This includes corrections of values reflected in Fidelity accounting of startups like Dropbox, Cloudflare, Airbnb and Pinterest  https://t.co/BuuyVzSYlS. And finally Thomas Tunguz who himself is a VC at US headquartered based Redpoint Capital, writes “2016 is off to a slower start than 2015” and more about the investment trends in VC markets  https://t.co/NZ4u6Jabyw, (here is our tweet  https://t.co/8OCTBX3xtr).

 

Also Bitcoin is at an important point in its development, we could see a split in the near future. The main argument seems to be if it stays a crypto currency or if it becomes a ledger for transactions (focusing on the blockchain). One important point is the size of the transaction record, the so called block. Learn more here:

  •  Splitting of  Bitcoin (Video)  500+ Bitcoin Classic Nodes: The Fork That  Finally Could?  https://t.co/cvqXAP2x1S
  •  Why #Bitcoin’s Block Size Debate is a Proxy War – CoinDesk #Payments vs #settlement  https://t.co/tkZzt5VftY

 

 

Hubs

 

Frankfurt

Admittedly a bit late to the game, but now Frankfurt is really gaining speed in the development towards a startup hub, with a focus on FinTechs.

Just some examples:

Logistics: 

  • Amazon reportedly considering purchase of German airport Frankfurt Hahn. This airport is in the middle of Europe, even though it is 120 km away from Frankfurt   https://t.co/Vtx4b73TWf

Fintechs:

  • Deutsche bank integrates several Fintech offerings and headquarters it’s the core for the FinTech cooperation the so called “digital factory” in Frankfurt  https://t.co/RfKLcE3los
  • The German Stock Exchange (Deutsche Börse) operator of Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the largest central counterparty for derivatives in the world, DAX, Stoxx and Xetra, as well as FX platform 360T now established a FinTech hub in Frankfurt. There is a nice video now available on YouTube. It is in German, but you can still get a good impression of the very nice place:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UhWAWv2byA
  • Another month, another accelerator. This time it is someone you would have never expected: The German Book Association called Bösenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels launched yesterday the accelerator program “Content Shift” in Frankfurt. If you are a startup with ideas around books, ebooks, publishing or related fields, they would surely love to hear from you  http://ow.ly/4n69gP

 

 

Companies

 

Ecommerce in Germany

Amazon Germany generated 2015 revenues of 10,6 bn € (+19%), this is more than the complete Otto group, their biggest German competitor https://t.co/TBWczd4vju

 

Lazada / Rocket

Of course we cannot get around the Rocket / Alibaba deal. There Rocket Internet, the Berlin based and Frankfurt listed startup factory sold half its stake in Lazada, an online retailer in Southeast Asia, to China’s Alibaba. Rocket received $137 million for the stake, valuing Lazada—which launched in 2012—at $1.5 billion  https://t.co/6wYKI5gzS9 https://t.co/lnRPDcVNO4

But we also have another critical article (to keep the balance), where the blog Deutsche Startups writes, that according to their research the “proven winners” of Rocket lost one billion Euros in 2015, with a revenue of 2,4 bn Euros  https://t.co/WkaVVSqei3

An analysis about Rocket Internet by Lieferando.de co-founder Christoph Gerber paints a bad picture about Rocket Internet’s current state:  https://medium.com/@cag1412/rocket-internet-a-detailed-look-da4302e887e4#.h8sue0wnn

 

We have talked about Auctionata in the past, the German website offering auctions for fine arts and antiques, received a very bad report by its auditor KPMG reports Wirtschaftswoche. The startup has in the past received good press, and 42 mn at unknown valuation in a series C in march 2015. It was even aiming for an IPO. According to this report members of the supervisory board have been active in auctions under fake names  https://t.co/LY1vFgX93v

 

Home To Go raised $20M in Series B Funding. The startup offers a search engine for vacation rentals. New York venture capital fund Insight Venture Partners invested with existing investors DN Capital and Acton Capital Partners  https://t.co/G8sPcYXIeL https://t.co/WGenHOKeYv

 

Have you ever heard about the so called hidden champions? That are companies in Germany, who are most of the time world market leaders, but only the people in the respective industries know them. Here is a nice article with a hidden champion TeamViewer. The company has been bought in 2014 for a billion USD. The company offers software for online maintenance or assistance  https://t.co/UfslnKBvRo

 

Munich based Industry 4.0 startup Konux raised 7.5 mn € from investors from the Valley. Investors includes the likes of Andreas von Bechtoldsheimer, one of the first investors in Google. Konux develops sensors for industry usage and established already after the seed round a branch in silicon valley, which now apparently paid off  https://t.co/jlhsIOYSWI

 

Munich-based IoT startup tado raises €20 million to internationally scale its service offerings  http://www.eu-startups.com/2016/04/munich-based-iot-startup-tado-raises-e20-million-to-internationally-scale-its-service-offerings/

 

BMW Loses Core Development Team of Its i3 and i8 Electric Vehicle Line. Key executives defect to Future Mobility Corp, a Chinese startup backed by Tencent Holdings. Tencent is one of the largest internet companies in China and offers products like the popular messenger QQ, and weixin, known abroad as WeChat  https://t.co/LFwbRRkl0Y

 

Tesla

Tesla was one of the biggest stories of the last month, especially the long ques for the pre-order of the new model 3. There have been many articles written about it and we just wanted to point out a few of them:

We wanted to give you the pros and cons

German Gründerszene assumes many customers will jump ship before model 3 gets delivered, because in such a great attempt, there are usually dealys. They focus on the risks in the long term  https://t.co/AE0b4Bau94

Jason Calacanis is totally pro Tesla. He sees in a few sentences the pre-order as Tesla’s $11b+ triumph  https://t.co/cTeVuupG3Z

 

Startups in the past Frederick Rueckheim turned Popcorn into a differentiated, branded product: Cracker Jack  https://t.co/vlf7nlxyMe

  • 7th Inning Stretch Song: “Take me out to the ball game” Free advertisement for Cracker Jack. This is genius Marketing – YouTube http://ow.ly/4nebyg
  • Take Me Out to the Ball Game – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://ow.ly/4nebN5

 

Events

 

Thomas: EU-Startups Conference – short intro and 15% discount for Startupradio listeners code: Startupradio

  • Learn more here: EU-Startups Conference 2016 | EU-Startups http://ow.ly/4n8NIo

 

Knowhow for those with vision