Startups and the Mittelstand: Why Cooperation Stays Loose and What Foreign Vendors Can Do About It
What Is This About?
About one in three German companies with 20 or more employees cooperates with tech startups, according to Bitkom’s 2025 survey, but only 11% build products or services together. This post reads that gap for founders and foreign vendors who want a Mittelstand partner: what the numbers say, why cooperation stays loose, and what makes it concrete.
A Partnership Market With a Thin Core
This post belongs to Startuprad.io’s series on go-to-market in Europe and Germany. Earlier posts covered how Mittelstand companies buy software and, in the finance series, how they buy factoring. Partnerships are a different route into the same buyers: instead of selling a product, a startup proposes to build something with the company.
The appeal is obvious. A Mittelstand partner brings customers, domain knowledge and credibility; the startup brings speed and technology. The question for a foreign vendor is whether German companies actually do this, and in what form. Bitkom Research has asked the same question twice, in 2022 and 2025, which gives us a usable baseline.
One caveat before the numbers. Bitkom surveys companies with 20 or more employees across the whole economy, not the Mittelstand as a separate group, and its press releases give no breakdown by company size. The figures describe German mid-sized and larger companies together. They are the best public evidence available, but they are not a Mittelstand-only measurement.
Executive Summary
Cooperation with startups is more common than it was, and almost always shallow. In 2025, 32% of surveyed companies cooperated with tech startups, up from 24% in 2022, though the two surveys word the question slightly differently. Most of that cooperation is loose: contact at founder competitions rather than joint work. Only 11% develop products or services together. The companies that do cooperate are satisfied, and the ones that do not mostly cite budget, missing contacts and the lack of a concrete project. For a vendor, that last barrier is the one it can remove.
Key Takeaways
Cooperation is growing but shallow. 32% of companies work with tech startups in 2025; 23% do so only loosely, and 11% jointly develop products or services.
Satisfaction is high. Among cooperating companies, 46% say expectations were fully met and 47% say they were rather met.
The barriers are practical. No budget (45%), no contact with startups (44%) and no concrete project (42%) lead the list.
A defined project beats a general pitch. The third barrier is the one a startup can answer with a scoped proposal.
Read the data carefully. The survey covers companies with 20+ employees, not the Mittelstand alone, and the 2022 and 2025 questions are not identical.
What the Bitkom Data Shows
In its 2025 survey, fielded in January and February among 603 companies, Bitkom found that 32% cooperate with tech startups. The most common form is loose: 23% take part in formats such as founder competitions. 11% jointly develop new products or services, 3% hold a financial stake in startups and 2% founded a startup from within the company.
Three years earlier the picture was thinner. Bitkom’s 2022 release, based on 604 companies, reported 24% cooperating and 71% not. Those 2022 numbers are not a clean comparison: the 2022 headline asks about startups in general, the 2025 headline about tech startups, and the forms of cooperation are broken out differently. Read the rise from 24% to 32% as a direction, not a measured eight-point gain.
The cooperators are happy: 93% say expectations were fully or rather met. The open question is why more companies never start.
That quote reflects the 2025 numbers: 46% of cooperating companies had their expectations fully met, 47% rather met and 5% exceeded, and practically none reported disappointment. Most surveyed companies, however, do not cooperate. It also frames the commercial question: the experience is good, so access is the problem.
Why So Many Companies Stay Out
Among companies that do not cooperate, Bitkom lists no budget (45%), no contact with startups (44%), no concrete project (42%) and no time (38%). 28% see startups as competitors rather than partners and 25% see no added value. Respondents could give several reasons, so the figures overlap.
Read as a seller, this list sorts into two kinds of barrier. Budget, time and the competitor view are internal to the company and a startup can do little about them in the first conversation. Contact and project are different. A company with no contact has not been approached in a way it recognises; a company with no concrete project has not been shown one. Both are things a vendor can supply.
That reading is ours, not Bitkom’s. The survey measures why companies say they do not cooperate; it does not test what would change their mind. But the 2022 list, with time at 47%, finances at 44% and contact at 42%, shows the same three or four reasons recurring, which suggests they are stable rather than a one-year quirk.
What Makes a Partnership Concrete
Taken together, the data points to a pattern that founders and foreign vendors can use. The proposal that gets a Mittelstand owner’s attention is small, specific and tied to something the company already does. It names a project with a start and an end, a person on the company side who owns it and a cost the owner can approve without a board. A proposal for a general collaboration lands in the 23% of loose contact; a scoped project is how a company ends up in the 11%.
Name the project. Offer one use case with a defined output, not a framework agreement.
Make the first step cheap and short. Budget is the top stated barrier, so the first commitment should fit inside an existing budget line.
Find the person who owns the problem. In an owner-managed company this is often the managing director; in a larger one it is the head of the relevant function.
Show you are not a competitor. 28% see startups as rivals, so say plainly which part of the work stays with the company.
Use the German-language channels companies already trust. Contact is the second-largest barrier, so introductions through trusted networks and media do more than cold outreach.
None of this guarantees a deal, and the survey cannot say how many scoped proposals convert. It does explain why a vendor that approaches with a project, rather than a pitch, is addressing the barriers companies actually name. For the wider market context, see the Go-to-Market in Europe and Germany pillar.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many German companies cooperate with startups?
In Bitkom’s 2025 survey of 603 companies with 20 or more employees, 32% cooperate with tech startups. In the 2022 survey, 24% cooperated with startups. The question wording differs between the two, so the change is a direction rather than an exact gain.
What forms does startup cooperation take in Germany?
Mostly loose ones. In 2025, 23% of companies cooperated loosely, for example at founder competitions, and 11% jointly developed products or services. 3% held a financial stake and 2% founded a startup from within.
Why do German companies not work with startups?
The leading reasons in 2025 were no budget (45%), no contact with startups (44%), no concrete project (42%) and no time (38%). 28% saw startups as competitors and 25% saw no added value.
Does the Bitkom data describe the Mittelstand specifically?
No. Bitkom surveys companies with 20 or more employees across the economy and does not publish a Mittelstand-only breakdown in these releases. Treat the figures as indicative for mid-sized German companies, not as a precise Mittelstand measure.
Work With Startuprad.io
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About the Author
Joern “Joe” Menninger is the founder of Startuprad.io, Europe’s leading English-language startup media platform covering Germany, Austria and Switzerland. With 740+ podcast episodes and over 1 million annual streams, Startuprad.io connects founders, investors, and corporate innovators across the region. Connect on LinkedIn
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