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This blog post first appeared first on old medium publication (https://medium.com/startuprad-io), and was moved to this blog with the relaunch of our website in summer 2024.
Welcome!
Welcome to This Month in German Startups by Startuprad.io — in a transatlantic news recording with Chris in New York City and Joe, from Frankfurt am Main.
Today we are wrapping up April 2021 for you. We talk about SPACs, which have been all the rage, but now they get to work. We bring you news about potential SPAC deals with Solarisbank, Infarm, Lilium, and Volocopter. The first three eying a valuation of more than one billion. Also, we have a Gorilla Unicorn.
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Top News
Unicorn Banking from Berlin via SPAC
„Banking as a Service“ specialist, the Berlin-based Solarisbank, is looking for an investment bank to take her public via a SPAC deal. They are looking for a valuation beyond 1 bn € (1.2 bn US$) https://buff.ly/2QslqtJ Note that they raised a Series C round in June 2020 with a valuation of 360 mn US$ (300 m €). This is compared to Commerzbank (Germany’s No 2 as listed Banks) with a market cap of 7,81 bn US$ as of April 27th, but they had 47.718 employees globally as of end of 2020, compared with 230+ for Solaris.
Unicorn Farming from Berlin via SPAC
The Berlin-based vertical farming startup Infarm hired Goldman Sachs to get them listed in a SPAC deal valuing the company at 1 bn US$. The startup raised 100 mn US$ from investors like Atomico and Skype founder Zennström https://buff.ly/3v4m3IW
Flying SPAC with Volocopter?
Air taxi startup Volocopter eyes fresh capital, SPAC an option: CEO https://buff.ly/2QBnHTv
Lilium is Already There
Aviation start-up Lilium to go public through SPAC deal with ex-GM executive, tripling the valuation of the company to 3.3bn US$ https://buff.ly/31RGwnu
About You to Surpasses 1 bn in Revenue
Online fashion retailer “About You” surpasses 1 bn € revenue (+57%) in FY 2020 https://buff.ly/3tqQUik
Related: Hamburg-based fashion online retailer “About You” stops potential merger with Zalando and prepares for IPO https://buff.ly/2Q5jjM6
German Nest Competitor Tado is Looking for a NASDAQ IPO
Tado is a German competitor of Google’s Nest. They raised more than 100 mn US$ VC money from investors like Siemens, Amazon, Total, or Eon. Now they are considering an IPO at NASDAQ https://buff.ly/3fZSFPH
Unicorn Gorilla!
“Gorillas, the on-demand grocery delivery startup, raises $290M and ‘surpasses’ $1B valuation” https://buff.ly/32UKts6
Wirecard
We keep you updated, just a small selection of news here.
Keep in mind there is still an investigative committee ongoing.
Chancellor Merkel had to appear in front of the investigative committee for Wirecard. We did not win any new insights, she only admitted to lobbying for Wirecard in China, but did not know about them cooking their books: https://www.bundestag.de/ausschuesse/untersuchungsausschuesse/3untersuchungsausschuss
Finch Capital’s Nomu Pay sweeps up Wirecard Apac assets https://buff.ly/2QayaoX
Ecosystem
We already had news that the largest fintechs are raising more money than the others, now we have confirmation that this held true in 2020 for all German startups as well.
Top 100 Tech Startups in Germany raised in 2020 more money than in 2019, despite corona https://buff.ly/3lK4Twy
Blockchain technology: Bundesbank confirms first successful trades of German government bonds with large international banks on blockchain https://buff.ly/31fSE1o
Fintechs in Europe raised 4,4 bn Euro (5.2 bn US$) according to BlackFin Tech https://buff.ly/3dHsg6u
Hubs
Note: The order of news and cities is only due to the time when we discovered the news.
Frankfurt
Wingcopter and All Nippon Airways partner to jointly develop drone delivery infrastructure https://buff.ly/32j6BMK Learn more here in our interview: https://buff.ly/3wZpJgQ
Düsseldorf
Citigroup and UK-based asset manager Chenavari invest 250 mn € (297 m US$) in Düsseldorf-based finance plattform Auxmoney, for credits directly from the platform https://buff.ly/3mxqvNa
Munich
Munich-based fintech Global Savings Group buys Berlin-based loyalty app Shoop — Munich Startup https://buff.ly/3sRdrUf
Austria
Graz in Austria opens new startup center for 12 m euros, suggestively named Unicorn https://buff.ly/3dOFjTB
Switzerland
Zürich-based Beekeeper acquires Lua to tackle trillion-dollar opportunity in the frontline workforce productivity and collaboration space https://buff.ly/3vWFLHC
The Video Interview is set to go live on Thursday, April 29th, 2021 at 17.00 CET (Frankfurt / Paris / Zürich / Milano)
The Audio Interview Podcast
The Audio Podcast will be published at the same time.
Companies
More on SPACs
The ticker symbol $RKTAU is the SPAC made by Berlin-based Rocket Internet. They will be traded on NASDAQ. The IPO volume could reach up to 287.5 mn US$ Article: https://buff.ly/3w387QK NASDAQ https://buff.ly/31beymE
Germany-based SPAC Tio Tech A prices $300M IPO https://buff.ly/3211hxa
Not Really Good, but Current Reality in eMobility
The e-mobility is not yet working in Europe. A retired couple wanted to drive with an ID3 (an all electric VW) from Freiburg (Germany) to Montpellier (France). Normal trip time 7,5 hours. It took them 26 due to problems with apps, charging, and payments — it’s maybe one extreme example, but with its emphasis on a specific problem, it shows a bigger frame for reporting about the future of mobility https://buff.ly/39M6Xzs
Fintech News
Berlin-based payment terminal provider Sumup raises 750 m Euros Venture Debt from investors like Bain Capital & Goldman Sachs for further expansion. IPO is at least 3 years down the road and SPAC out of question https://buff.ly/3rkyLRt
AllianzX, the VC arm of German insurance giant Allianz is rumored to have invested 100 mn US$ in the 600 mn US$ investment round with Stripe https://buff.ly/3coBtBj
Adler App — is the robo advisor of Vanguard in Germany. The blog Finance Forward reports BCG helped with building it https://buff.ly/2QM6OoZ
Meet the fast-growing N26 ‘mafia’: the employees turned entrepreneurs | Sifted https://buff.ly/2PCiuul
Wefox brings in Goldman Sachs for funding push | Sifted https://buff.ly/2OTqkzw
Single Company News
Founders of Berlin-based Kolibri games studio leaving the company, after already selling it to Ubisoft in 2020 https://buff.ly/2PsZAWw
Otto, a former catalog retailer, and No2 in German eCommerce increased revenue in 2020 by 30%, mostly driven by online shopping https://buff.ly/31mLQ2e
Mario Götze (yes, the football player) invests in Berlin-based Plusdental — a company producing dental splints. The company wants to become a unicorn https://buff.ly/3sBZFpz
The billionaire twin investors behind BioNTech’s success have set their sight on a new startup “Münchner Leukämielabor” a startup focusing on treating https://buff.ly/3fLISwk
Learn more about them in our blog post:
All Other News
ECB: New digital Euro will be anonymous https://buff.ly/3uR7UOW
Stay ahead of the curve
The a16z Marketplace 100: 2021 — Andreessen Horowitz https://buff.ly/3cW0ti7
Zoom launches $100M Zoom Apps investment fund — TechCrunch https://buff.ly/3v3bd5R
Feedback
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The Interviewer
This interview was conducted by Jörn “Joe” Menninger, startup scout, founder, and host of Startuprad.io. Reach out to him:
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