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DACH Startup News November 2021: Founders, Funding and Ecosystem Updates

Updated: May 9

November 2021: Tier raises $200M, N26 exits the US, and Frankfurt's first unicorn Clark. Explore the latest in German startups.

What Is This About?

November 2021's startup roundup features Tier raising $200 million, N26 exiting the US market, and Frankfurt's first unicorn Clark. This edition covers the month's most significant funding rounds, strategic moves, and ecosystem developments across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Introduction

November 2021's startup roundup covers Tier raising $200 million, N26 exiting the US market, and Frankfurt's first unicorn Clark. This edition captures the month's most significant funding activity and strategic pivots across the DACH ecosystem during the peak of the 2021 startup boom.

November 2021 features Tier raising $200M, N26 exiting the US, and Frankfurt's first unicorn Clark — capturing peak 2021 boom activity across the DACH ecosystem.


November 2021: Tier raises $200M, N26 exits the US, and Frankfurt's first unicorn Clark. Startuprad.io brings you independent coverage of the key developments shaping the startup and venture capital landscape across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.


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Top News


Tier raises capital and buys a bicycle rental company


N26 pull the plug on their US operations

  • They will stop on January 11th, 2022 already. So there is not much time to shift your main bank account if you ever had it there. N26 started in the US in 2019 and now, 2 ½ years later, already leaves again. https://n26.com/en-us/blog/n26-us-operations

Three more unicorns (Sono Motors is publicly traded and strictly not a unicorn, but Clark and Razor Group make the cut)


Sono Motors IPO on NASDAQ


Clark.de — Now a unicorn


Razor Group

Amazon-shop-buyer Razor Group raises 125 mn US$ and cracks unicorn valuation https://buff.ly/3wCdmaM


Ecosystem


Hubs


Frankfurt


Mainz

  • BioNTech, the company behind the Pfizer corona vaccine is building a factory in Africa to produce their vaccine https://buff.ly/3vOj6xw

  • BioNTech is not only successful as a startup, but the tax revenues fill the coffers of Mainz, where they are located. Mainz wants to use the money to pay back debt and help to get more biotech startups to the city https://lnkd.in/e4EsrE2b


Tübingen

  • Curevac one of Germany’s great biotech hopes had to trash its first approach for a corona vaccine, now they are back with their 2nd attempt and promising data on it https://buff.ly/3Dtpuxj


Heidelberg

  • Insurtech startup Getsafe obtains property insurance license, turning itself from an insurtech into an insurance company https://buff.ly/3CmnYMT


Hamburg


Munich

  • See above for Sono Motors

  • Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek puts €100M into #Munich-based defense startup Helsing.ai, in their Series A funding at a valuation of more than €400M to support democracies — TechCrunch https://buff.ly/309TGP6

  • UVC Partners raises their 3rd VC fund. Amongst the investors are the founders of the unicorns Flixbus and Celonis. Flixbus received investments from UVC early on https://buff.ly/3nvdSUW. Now Deutsche-Startups reports that they raised 255 mn €, the original target was 150 mn € https://buff.ly/3x2FDY4

  • Cobrainer applies AI to HR and raises 11 mn € as Series A funding, to expand across Europe https://buff.ly/3jHZR3N

  • Deep North, a Redwood City, CA and Munich, Germany-based AI company transforming video assets into custom-tailored analytics, raised $16.7M in Series A-1 funding https://buff.ly/3GBVAZC

  • Cliniserve, a SaaS tool for nursing homes from Munich, raises a “seven-digit” seed round https://buff.ly/3oaFSwk

  • Munich-based Parkamo closes €2.1 million funding to continue the expansion of its climate compensated parking app | EU-Startups https://buff.ly/3wD8Poi


Stuttgart


Austria


General News / Companies News Section


The Zooplus story is nearing an end. The story in short: One PE company wanted to take them private and made an offer. Then two others were interested in joining the fight. One dropped out and H&F and EQT decided to work together.

  • Zooplus buyout to be decided Wednesday, November 3rd, the offer for the company was raised, now reaching 3.4 bn Euros (~4 bn US$) https://buff.ly/3w4pJft

  • Hellman & Friedman (H&F) and EQT now own more than 50% of the Zooplus shares. They paid 480 €/share, valuing the company at 3.7 bn € https://buff.ly/3FvDIhP

  • Here is a short overview of the bidding war compiled by the Exciting Commerce Blog

  • 2,8 bn Euro (390 Euro/share) Hellman & Friedman August 13th.

  • 3,3 bn Euro (460 Euro/share) Hellman & Friedman September 12th

  • 3,4 bn Euro (470 Euro/share) EQT September 25th

  • 3,4 bn Euro (470 Euro/share) Hellman & Friedman October 7th

  • 3,4 Euro (480 Euro/share) Hellman & Friedman and EQT joint offer on October 25th

  • November 3rd they purchased more than 50% of the shares


Fintech

  • A German blog looked through the published P&L and balance sheet of Berlin-based fintech unicorn Trade Republic (Sep 30th, ‘20)

  • Their revenue grew by 3.600%

  • CAC 40 €

  • RPC 100 €

  • ==> They make ~60 € out of each new client the first year https://buff.ly/3EYjBZ9?utm_source=-custom-by-source-0-

  • Moonfare — a Berlin-based fintech that allows its clients to invest in PE funds — raises $125M in Series C led by Insight Partners to accelerate global growth https://buff.ly/3jYSBB2 at an assumed valuation of 500 mn Euros. They can be seen as a competitor of NYC based startups iCapital Network or Artivest, but iCapital has already raised 3x the funding of Moonfare. We will see how far Moonfare gets, since the money is for their international expansion.

  • A new move in the neobroker competition between Trade Republic, Bitpanda and Scalable: Munich-based neobroker Scalable Capital buys JustETF, an ETF-focused website https://buff.ly/3o5o9Gk

  • German finance oversight Bafin surprised by Insurtech Hype, the seven insurtechs in Germany only make up 0,02% of all property premiums in the German market https://buff.ly/3D0TIrg

  • Solarisbank (the banking backend of many fintech startups) is reorganizing due to their first international acquisition https://buff.ly/3pY7QxB


SPACS are not dead yet

Former German McKinsey CEO Cornelius Baur keeps pushing his SPAC plans. It will be listed in Amsterdam, looking for targets in health care https://buff.ly/3qOMnaY Now Handelsblatt reports the ex CEOs from Merck and Qiagen are also part of the SPAC team: https://buff.ly/3kUg4DT


Noteworthy New VC Funds

  • World Fund just launched Europe’s biggest climate tech venture capital fund with €350 million https://buff.ly/2ZvbdAU

  • Balderton Capital announces €529 million early-stage fund to back Europe’s next wave of breakout tech https://buff.ly/3ctKybb


All Other News


Stay ahead of the curve

This article was originally published on Startuprad.io. Find the link here: https://www.startuprad.io/blog/this-month-in-german-startups-november-2021/


  • November 2021: Tier raises $200M, N26 exits the US, and Frankfurt's first unicorn Clark.

  • This article covers a significant development in the DACH startup and venture capital ecosystem.

  • The DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) continues to be one of Europe's most dynamic startup markets.

Relationship Map

  • Startuprad.io → published → DACH Startup News November 2021: Founders, Funding and Ecosy

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What are the key facts about DACH Startup News November 2021:?

November 2021: Tier raises $200M, N26 exits the US, and Frankfurt's first unicorn Clark. Explore the latest in German startups.

How does this affect the German startup ecosystem?

This article is part of our coverage of DACH Startup News January 2022: Founders, Funding and Ecosystem Updates.

What are the latest startup funding trends in the DACH region?

Startuprad.io tracks venture capital and startup funding across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Explore our pillar coverage pages for the latest data.

About the Host

Joern "Joe" Menninger is the host of the Startuprad.io podcast and covers founders, investors, and policy developments across the DACH startup ecosystem. Through more than 1,300 interviews and nearly a decade of reporting, he documents the evolution of the European startup landscape. Follow Joern on LinkedIn.

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