Public Funding for Startups in Germany

Let’s talk about especially the public funding landscape in Germany. I think we’re have a really advanced public funding landscape. That means that we have a lot of public funding from the state Germany itself. But then you can break it down into the regions and also in cities and communities and I think this is a special thing and you can apply to every one of these. So, it’s not that you can’t because you’re based in Hamburg you can’t apply for the public funding of the ministry of economics for example. So I would say yes, Germany is economically really strong. We also have strong investment landscape. So the most common purposes of course are AI, Tech, and especially innovation. And innovation, I just want to motivate you, is a really broad word. It’s just like the buzzword we need nowadays but it can be a social innovation. Of course it can be like tech innovation, but I think it’s always nice to focus also on the social innovation part we can actually have for society and this you just need to put in good words to figure out like what kind of innovation you have. But most of the funds I know of in Germany for research like for scientists and innovation. Where is the most public funding granted? We would assume it’s Eastern Germany or to the Polish border. But we really need to see that Germany has a lot of peripheries all over. So you can just see where do they have structural difficulties, and there you also see more fundings because the funding structure is actually coming from the EU commissions, most of the times, and this is the criteria for that. But I wouldn’t deny it but of course, Brandenburg is the regional periphery and they have high public funding rates of course but you have the same in western Germany as well. So how do I actually know if I’m eligible with my company or as an individual? It’s really that you need to check the criterias, because they can vary from each public funding to the other. I would always recommend, even if you don’t fit 100 percent, give them a call and ask if there is a possibility that you can fit still into their criteria. Because what I just experienced is that most of them are super friendly and they really want to support you. So, my advice is treat public funding and the employees who are in charge for that as your partners not as your enemies because public funding is actually there for support and to make us more successful and put better economics outside. So what’s most important for applying for funding is reading the criterias in detail, because what they don’t like is if you missed something if you didn’t do your homework and that can be sometimes really tiring because the application process is really long and really strict and sometimes especially in Germany you have a lot of bureaucracy around it. But they are really happy to ask or to help you, and if you just ask you most of the times get an answer. If it’s not something you could have read already, so just do your homework and be friendly and treat them also as individual humans and not someone who wants bad for you. That’s my advice for you.