German startup funding like in Silicon Valley

When it comes to transferring scientific findings from research to application, virtually no other university in the world is as successful as Stanford. Hewlett-Packard, Google, NVIDIA, LinkedIn, Instagram, WhatsApp, Netflix – all of these global tech heavyweights were founded by graduates of the university on the US West Coast. But what is that makes Stanford so good as an innovation hub for aspiring entrepreneurs? And what can German universities learn from this?  

Professor Helmut Schönenberger has been grappling with this question for more than 20 years. He started searching for answers after studying aerospace engineering in Stuttgart when he was doing his postgraduate business studies at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In 2001 he travelled to Stanford to do his thesis: he compiled his findings in a study in which he analysed the similarities and differences between the US and German innovation systems based on the examples of Stanford and TUM.  

Then BMW heiress Susanne Klatten heard about Schönenberger. She was looking to improve the conditions for start-ups in Germany. “I had this notion that we needed more start-up entrepreneurs who were passionate about their business idea and wanted to make it their mission in life,” said the entrepreneur in an interview with Handelsblatt. Together with Schönenberger, Klatten founded UnternehmerTUM in 2002 as an institute affiliated to TUM – a start-up innovation centre based on the US model. 

The biggest start-up centre in Europe 

UnternehmerTUM has since developed into the biggest centre of its kind in Europe, ranking first among the 125 European start-up centres listed in the Financial Times’ “Europe’s Leading Start-Up Hubs”. Originally a somewhat small entrepreneurship centre based on the Stanford model, it has since expanded into a team of over 400 employees. “What I think is rather unusual about UnternehmerTUM is that we cover the entire journey of a founder – from the initial idea through the growth phase and on to the IPO,” says Managing Director Schönenberger. He’s also been an honorary professor at TU Munich since 2016 and Vice President Entrepreneurship since 2020. 

More than 50 start-ups now come out of UnternehmerTUM every year, including successful companies such as the travel provider FlixMobility, the developer of electric air taxi systems Lilium and Celonis, which helps companies analyse and optimise business processes in the field of process mining. Valued at more than 10 billion euros, Celonis is the first and so far the only German “decacorn”.