Technology: Berlin startup scene promises windfall – Finanzen100

Today 11:51 • Finanzen100

venture capitalists have begun to achieve gains in London, Stockholm and Berlin. (© iStockphoto.com / sborisov)

For years, the Silicon Valley and Asia showered with money, the venture capital industry. Now also gets a portion of the money from Europe blessing. Salesforce.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Google are all in Western Europe in search of promising technology companies – be they specialized in mobile payment systems, game developers or providers of cloud software

Also. conventional venture capitalists like Sequoia Capital got an appetite for European start-ups.

Where does the sudden interest in a region that is not just for breakthrough innovation is known? On the one hand, therefore, ensure that startups in Berlin, London, Paris and Stockholm have much usually cheaper than those in the US. Large corporations such as Microsoft and Salesforce thus arrive at well-educated engineering talent and new ideas without even come close to pay what they would have to put your home on the table. In addition, venture capital in Europe 15 years after the bursting of the dotcom bubble is still relatively scarce. Accordingly, demand is American money for startups that want to grow and have the world market in mind.

“I’ve never experienced that more innovation came from Europe, “said John Somorjai, the Salesforce Ventures forwards and announced in October that he has made available 100 million dollars in order to invest in the region. “Every time I go to Europe, my schedule is full of interesting companies that I can meet; formerly difficult.”

For many years, European startups gave content to provide local or regional markets, gradually grow and happen until years after the founding of the revenue mark of 100 million euros. Venture capitalists are of the opinion that this point should be reached after five years. A good example is Xing, a German version of LinkedIn that never came quite moving. The company still exists, but most Germans, who are active in areas such as technology, banks or journalism, use LinkedIn.

European startup landscape still suffers from teething. The music streaming service Deezer SA and the food delivery service Hello Fresh from the stable of Rocket Internet SE have postponed their planned IPOs in recent weeks due to volatility in the markets.

And yet in the past year, many things have changed. Venture capitalists have begun to achieve gains in London, Stockholm and Berlin. Redundancies at major companies such as banks and consultancies have ensured that a lot of professionals change in the technology industry.

“Europe creates now systematically Companies in the billion dollar range, “said Ciaran O’Leary, venture capitalists from Berlin who has invested together with Salesforce and was involved in the sale of 6Wunderkinder to Microsoft. “There used to be two or three, and now there are over 30.”

Many of these companies have enormous capital needs. Venture capitalists have pumped in the first nine months 10 billion dollars in European startups, but US companies have approximately six times obtained during the same period, according to the analysis company Preqin so much. From the US perspective European startups are veritable bargain.

“In the majority of cases it is cheaper, a company in Western Europe as a to buy in Greater San Franciso “, Yair Snir said Microsoft Director Strategy and Business Development for Europe.

Following the acquisition of 6Wunderkinder App in June expands Microsoft from its ventures Accelerator program in Berlin and partners with established German companies such as Siemens AG from the industrial and automotive.

“15″

Google Ventures has provided $ 125 million for acquisitions in Europe and has invested in several companies, including the music publishing and cobalt Oxford Sciences Innovation, a subsidiary of the British university. Intel Capital has invested money in MariaDB, an open source database in Finland, and in iZettle, a provider of mobile payments.

Sequoia has invested in, among other things, the travel search engine Skyscanner from Scotland and in the Swedish payment service provider Klarna. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & amp; Byers helped at a recent round of financing, with the wanted the Berlin manufacturer of sensors and software for industrial Internet applications Relayr procure 11 million dollars.

In May Somorjai introduced Salesforce Ventures Alex Kayyal a, who had previously worked for the London-based affiliate Hermes Growth Partners. Since Salesforce Ventures participated in a financing round for CartoDB, a data mapping providers from Madrid, whose customers include Twitter Inc. counts. Further engagements, which is Salesforce Ventures since received, are Cloud 9, a service from Amsterdam, which helps software developers to collaborate in the cloud, and Universal Avenue from Stockholm that companies seeking a global presence, “brand ambassadors” conveys.

As a particularly strong magnet for investments Berlin has proved. In many respects the city when it comes to venture capital, London has left behind. In the first half of invested venture capital, according to Ernst & amp; Young GmbH 1.93 billion euros in German startups, three times as much as in 2013. Young firms from Berlin got in this way 1.4 billion euros, while London startups brought it only to EUR 1.1 billion.

“I love European companies,” said Somorjai. “We have with any company that we bought in Europe, huge success.”

Bloomberg News / syg