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Biontech founder Şahin, Türeci: New self-esteem for Germany as a business location
Photo: Pool / Getty Images
It took a pandemic for Germany to recognize what it has in people like Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci. Last November, the scientist couple suddenly became famous because the research company Biontech they founded was able to announce a breakthrough: The corona vaccine worked! Today the newly developed vaccine is in the bodies of millions, it has saved countless lives - and has given Germany as a business location a new sense of self-worth. As long as there are founders like Şahin and Türeci, things won't go wrong.
At the same time, the medical startup's unlikely success has highlighted the driving force behind economic innovation. Whether tourism, e-commerce or pharmaceutical research: wherever something new is developed in Germany, founders with migration experience play an important role. In the case of Biontech, it is the children of Turkish immigrants who developed one of the first vaccines against the corona virus. The travel startup Omio, which is now worth over a billion euros, was founded by Naren Shaam, who was born in India. And the young branch of turbo food deliveries is also led by an immigrant in the form of the Berlin start-up "Gorillas".
Overall, founders with a migration background account for
around 20 percent of
the start-ups in Germany; the numbers are particularly high in Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia.
This was the result of an evaluation by the Federal Association of German Startups and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, which is available to SPIEGEL.
Younger, better educated and more international
More than half of the entrepreneurs recorded in the “Migrant Founders Report” are first-generation immigrants,
only 43 percent
were born in Germany.
What all these start-ups have in common: On average, they are younger, better educated and more international than the typical self-employed.
This is shown by the results of the study.
Germany attracts qualified people:
91 percent of
the immigrant founders are academics, compared to
79.5 percent
of those born here.
Almost half have a degree in one of the coveted STEM subjects.
54 percent
of first-generation immigrants have established English as the working language in their company, half of their teams come from abroad or have good to very good international networks that they can use.
Only
a third
of all start-ups can say that about themselves.
Anyone who settles in Germany is doing more to grow faster.
Around
67 percent of
the immigrant founders aim for a sale that is as expensive as possible, a good third of which the company wants to sell for more than 100 million euros.
Ascending trend.
At the start-up association, people like to hear such news; they speak for a lively, attractive start-up ecosystem that attracts founders instead of scaring them off with German stink.
You don't always have this feeling: only last year, association president Christian Miele had a bitter dispute with the editor-in-chief of "Bild", which gave Omio founder Naren Shaam the headline "Indians gets 100 million to travel!" For an "Inderview" had asked.
Despite all the positive developments in the scene, the bizarre dispute shows that there are still cultural barriers that stand in the way of many founders with migration experience.
Half of them see linguistic and bureaucratic hurdles in their own entrepreneurial activity, at least 14 percent complain about a lack of welcoming culture.
Missing millions
As is so often the case, the most pressing problem is money.
In contrast to German founders without a migrant background, there are funding gaps here that cannot only be explained by the younger age of the company.
First generation migrant founders received an average of just 1.1 million euros in external capital.
That is less than half of the start-up average of 2.6 million euros.
The gap is also larger than expected for state subsidies.
The experience of the past few months shows that early funding can definitely be worthwhile. The state promised Biontech researchers 375 million euros in funding last autumn. Thanks in part to the state cash blessing, the married couple Şahin and Türeci were able to bring the vaccine to market in record time. The success story of the German start-up miracle was also available for free.