German founders in the toughest accelerator in the USA

san francisco Airbnb, Stripe or Dropbox: The renowned start-up forge Y Combinator has produced some of the most valuable companies in the world. The Silicon Valley organization has funded around 4,000 companies.

The youngest group of funded companies recently presented their business models to a select number of investors and journalists. The Handelsblatt was there and presented the six start-ups from Germany that were accepted.

The Y Combinator is a Silicon Valley institution that has helped shape the landscape for businesses. “The Y Combinator is the gold standard,” said Christian Jorg, Managing Partner US at the German Accelerator start-up program funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics.

The organization is well networked and gives good access to donors. “Follow-up financing is much easier than with other accelerators,” said Jorg.

While the Y Combinator, YC for short, initially concentrated on promoting a small number of companies, the focus has been greatly expanded. More than 400 companies were accepted in the last round.

Voize: voice assistant for the healthcare sector

In the most recent round, 17,000 young companies applied. 414 were selected. Six of them come from Germany. Fabio Schmidberger is one of the founders of the program. He is CEO of Voize, a company that enables care documentation by voice. Employees in hospitals, for example, should no longer have to fill out time-consuming forms, but should be able to simply dictate important information.

Schmidberger is hoping for decisive support from YC as the company continues to expand. “The expertise at the YC is the best,” said Schmidberger. During the three-month program, he and his co-founders would be supported by outstanding professionals in building their company.

When asked why his company was accepted, he had a clear answer: “We were only accepted at the second attempt. Our biggest advantage was that we were able to show great progress.” The business model has paid off. Sales have increased tenfold.

Several attempts at the YC are not the exception, but the rule. In the most recent round, the program counted 57 percent of the companies that went through the application program more than once.

Flagright: real-time anti-money laundering check

Baran Özkan is co-founder and CEO of the Munich start-up Flagright. His company offers a solution designed to help companies in the financial sector identify criminals in real time. Thanks to a simple integration, companies could quickly and easily meet the requirements of the money laundering regulation.

“Y Combinator is the best address in the world”, Özkan explained the decision for the program. His company was also interested in the Techstars program in Berlin, and Y Combinator was ultimately faster.

By being accepted into the funding, Özkan, Schmidberger and the other founders in the program not only get access to experts, training courses and contact with sponsors.

YC itself also invests in the companies. Each start-up gets $125,000 in return for giving YC a 7 percent stake in the company. YC is adding an additional $375,000 for this year’s enrolled companies. So start-ups can raise up to $500,000.

Glocally: Sustainable delivery service

Fabian Warmdt is CEO of the Munich start-up Glocally. The company promises sustainable and fast deliveries in e-commerce. The delivery should be CO2-neutral. The company relies on e-cargo bikes for this purpose.

Warmdt passes a devastating verdict on comparable programs in Germany and Europe. “Accelerators in Germany or Europe are not effective. We even stayed in a couple which was a waste of time. It prevents you from building products and winning customers,” criticized Warmdt.

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The YC is structured differently. The focus is on imparting the specialist knowledge of experienced founders. The start-ups would be burdened with too much time and could still learn a lot. “For example, one of our partners founded Yahoo. That’s so much experience and knowledge, you won’t find that anywhere else in the metropolitan area,” said Warmdt.

Pina Earth: Platform for Sustainable Forestry

Pina Earth from Munich has made it into the YC with a platform for forest owners. The young company wants to qualify and reward sustainable forestry with a collection of digital tools. The start-up promises that by using aerial photo data and artificial intelligence, the CO2 sequestration of forests can be precisely measured and tracked.

YC not only provides the start-up with a good network, there is also professional support. “We are closely accompanied by Gustaf Alströmer, who has also made many investments in climate tech start-ups as a business angel,” said Pina Earth co-founder and CEO Gesa Biermann.

AiSupervision: Recording manual production steps

The company AiSupervision from Mannheim is aimed at industrial customers. CEO Sascha Lang wants to build an operating system for production lines. On the basis of artificial intelligence, the system should also be able to record manual production steps in production and thus relieve foremen, for example. “We are live in 15 factories,” said Lang at the presentation of his company.

Anyone who has looked at factories outside of Tesla or Amazon knows how often paper and pens are still used to monitor the production process. A lot of money and efficiency would be lost as a result. AiSupervision aims to solve this problem, Lang said.

Gavel: Live shopping for retailers

The Berlin start-up Gavel has made it into the YC with a concept for live shopping. Co-founder Marvin Musialek explained that many retailers still haven’t set up online sales. Gavel wants to change that and is initially concentrating on comic book stores.

Musialek said: “Y Combinator invented the Accelerator principle, and we are always convinced of it.” The support and financing from the USA is important – also for future expansion. “The USA is a very strong and crucial market for us, but will play a role for us more in the medium term,” said Musialek.

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