In episode 2 of our video podcast Pitch & People, Darius Göttert is our guest. And with him comes a fascinating journey through the Munich ecosystem.
He founded his first company while still a student – a small firm in Wittenberg that turned vinyl records into design clocks. Göttert discovered his passion for entrepreneurship early on, moved to Munich at 16, completed his high school diploma in international business, and simultaneously joined a “Die Höhle der Löwen” startup. There he learned what it takes to scale a team from five to thirty people.
Through a student initiative, he found his first co-founder. Together they founded Spreadly, a platform for digital business cards, brought business angels on board – and Göttert dropped out of university. Today he looks back on a series of his own ventures and describes himself not as a classical CEO, but as a “venture builder” who brings together ideas, networks, and founders.
FORA – the hacker house at Stachus
Currently, FORA is his flagship project: a hacker house in the heart of Munich where ten to fifteen young founders live, work, challenge ideas, pitch, and grow together. There’s full board, a gym, an ice bath, sessions with investors and mentors.
“I like to build the things I would have wished for myself,”
Göttert says in the Pitch & People Podcast. When he came to Munich, he didn’t know anyone. Today he creates the place he needed back then: a low-threshold entry point into the Munich startup ecosystem, right in the heart of the city, where you can build a company from the ground up in three to six months – and stay in Munich with your team afterward.
Young Founders Network – a movement of generation Z
In parallel, Göttert founded Young Founders Network: Over 1,200 young founders between 15 and 26 years old who inspire each other, exchange ideas, and polish new ideas together. Supported by the Bertelsmann Foundation, they meet twice a year at the Code University in Berlin – a young biotope for entrepreneurial thinking, far removed from old silo mentality and with radical courage to take risks.
Darius Göttert believes in this generation:
“They have an extremely low fall height and don’t think first about what could go wrong. They just start.”
Munich: the most beautiful city in the world – with hurdles
Despite all his enthusiasm, Göttert doesn’t hide the downsides. Breaking into the Munich ecosystem is difficult, especially because of high cost of living. He says:
“In Berlin there are scholarships, in Munich you first need 50,000 euros from a business angel just to afford rent.”
With projects like InGemeinschaft, he creates counter-models: students move cheaply into old buildings with seniors – affordable housing and lived intergenerational dialogue at the same time.
Darius Göttert: “Our security is our skills”
For Göttert, security doesn’t mean having capital reserves in the background, but skills and networks. Almost every decision in his career has been risky, and precisely for that reason worthwhile. In five years, he sees himself with his own fund that provides capital to young founders as the first investor.
Until then, he keeps building: startups, networks, courage. And an environment where entrepreneurship isn’t exotic, but self-evident – exactly as he wished for himself as a 16-year-old in Munich.
