Munich Startup: What motivated you to found your company?
Valerie Laubsch: Entrepreneurship has always been present in my family. Both my parents are self-employed, and there were also many people in my circle who built their own companies. This showed me early on how much responsibility, freedom, and design options come with it. When a topic really excites me, I don’t just want to think about it—I want to work on it actively. Founding Moverloop was therefore a very natural step for me.
Munich Startup: What would you have liked to know before your first founding?
Valerie Laubsch: That you shouldn’t wait for the feeling of being ready. Many of the decisions that really moved us forward didn’t feel natural at first.
Conscious decision against early funding round
Munich Startup: How has your company been financed so far?
Valerie Laubsch: My co-founder and I met through an early-stage investor program, but we consciously decided against an early funding round. We wanted to first prove that customers really have the problem and are willing to pay for the solution. Raising capital is easier today than building a functioning business model.
Munich Startup: When and where do you get your best ideas?
Valerie Laubsch: Usually at night. I often wake up in the morning and suddenly have a much clearer opinion on a topic than I did the evening before. Otherwise, actually under time pressure.
Munich Startup: What are your 3 favorite work tools?
Valerie Laubsch: Jira – our operating system. Processes, projects, and much of our CRM logic converge there. Claude – the tool where I spend most of my time daily, like probably most people. Gmail with Gemini integration – I used to spend evenings answering emails. Today it’s much more efficient.
Munich Startup: Your top tip on “pitching”?
Valerie Laubsch: If I have to memorize a pitch, usually something is wrong with the storyline. My goal is for each slide to convey exactly one message. Then I can focus on the conversation instead of getting the next sentence right.
Entry barriers for startups lower than ever
Munich Startup: Does it seem like a good time to found a company right now? Why?
Valerie Laubsch: Yes, absolutely. I actually tell this to friends often. Due to rapid technological development, many companies are currently forced to question their processes and business models. This creates an openness to new solutions that I hadn’t seen in this form a few years ago.
At the same time, opportunities for founders have increased enormously. With the right tools and AI support, a small team can today build things that would have required significantly more capital, personnel, and time in the past. The challenges haven’t gotten smaller, but the entry barriers have.
Munich Startup: What technology or industry would you focus on with your next startup?
Valerie Laubsch: Probably still energy. Few industries are under such simultaneous economic, technological, and regulatory pressure for change. This creates many challenges, but also many opportunities. If not, I would consciously do something completely different, perhaps B2C.
Making networking opportunities more accessible
Munich Startup: What could be improved at the Munich startup location from your perspective?
Valerie Laubsch: Munich has a very strong founder scene and many good support offerings around TUM. At the same time, I keep hearing from other founders that access to relevant networks isn’t equally easy for everyone. More open and low-barrier opportunities to network would further strengthen the location.
Munich Startup: Which founder would you like to meet in person? And what would you ask them?
Valerie Laubsch: Patrick Collison. It’s impressive how he consistently built Stripe as an infrastructure company over many years. I’d be interested in which decisions in the early years appeared controversial or hard to understand from the outside, but in retrospect had the greatest impact on the company’s success.
