News & Podcast

From their first prototype, which was still driven to investors in a van, to a unicorn with over 1,000 employees: Egym is one of the most prominent success stories in the Munich startup ecosystem. At the Munich Startup Festival, Egym founder and Co-CEO Florian Sauter spoke with Mathias Renz, Head of Venture Capital Magazin, about how an idea shared by two school friends turned into a billion-dollar company – and why naivety, persistence, and the right investors played a decisive role in the journey.

David Baumgartner’s founding story is straight out of a picture book. During a trip around the world, the Munich native came up with the idea for Dean&David. As part of the Munich Startup Festival, he spoke with us about his success and explained why not everyone can achieve what he has.

No bubble, just real contacts – under this motto, the Munich Startup Festival 2026 brought together around 1,300 guests on July 22 at Backstage Munich. Founders, investors, academia, corporations and politicians discussed Europe’s innovative strength, the future of entrepreneurship and key technologies such as defence tech, biotech and space tech. Inspiring keynotes, high-caliber panel discussions, workshops, speed networking and numerous encounters made the festival a day full of ideas, exchange and new connections.

Munich startup Custom Surgical has completed a pre-series A funding round, is moving into new offices at the Munich Technology Center, and plans to double its team. The company combines hardware, cloud platform, and AI to digitalize and scale ophthalmological diagnostics.

A satellite that deploys only in space and extends structures to 15 meters in size. What sounds like science fiction is highly complex engineering: Munich-based startup Dcubed develops technologies that must perform precisely in orbit – or not at all. We spoke exclusively with Dcubed founder Dr. Thomas Sinn about this fascinating technology.

South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, is considered the mecca of the global innovation scene. Those who succeed here play in the Champions League. In 2026, the Isar metropolis made a real statement. With the first own “Munich Haus,” a high-caliber delegation, and startups on an expansion course, Munich proved that it is already a global powerhouse.

The Munich startup Sinalis automates patient communication by phone – multilingual, empathetic, and around the clock. In the videocast Pitch & People, co-founder Paul Sachse explains how a hackathon idea became a healthtech startup that wants to relieve medical staff and give patients more attention.

1,500 participants, numerous panel discussions and plenty of time for networking and pitching. The 3rd Munich Startup Festival once again brought Munich’s startup community together in one place and created space for new ideas. Five founders pitched their ideas at the Munich Startup Awards in front of an expert jury. UniteLabs and its co-founder Robert Zechlin were delighted at the end to receive the award and 10,000 euros. First published on: July 17, 2025

We from Munich Startup met with three investors at Slush 2025 in Helsinki. In the interview, Inga Grieger from BMW iVentures, Ronja Stoffregen from Rehau New Ventures and Eva Spannagl from OpenAI talk about what they look for in founders, why it’s a good time for new ideas, and what added value they can provide to startups.

One minute of full concentration, one minute to convince your next investor. Pitch & People, the new video podcast from Munich Startup, was out and about at the Bits & Pretzels with StartupMatch, the platform that brings together startups and investors through 60-second pitches, and let founders pitch their ideas. All pitches are in the video.

By age 24, Darius Göttert has already founded more startups than most people do in a lifetime. From student ventures via Spreadly to the hacker house FORA: Göttert builds ecosystems for young founders and wants to shape the next generation of entrepreneurs in Germany with his network. That and more on Pitch & People.

Germany’s startup scene is facing standstill – not due to a lack of ideas, but due to a lack of skilled workers. While scaleups have long been recruiting internationally, Germany is still struggling with outdated visa processes and bureaucratic hurdles. In an interview, Magdalena Oehl, deputy chairwoman of the Startup Association, warns: if Germany doesn’t make it easier for international talent to come here, the growth of entire industries is at stake.