Anyone reading today’s press release may be a little surprised at first glance: majority stakes? Isn’t German Startups Group a venture capital firm that only acquires minority stakes like other VCs?
Well, no. For a start, we’ve never been a typical venture capital fund. We’ve always gone off the beaten track, looking for new paths in the VC industry – an industry that, ironically enough, is relatively lacking in innovation.
Right from the outset, German Startups Group has never been a fund. Instead, it is an entrepreneurial holding company and one of the few evergreens in the market (meaning that we can invest over any period of time, no matter how long); it is stage-agnostic (i.e. we invest not only in seed, but also early and growth stages), and with 40 holdings currently operationally active, our portfolio is significantly broader than those of traditional VCs.
As of today, our intention of thinking longer-term is also demonstrated by the acquisition of our first majority stake, Exozet, who we’ve been sharing a spectacular office with for a few weeks now, in the penthouse of the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin.
This means that German Startups Group is even more flexible because we can and will enter into an increasing number of long-term majority stakes in companies that are strategically relevant for the ecosystem, or that are plain and simply attractive. We will continue with our established VC minority stakes, regardless of their maturity level.
With this in mind, there are two great reasons for our majority stake in Exozet. Not only is it an economically attractive business, but their 100 employees, qualified in areas ranging from UI/XI to App programming, web design and back-end as well as online marketing, help us right away to significantly expand on our “smart money” promise to our holdings.
And we’re staying true to ourselves: we’re still not a company builder, we do not compete with founders, we do not copy, and we do not impose our service.
But our shoulders have just gotten considerably broader if needed and desired. And that’s a good feeling.