Sunday 25th July 2021
How special are unicorns?
“Every unicorn is an award”
Gorillas, Scalable, Forto: They all achieved unicorn status after lavish rounds of financing. In an interview with ntv.de, Gesa Micaizka, executive board member at the startup association, explains why this is – and whether an end to the current boom is in sight.
ntv.de: Investors are currently investing more money in startups than seldom before. Not only does the capital volume of the deals increase, the valuations also reach completely new spheres. How can this hype be explained?
Gesa Micaizka: For me, that’s not hype, but the natural result of long-term development. Startups are an integral part of our economy. There is no longer any doubt about the innovative strength of the German start-up scene. The number of unicorns in Germany has been growing for years. Just like the number of their little siblings, the “Soonicorns”, who have the potential to soon belong to the “Unicorns” family. In addition to the financing, this development can also be seen in the workforce: In the past few years, the number in this area has risen steadily – to around 415,000 people.
While venture capitalists have been cautious in 2020, money has apparently been extremely loose in the past six months. Do you expect the current boom in financing rounds to end in the foreseeable future?
Gesa Micaizka is a managing board member at the startup association and founder of auxoo Beteiligungen, where she primarily supports founders as an investor.
We are in an exciting development. Never has more money been invested in the capital markets. It has never been easier to do this around the world. The declining attractiveness of traditional investments makes venture capital investments, but also stocks – especially growth-oriented ones – more important for many players. In Germany, for example, the American SPACs trend is gaining momentum. Since the beginning of this year there have been three listed SPACs, i.e. financing companies that help the German startup ecosystem to raise more capital.
Will Germany now be able to catch up with the European fintech metropolis London?
Despite rising investment sums, we are still far behind the UK, especially when it comes to late-stage investments. We need to close this gap. As an industrial nation with an outstanding research and university landscape, we have a good basis, but the framework conditions are not ideal. Politicians must set the right course here. In addition to the issue of capital, this primarily affects the issue of heads. Startups often rely on employee participation programs to attract talent. In this way, employees participate in the company’s economic success. Unfortunately, the political opportunity was missed to create really attractive legal regulations for this. That throws us back in the fight for the best minds.
Not only is the size of the deals increasing, their number is also increasing. Is a financing culture slowly establishing itself in Germany?
For sure. We are on the right track. The crucial point is the late-stage investments. A lot of people get start-up capital, but at the back the money becomes scarce.
Gorillas, Scalable, Forto: they all recently achieved unicorn status after lavish rounds of funding, so are worth more than a billion US dollars. Is this award anything special at all?
Of course there are more and more unicorns. Worldwide two are created every day. This is due to the increased spread of Internet access, the availability of scalable and global software solutions and, of course, the massive increase in VC investments. For Germany every unicorn is an award. Because startups and scaleups are job engines! The job potential at startups and scaleups is enormous. In the US there would have been no net job growth since the 1980s without startups. If we succeed in bringing the proportion of employees in startups and scaleups in the total population to the level of Sweden, the number of jobs created by startups and scaleups in this country would more than double; if the level of the US is reached, that means the creation of more than 3 million new jobs.
Will more companies follow them in the future?
I hope so.
Gorillas reached this milestone in a record time of only nine months. Will that be the new normal?
There are always certain framework conditions that favor rapid growth. In the case of gorillas, it was definitely the corona pandemic. It remains to be seen whether this speed will become the norm.
Juliane Kipper spoke to Gesa Micaizka
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