Snapshot of the German Internet biz

After travelling around during the last weeks and talking to lot’s of people (esp. Venture Capitalists and other financials) some very interesting picture about the current atmosphere in the German Internet market was drawn in my head.

The picture consists of the following core items:

• » Very optimistic – though everybody claims to look very critical at the situation and esp. business models
• » VCs and BAs are racing for investments – they appear more often in the public, start holding presentations, are contacting you if they think you are going to start something up
• » Enthusiastic people see their fortune online – more business plans appear, the quality of the startups decreases
• » There is more professional money than professional investment opportunities

Furthermore we do have some very interesting scenarios in the Industry:

1) CopyCatProfessionals - some people tend to have very tight connections to the American market and are close to current developments in the big free nation. Combined with some powerfull money, they are starting clones of American success stories (check Alexa to figure it out) betting on the fact, that the American original will either have to buy the venture or it might work in the German market too. For this, they are always looking for young internet professionals beeing able to lead the company to success and multiply its market value. (Btw. there is a large demand for young professionals with extensive experience in managing an internet venture).

2) The classic German VC scene is getting obsolete for financing and developing the national internet business. The reason is their experience and their internals as well as risk management and methodology, which keeps them away from doing investments online. The ones who are actually much more important to the German online biz are decent Business Angels as well as the InternetPopStars such as the Samwer Brothers or Lukasz Gadowksi. They do have already made their fortune in the Internet and know how the business goes. They are heavily investing in startups helping them with experience, knowledge, cash and even buzz. They are pushing the whole thing forward, though it sometimes leaves some kind of of weird taste back in the air (at least to me ).

So if you got an idea – remind yourself about the old mom’s tale:

“There is no better time than now”

So finally I want to add my part to the hype-vs-no-hype discussion. As we see lot’s of ideas and concepts passing our tables and having a close look at current online developments, I do see two facts:

• 1) there are lot’s of new online ventures with sometimes not 100% convincing business models
• 2) yes, people have learned and are not as blind as they had been years before.

Which leads me to the conclusion, that there will some web apps dissapear again. But I do not think, that they are going to go bust … usally they do have enough substantial value to be sold or the teams are smart enough to adopt current market developments.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.