Comment by chromanoid
1 year ago
Stability, sustainability, EU legislation compliance and taking care of your individual problems. If it goes well, the companies will grow with you and don't outgrow you.
I think there is a growing Digital Mittelstand in Germany already. I myself work for such a company. We have some strong VC-backed competition. So far the company, self-financed, fares quite well.
I think the author misses a plethora of B2B markets when coming up with examples. There Mittelstand can be a very stable, (if desired) regional long time partner.
I have worked for a couple of those as well.
Super interesting niche products, that were crucial for people's day to day work, sustainable work pace, always shipping interesting features every other week. A lot of focus on quality (the QA:Dev ratio was 1:1 in one of those for example).
A lot different from the "we must rule the world or die" from regular startups outside Germany. Incidentally one of those companies I was in just died, after getting from 50-90 (when I was there) to 900 employees. I'm glad I left before the decline.