Venture debt has long been widespread in the U.S. and Israel, but it only started gaining traction in Germany in 2018, when Silicon Valley Bank established its European branch. This marked the introduction of tailored loan products specifically designed for startups in the region.

At this year’s HHL SpinLab Investors Day #15, more than 200 guests, including venture capital funds, business angels, and corporates from all over Europe – France, Belgium, Tallinn, Poland, and Italy – came to Leipzig. One of this year's topics was shifting from software to hardware startups. 

The effects of the Corona pandemic and the steadily increasing use of cloud services are changing the world of work and confronting many IT managers with entirely new challenges. They have to take on new areas of responsibility and fulfill the new requirements for flexibility and automation at all levels. The core disciplines of IT strategy, IT security, IT infrastructure, software, data, and processes remain the same, but the underlying challenges in these areas have evolved.  The trends that are emerging for 2023 will require new changes:

Does this situation seem familiar to you? The days are over, where fruit baskets are a good enough to attract and keep employees. They want their company to care for their needs and also want to see the benefits of working at their job in their personal life. Having a mental health webinar, for example, as presented in this TikTok by Ali Woods video, might look good to others on LinkedIn. But does it actually contribute to your employee's wellbeing if they are already overwhelmed with work? Not really. 

At SpinLab, we always act in the interests of the environment, society and our employees. We are committed to driving social change and sustainable development in order to make an effective contribution to a future worth living.

Going in to the new year, we have the time to reflect on the way that remote work is currently organized in our team. Do you have long-term solutions to common challenges in remote work? In this article, I will highlight five challenges of remote work and tips on overcoming them.

Recent studies such as the Female Founders Report and German Startup Monitor clearly showed that the startup landscape is mainly white and male. Only 18 % of founders in Germany are women. Just five percent of these female startup founders received more than one million euros in funding, compared to 30 percent of men. Unfortunately, a lot of VC firms seem to be run with a "boys club" mentality, resulting in unconscious biases and systemic inequalities. As part of the 12th edition of the HHL SpinLab Investors Day, Bettine Schmitz (Auxxo), Dagmar Bottenbruch (Segenia), Petra Sokolová (Inven Capital) and Duc Quyen Tran (Dieter von Holtzbrinck Ventures) came together to discuss why more diversity in venture capital is needed. Dr. Tanja Emmerling (Hightech Gründerfonds) presented in her keynote: “Diversity -so what?!” Essentials for your Diversity Playbook: how diversity can be implemented in venture capital

​​Dear reader please note this is NOT a regular product market fit blog article. Here we neither explain you what Product Market Fit is (we already did in our Product Marktet fit and your startup: 7 things you need to know blog nor will we repeat you that a bad product market fit is the reason #1 why startups fail. With this article we want to introduce you to a methodology to quantify your product market fit.

Not really unexpectedly, the startup environment is not very diverse but rather homogeneous. Let the numbers speak: Let the numbers speak: 16 % of founders in Germany are women and roughly 75 % of VC money goes to male-only startup teams. Many companies, advisory boards, political parties have picked up these facts and want to contribute to change, for example by offering startup accelerator programs for (gender) diverse startup teams (Grow F, SpinLab Summer School), VCs that especially support female or mixed teams, quotas or scholarships. It has even become a trend in many industries.

When preparing financial rounds, investors usually ask for cap tables (short version for “capitalization table”). Basically, this is a list or spreadsheet with an overview of all shareholders who have a participation on your company. Sounds easy? But in fact it isn’t, especially in later financing rounds. Why? Well, in the easiest case is the simple share distribution to founders and investors round by round, but in practice the deal structures are more complex. Typically, due to special rights and agreements, the allocation of equity shares deviates from voting rights and from money proceeds distributed after a cash event like an exit (e.g. a trade sale or an IPO). Very often it is complex enough to hire (and pay) external consultants and lawyers to reproduce the contractually fixed distribution and it is a frequent discussion point in due diligence processes on that way. Thus, it is worth paying some attention right from the beginning.