The hottest startups in Berlin

The German capital is one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan startup hubs, says Julien Fredonie, the head of strategic venture partnerships in Europe for Honda’s Xcelerator programme. “It’s a city that attracts people. It’s affordable, and there’s a spirit of creativity here.” The cost of living has gone up over time, but Berlin still remains cheaper than Paris or London, and has everything young entrepreneurs in their 20s need. Famous for its e-commerce entrepreneurs, in the last two years Berlin has diversified, with a new generation of adtech, fintech, AI and Internet of Things startups.

HelloFresh

This meal box delivery service has become a household name, expanding to 11 different markets around the world since its founding in Berlin in 2011 by Dominik Richter and Thomas Griesel. They no longer back the bags themselves – with nearly 55 million meals delivered to two million households worldwide, it’d be difficult – but their pre-portioned ingredient packages complete with cooking instructions have proven immensely popular. HelloFresh competes with Blue Apron for global dominance, and its stock is hotly tipped by investors. hellofresh.co.uk

Teraki

Physics PhDs Daniel Richart and Markus Kopf set up Teraki back in 2014, but only recently has it begun attracting attention. Employing 30 people from 15 different countries – an example of Berlin’s global outlook – the company helps IoT devices run faster by qualitatively analysing performance using algorithms, then crunching down the data streams to a fraction of their original size to run up to 10 times faster. Teraki raised €2 million (£1.8 million) earlier this year from Horizon Ventures (backers of Skype and Slack) to invest in autonomous cars software, but it has bigger goals, says Richart: “The plan is to become the key component in any new AI-enabled device coming to the market.” teraki.com

FreightHub

Brothers Fabian and Ferry Heilemann have a strong pedigree in the startup world, selling company DailyDeal to Google. Partnering with fellow co-founders Erik Muttersbach and Michael Wax in March 2016, they launched FreightHub, which applies algorithms and cloud-based data-driven tech to the global freight industry, where until recently reliable data on priceless cargo has been hard to come by. “We managed to get the first container on the water within four months of the company’s inception,” says CEO Ferry Heilemann. As well as its Berlin office, FreightHub’s 150 staff work in Hamburg, Cologne, Hong Kong and Porto – expansion enabled by more than $53 million (£42 million) of funding, including $30 million in a recent series B round. freighthub.com

TIER Mobility

On a trip to San Diego in 2017, Lawrence Leuschner spotted how electronic scooters had upended the way people got around the city. A year later, he and TIER co-founders Matthias Laug and Julian Blessin had TIER’s first e-scooters docked in European cities. Now they’re in 36 cities across 10 European countries – though due to challenges with regulation for the e-scooter sector, it only launched in Germany in June 2019. The company is growing faster than better-known peers such as Bird and Lime, with more than eight million rides notched up by April 2019 – success that has attracted €32.4 million in funding. tier.app

N26

Berlin’s digital bank remains a powerhouse in the City, not least after expanding into the UK. Founded by Maximilian Tayenthal and Valentin Stalf, N26 tripled its customer numbers in 2018, reaching 2.5 million in 24 countries. It secured $300 million – the largest private equity investment for a European fintech company – in January 2019, valuing the firm at $2.7 billion. It’s also partnering with third parties to offer deals on hotels, co-working spaces and travel insurance. n26.com

Where to eat: Ernst, Gerichtstrasse 54, 13347The coolest eatery in Berlin among those in the know is Ernst, the brainchild of Canadian chef Dylan Watson-Brawn. It can be hard to find, hidden in an apartment block, but its open kitchen is entertainment itself.

Where to drink: Sankt Oberholz, Rosenthaler Strasse 72a, 10119The original and still one of the best, Sankt Oberholz was one of the first co-working cafés in Berlin. It remains a great place to work, with early-stage startups hiring team rooms as they grow their ideas.

Where to visit: Spreepark, Kiehnwerderallee 1-3, 12437Up your Instagram game at this abandoned theme park, originally built by the East German Communist government in 1969. Access is negotiable and dependent on the security guards patrolling the perimeter, but it’s worth trying to get in.

Rasa

With offices in Berlin and San Francisco, Rasa is reinventing the chatbot market – as investors have recognised, ploughing $14 million into the firm. Founders Alex Weidauer and Alan Nichol met at Cambridge University. “We’re building the standard infrastructure layer for conversational AI that allows all makers to create the best text- and voice-based AI assistants,” they say. rasa.com

Relayr

Founded by Harald Zapp, Jackson Bond, Michael Bommer and Paul Hopton, Relayr allows industrial devices to interact with each other, even analysing data to flag up when machines need repairing. In 2018 the startup was acquired by re-insurance group Munich Re at a valuation of $300 million, putting the company in an even better place to grow. relayr.io

Ocean Protocol

Integrating the blockchain into your product has become a surefire way to attract plenty of hype, but few products live up to the promise. Ocean Protocol has generated buzz for enabling secured, encrypted data communication that can be monetised – think about how the data generated from your car while driving could be sold to insurance companies, allowing you to profit. The company faltered slightly in early May with a disappointing initial exchange offering, but share value has gone up since. oceanprotocol.com

Peat

An unusually booming subsector of Berlin’s startup scene is in agtech – agricultural tech – and Peat is one of the most interesting. Set up by a team of six, including plant pathologist Alexander Kennepohl and geobotanist Simone Strey, the company’s main product, Plantix, uses machine learning to identify and advise farmers on the health of their plants. The firm has raised €5.6 million over three funding rounds since it was founded in 2015. peat.technology

Motor AI

Funded through the European Union's Horizon 2020 research programme, MOTOR AI improves the decision making of self-driving vehicles by analysing hours of footage captured on car-mounted cameras of “edge cases” from real-life driving, such as near-misses, unpredictable car movements and pedestrian interaction with roads. Co-founders Roy Uhlmann and Adam Bahlke have decades of experience in startups – Bahlke was an early engineer at solarisBank – while the company also receives advice on AI from Berlin-based academic Johann-Christoph Freytag. motor-ai.com

This article was originally published by WIRED UK