Christoph André Müller

🙌 Behind the headlines, Germany’s builders are tackling deep infrastructure problems and bringing new capital into the ecosystem. Teams are expanding. 🇩🇪 DivTax (Hamburg) #FinTech #TaxTech International dividend taxation is still painfully manual. DivTax is fixing that. The startup raised €1M in pre-seed funding from Angel Invest, CapCircle Partners, superangels 😇, ING COO Dr. Ralph Müller, lemon.markets founder Max Linden, Christian Stiebner, and Matthias Goegele. Founded by Nicolas Oldag, Julius Holzer, and Linus Holzer, the platform helps investors reclaim up to 25% more from foreign dividends through fully digital withholding tax management. ❗ Hiring: 2 openings - https://bit.ly/47xBvme 🇩🇪 Noxon GmbH (Munich) #MedTech #Wearables Muscle diagnostics has barely changed in decades. Noxon is bringing it into the wearable era. The company raised a seed round led by HTGF | High-Tech Gründerfonds and Bayern Kapital, with participation from Auxxo and another institutional investor. The team is building OCIAN, a non-invasive wearable that combines muscle diagnostics with neuromuscular stimulation in a closed feedback loop. Founded by Maria Neugschwender and Ka Hou Leong, the technology aims to improve rehabilitation and neurological care. ❗ Hiring: 7 openings - https://bit.ly/4uhcBRP 🇩🇪 Flink (Berlin) #QuickCommerce #ECommerce After a brutal shakeout in European quick commerce, Flink is leaning into disciplined growth. The company secured $100M in growth capital led by Prosus Ventures and existing investors, with participation from Btomorrow Ventures. Founded by Julian Dames, Oliver Merkel, Robin Kiesler, and Christoph Cordes, Flink delivers groceries and everyday essentials through local fulfillment hubs across Germany and the Netherlands. The new capital strengthens its position following EBITDA profitability and supports expansion in core markets. ❗ Hiring: 100+ openings - https://bit.ly/4unXPca 👤Tagging: Evelien van Breda, Head of People 🇩🇪 UniverCell (Kiel) #BatteryTech #CleanEnergy Europe wants stronger battery supply chains. UniverCell is building one. The company raised €30M in Series B funding co-led by DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF), IKA – Laboratory, Analytical and Process Technology, and WIKA Group, with support from the EIC - European Innovation Council. Founded by Marius Strack and Dr. Stefan Permien, UniverCell operates a gigafactory in Northern Germany producing lithium-ion cells for satellites, space systems, and medical devices. Their proprietary dry-coating process reduces energy use and improves battery performance while scaling European manufacturing. ❗ Hiring: 8 openings - https://bit.ly/4llT2DR Funding is the milestone. Execution starts the day after. If you’re facing post-raise people decisions around hiring, people planning, and execution risk, I open limited office hours for founders and People leaders on what comes next after a raise. DM me or comment below for a 30-min slot.

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Dear Founders, Early-stage investing is nothing like stock market investing. And when Angels or pre-seed VCs invest, they’re not thinking like growth-stage investors. You’re too early for that. You’re pre-product. Pre-revenue. Sometimes even pre-team. So what are they really betting on? Not your idea (there are thousands of those). Not your business (there isn’t one yet!). They’re betting on: 1) You. The kind of person who gets things done even when it’s hard. 2) Your market. Whether this is a wave worth catching. 3) Your timing. Whether now is the moment to catch it. Yes, traction matters. Any shred of data that derisks your story helps. The more you have, the better. But no amount of traction will overcome the above 1, 2, and 3. Early investors don’t just invest in companies. They invest in people they want to see win, and in macro trends too big to ignore. If you want to raise early… Don’t just polish your deck. Show them you’re the person who will find a way, no matter what. Yours truly, David

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How will the rise of secondary sales of VC investments affect startups? It's still early but there are some strong indications that there can be some positives for companies and founders: +++ Secondary sales enable founders, early employees, and investors to realize partial liquidity while companies remain private, reducing pressure to rush toward IPO or acquisition. +++ It's also an opportunity to clean up cap tables, align incentives, retain top talent (by enabling option holders to access liquidity earlier), and extend their private growth trajectory without being forced into less optimal exit timing.​ +++ A secondary can better align a company's long-term growth objectives if companies are able to reach their full potential over a longer period of time and not be subject to exiting to fulfill a VC's fund cycle. Yesterday's annoucement of Goldman Sachs acquisition of Industry Ventures demonstrates that secondary sales have a continued role in the VC ecosystem. As the stigma around secondaries diminishes, well-structured secondary events are increasingly can be seen as positive signals of company health and board sophistication, supporting broader ecosystem resilience. What are your thoughts? What are the potential negatives of a more robust secondary market? #vc #secondarymarkets #venturecapital #secondaries #founders #startup

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People chase the wrong business models because big round headlines confuse first-time founders about what to build. The problem is simple: Startups that announce €10-50M Seed, Series A, and Series B rounds very early are typically very CAPEX-heavy. Examples include Airbnb roll-up cases, DACs, ghost kitchens, EV chargers, real estate plays in general, vertical farming, etc. The same is true for land grab SaaS strategies in crowded markets, such as AI-powered property management software (+ maybe an aggressive rollup strategy on top). These need to raise a lot (and dilute a lot) because it's the nature of their business model. No money raised, no success. First-time founders read those headlines and think, "oh great, this seems to be what is successful, let me build something similar." Yet the reality is that those models are unlikely to be the future €10BN+ outcomes. They just need a lot of money because they don't work without it! But the best outcomes are often not CAPEX-heavy at all - they are insanely profitable from the get-go. Ironically, that's why they originally don't make it into any headlines early. Google raised a $100k angel round, which got them going for a year and raised no more than ~$26M until IPO. eBay bootstrapped to profitability and then raised ~$5M from Benchmark, without anyone else investing until the IPO / $40bn valuation. This is a big systemic problem and it's sad that venture is so focused on "how much you raise" rather than "how successful you actually are in your discipline". Daniel Kahneman explains this well: Our brain likes easy questions (heuristics) and, if possible, prefers to replace hard questions (e.g., which startups can be successful) with easy ones (e.g., which startups raise big rounds). There is a massive "Availability Heuristic" in venture. Don't ask: "will this venture raise a big round?", but ask instead: "could this company be so profitable that I never need to raise capital for it?" Don't ask: "will this make a headline?", but ask instead: "is this a sustainable business model that can survive decades?" Don't ask: "what will others think?", but ask instead: "what do I deeply care about here and is this something I can motivate myself to do for the next decade?" I'm guilty myself of announcing and promoting big funding rounds of companies I invested in or founded. Yet, we should be aware that many of the big rounds being announced are not a good proxy for success - they are an artefact of the inherent business model those companies are bound to.

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✨ MORE THAN 100 NEW GEMINI SCALE-UPS ✨ The German start-up scene was buzzing in 2025 and on clear trend has emerged: an increasing number of startups build on Google Cloud. Far more than 100 German startups have newly adopted GCP or even made the strategic switch from other hyperscalers. That is double the amount of last year! This pivotal move is largely driven by a clear vision: to leverage Google Cloud's cutting-edge AI portfolio and secure a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market. “This year we have seen an increased migration, with startups recognizing the unparalleled power of Google Cloud's AI offerings. The allure of models like #Gemini3Pro, #Veo3.1, and #NanoBananaPro.”, David Weiner (Director Digital Natives Google Cloud) All of these Google’s own models as well as third party models are part of the #VertexAI platform. They are providing companies with advanced capabilities for everything from hyper-personalized customer experiences to complex operational optimizations. For those requiring enterprise-grade solutions, Gemini Enterprise has become the go-to choice, offering robust, scalable, and secure AI for mission-critical applications. "With the new Gemini 3 models, we've experienced a leap in the quality of our automated bug fixing. The combination of enormous context and improved agentic capabilities allows us to autonomously analyze even complex bug reports and generate precise solutions – this massively reduces the workload for our developers.", Marco Prueglmeier (CTO, Noyes Technologies) A key factor in making this move is the assurance of sufficient AI compute. Next to Google's own infrastructure and chips such as the 7th gen Ironwood TPU made for inference, startups are able to utilize services like Provisioned Throughput to guarantee the token quotas and processing power needed to fuel their AI innovations. “AskUI has successfully partnered with Google Cloud, leveraging its specialized AI services like Vertex AI and Cloud Run with GPUs to host their core models. This collaboration ensures scalability, cost-efficiency, EU-region compliance, and the low-latency performance critical for their advanced digital quality assurance solutions”, Jonas Menesklou (CEO, AskUI) The benefits extend beyond technology. Google Cloud's commitment to fostering innovation with substantial incentives offered to switching companies. They combine commercials, comprehensive technical support and a vibrant ecosystem. “Medwing is accelerating its next-gen health-tech platform with Google Cloud. Building on the successful deployment of the Google Cloud Talent Solution to power their job search, they now plan to introduce AI-powered initial candidate interviews and smart interview scheduling that streamline how candidates and healthcare facilities connect." Jonathan Magen (VP Product, MEDWING) Here's to a future of continued growth and groundbreaking innovation! #startup #gcp #gemini #LifeAtGoogle

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“A startup ecosystem needs to be run by entrepreneurs.” This sentence, stated by Matthias Notz yesterday on the Rise & Scale stage in Berlin, was the most significant statement of the day for me. I fully agree. An ecosystem is not measured by events. Not by programs. Not by strategy decks. It is measured by two numbers: • How many startups are created? • And how many succeed? The decisive factor is founders who have already gone the full journey from idea to exit. They bring a unique combination of experience, network and capital. An exit is not just personal success. It is an 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘁 for the entire ecosystem. The question is: Does that asset stay in the system? It stays when founders build again. When they become serial entrepreneurs. When they re-invest. When they back the next generation. If this cycle repeats over years, ecosystems mature. Not by design. But by entrepreneurial repetition. This is evolutionary growth through consistency. All other actors in the ecosystem can accelerate or slow this process. But the core remains 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹. That’s why platforms like Rise & Scale matter. Bringing ecosystem leaders from more than 20 countries together openly and internationally. Thank you to Start2 Group for creating this space. P.S. If you don't manage to post a LinkedIn post with the “Meet Me at Rise & Scale” visual before the event, just turn it into an “I was here ;-)” visual.

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