Start-up strategy: Politicians have forgotten about the financially weak

The German government proudly presents its start-up strategy, with which it wants to make it easier for founders to set up a company. But it clearly falls short in one area.

The German government has presented its own strategy to provide better support for startups in Germany. That's all well and good, but it's a shame that it made a fundamental mistake. But first, let's get to the facts: In the strategy, the German government states that they want more diversity in the startup world. Then the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology dutifully lists a few facts, the main ones being that we have too few women in startups, too few women among investors, and yes, even too few women among those responsible for funding programs. The same is more or less true for migrant women and migrant men, he said. And the reader can only agree with all this, nod and think to himself: Yes, that's exactly how it is. This is followed by a catalog of measures to promote women through all kinds of programs, and an attempt to create parity on investment committees, as well as to make it easier to combine family life with starting a business (this is just an excerpt, the entire catalog can be found here).

The federal government has not understood diversity

The problem with this strategy is that the federal government is taking a much too narrow view of diversity. Women are to be promoted, women are to be on investment committees, women are to reconcile family and career, and yes, migrants somewhere too. But creating diversity in a startup, or even in an entire industry, goes far beyond immigration and percentages of women. A female founder once said to me, "It's annoying when everyone in a startup office is white men with white sneakers in their mid-20s. But it wouldn't be any better if there were half women standing next to them in white sneakers. The sneakers here are, of course, just a metaphor she wanted to use to express: it's no use at all to reduce diversity only to a balanced proportion of women and men.

Diversity means bringing together different experiences from different cultural backgrounds and perhaps also different age groups. What about the ideas of older people? What about the input that minorities can give apart from migrants? And above all: What about the start-up ideas that come from people from precarious backgrounds, who don't go to university and whose parents haven't previously paid for three seminars on starting a business? The federal government has forgotten all these groups, of which that of the financially weak is the most fatal. Because to date, while there are many startups, few address problems such as poverty, the welfare state or hunger.

Projects and programs for financially weak people are lacking

There are hundreds of banking apps for hip city slickers, but none that will fill out my Hartz 4 application. There are hundreds of fancy e-commerce solutions, but hardly any for brokering old clothes. And this list could probably be continued almost endlessly. But it shows, even in its brevity: No one will care about these (sometimes pressing) problems unless more people who know them in the first place make it into the startup and entrepreneurial world. For this, however, completely different support options are needed that start in schools, not only at the Gymnasium, but also at Realschulen, Gesamtschulen and Hauptschulen. The federal government promises that there will be great support for female professors and their students, but forgets that, regardless of gender, someone may have a much better idea but simply never make it to university - because there is no money, because there is no education, because there is no support and no belief in him or her. This is where the federal government has missed a big lever.