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 there is one point where it clearly falls short.

The German government has presented its own strategy to better promote start-ups in Germany. That's all well and good in itself, but it's just stupid that it has made a fundamental mistake. But first the facts: The strategy states that the German government wants more diversity in the start-up world. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs then dutifully lists a few facts, which mainly focus on the fact that we have too few women in start-ups, 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 migrants. And the reader can only agree with all of this, nod and think: yes, that's exactly how it is. This is followed by the catalog of measures, which provides for the promotion of women through all kinds of programs, as well as the attempt to create parity in investment committees and to make it easier to combine family life and starting a business (this is just an excerpt, the whole catalog is available here).

The federal government has not understood diversity

The problem with this strategy is that the German government has taken a far too narrow view of diversity. Women should be promoted, women should be on investment committees, women should reconcile family and career and yes, migrants should also be promoted somewhere. However, creating diversity in a start-up or even in an entire industry goes far beyond immigration and the proportion of women. A female founder once told me: "It's annoying when everyone in a start-up office is a white man in white sneakers in his mid-20s. But it wouldn't be any better if half of them were women standing there in white sneakers. The sneakers are, of course, just a metaphor that she used to express the fact that there is no point in reducing diversity 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 other than migrants can provide? 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 already paid for three seminars on starting a business? The federal government has forgotten all these groups, the most fatal of which is the financially disadvantaged. Although there are still many start-ups today, only a few deal with problems such as poverty, the welfare state or hunger.

Projects and programs for financially disadvantaged people are lacking

There are hundreds of banking apps for hip city dwellers, but none that fill out my Hartz 4 application. There are hundreds of chic e-commerce solutions, but hardly any for brokering old clothes. And this list could probably go on almost indefinitely. But it shows in its brevity: Nobody will take care of these (sometimes pressing) problems unless more people who are even aware of them make it into the start-up and entrepreneurial world. However, this requires completely different support options that start in schools, not only in grammar schools, but also in secondary schools, comprehensive schools and lower secondary schools. 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 a lack of money, a lack of education, a lack of support and a lack of belief in him or her. The federal government has missed a big lever here.