Less Maximilians please

The startup scene likes to pretend it's progressive, but when it comes to diversity, it's not. It is only partly to blame for this. But it could still do more.

The startup scene is full of do-gooders. They want to make our planet fairer, more sustainable, more efficient and a bit more beautiful. Sometimes they are met with biting ridicule, and critics accuse more than a few of them of only pursuing their lofty goals until the first exit opportunity. At the latest then, they reproach, Bertolt Brecht applies as so often in life: "First comes the food, then comes the morals.

As comfortable as this view is, it is not much more than cynical. Many founders and employees in young companies believe in their vision; they really want to make a difference. For every e-commerce joint that is quickly cobbled together, there is at least one start-up with a really good idea that deserves money and attention.

But there are unquestionably points where the skeptics are right. One of the most painful is the field of diversity. On the surface, the startup scene is all in on the topic; being "woke" is the factory setting. There is counter-gendering, talk of empowerment, and every opportunity is taken to proclaim that one belongs to the good guys. But that doesn't have much to do with practice. If you were to create a media founder in a lab, his name would probably be Philipp or Maximilian, he'd be around 30, and he'd have just founded a fintech company in Berlin with two (male, of course) fellow graduates of some business school that does something with ETF savings credit cards.

That's a scandal in a country where 50.7 percent of people are women, 26 percent have an immigrant background, nearly 10 percent are severely disabled and 68 percent live outside major cities. And these are just some of the dimensions that actually need to be taken into account when talking about diversity.

Startups can't even get to the root of the problem

More diversity is not an end in itself, but an asset. Because let's face it: the German startup scene is populated by herd animals. In the past, there were online retailers in the style of Zalando; after N26, everyone wanted to open a new bank; and most recently, we were overwhelmed by new food delivery services. This lack of ideas stems from the age-old principle of "follow the money" (because investors are not always creative either), but also from the fact that they are often created in circles of similar people with similar biographies in the same cities. By the way, the 20th neobank does not improve the world anymore.

But how could something really change here? The answer to this question is as complex as the topic of diversity itself. And it starts with an uncomfortable realization: The startup industry itself can't even get to the root of the problem. After all, women, people with an immigrant background and those with disabilities or from poor backgrounds experience disadvantage across society as a whole. They have more difficulty getting a good education, more difficulty finding a place to live or a job. No start-up initiative, no matter how ambitious, can change that. This is where politics and society must start, otherwise every superficial measure, from Girls Day at schools to women's quotas on DAX supervisory boards, will fizzle out.

But that doesn't mean we should sit back and do nothing. Because there is at least one very effective lever to help more people with diverse backgrounds start their own businesses. Give them more money. After all, if you don't fit the standard startup mold, you're unlikely to see venture capitalists whipping out their checkbooks. This makes initiatives like Softbank's Emerge Accelerator, which explicitly supports diversity among founders, all the more important. Or networks of female investors and business angels who join forces to promote the ideas of previously undiscovered female founders and pass on their experience. All of these ideas can help; they are more than just "fuss," to quote a former chancellor who has since fallen out of favor.

The only thing that remains important is for startups to use their growing influence in the business world to insist on the fundamental changes that are needed. Often enough, activists complain that the "old" big companies do not use their undoubted influence to push them. To do otherwise would be a first sign that invoking a "new generation of entrepreneurs" describes more than an age issue.