These are the richest German founders

Manager Magazin named the richest Germans - and the list also included some tech founders. We present the five who have hoarded the most wealth.

In the past, it was often entrepreneurial families or old clans that appeared in the rankings of the business magazine. Today, a number of founders also feature. We have compiled the top 5 for you.

1st place: Martin Klenk, Bastian Nominacher, Alexander Rinke (Celonis)

The Manager Magazine estimates the trio's assets at 5.5 billion euros. Their start-up Celonis was valued at 13 billion euros a few months ago. The fortune is thus derived from the founders' company shares. Celonis has been offering B2B process optimization software since 2011, for example to detect errors in supply chains at an early stage.

2nd place: Tobias Lütke (Shopify)

Shopify founder Tobias Lütke is listed by Manager-Magazin at €2.6 billion. He founded the start-up with a modular solution for online retailers in 2006 and still holds shares worth billions. Shopify is worth just under 40 billion euros on the stock market. Lütke founded the company in Canada, not in Germany, because the Koblenz native emigrated to the North American country 20 years ago.

3rd place: Julian Teickee and Dario Fazlic (Wefox)

Together, Julian Teicke and Dario Fazlic have assets of around 600 million euros. They founded the digital insurance start-up Wefox in 2014, which is now valued at 4.5 billion euros. The third founder and CFO Fabian Wesemann is not listed in the ranking.

4th place: Hakan Koc and Christian Bertermann (Auto1)

Auto1 founders Hakan Koc and Christian Bertermann are also valued at around 600 million euros. Just last year, they took their used car portal, founded in 2012, public. Since then, it has lost a massive amount of value and is now still worth one and a half billion euros. In the meantime, Bertermann is the sole CEO. Koc left the company at the beginning of 2022.

Rank 5: Jochen Engert, Daniel Krauss and André Schwämmlein (Flix)

Jochen Engert, Daniel Krauss and André Schwämmlein have assets of around 500 million euros. The three founded Flix eleven years ago and have been trying to secure a monopoly position in the pan-European long-distance bus market ever since. They have also entered into competition with Deutsche Bahn in rail transport with the Flixtrain service. The company is now valued at 2.7 billion euros. Investors have so far invested more than one billion.