Big deals and new start-up stars

2020 was a special year for many startups - and not just because of Corona. A short review of the year.

No, of course, this year in review doesn't avoid the topic of Covid-19 either. The disease has also shaken up the start-up world. In the years before Corona the scene in Germany was constantly going uphill: more and more start-ups, more and more money. But since March at the latest, the uncertainty has been great. According to the Gründungsmonitor 2020 of the German Start-up Association, almost 75 percent of young companies say that their economic activity has been affected by the Corona crisis.

But amid all the bad news, the gloomy economic outlook and the down economy, there were also some other events that moved the startup scene in Germany - a look at the tops and flops of the year.

Dr. Oetker buys message in a bottle

Strictly speaking, the idea of messages in bottles is neither new nor revolutionary. For as long as there have been beverage retailers, some of them have been delivering their goods directly to their customers' homes. When Dieter Büchl founded Flaschenpost in 2012, he had nothing else in mind. Yet his company now has more than 8,000 employees and is growing at more than 200 percent a year. The promise the delivery service makes to its customers sets it apart from the competition: Drinks will arrive within 120 minutes.

From Büchls start-up apparently so enthusiastic Dr. -Oetker CEO Albert Christmann starts 2017 with Durstexpress directly its own beverage delivery start-up. But the great success remains absent. While Flaschenpost is represented in a good 150 cities in November, Durstexpress delivers in just ten municipalities. The rest is history - and probably the deal of the year. At the beginning of November, Dr. Oetker announces that it is buying up Flaschenpost. According to media reports, the company wants to put up to one billion euros on the table. So a successful start-up doesn't always have to reinvent the wheel.

Thick financing rounds

With Auto1, Lilium and Auxmoney, among others, a whole series of start-ups have concluded a financing round of at least 100 million euros. Apparently, Wefox made a precision landing - and largely unnoticed. According to the magazines Finance Forward and Finanz-Szene

, the unicorn is said to have raised 100 million euros in September. 25 million came from a loan and 75 million as convertible bonds. The Berlin-based startup did not communicate the December funding round itself. Finance Forward estimates that Wefox is working towards an even bigger deal in the next six months. So the next year should be exciting.

No desire for a works council

A works council simply didn't fit with the company's culture. That's apparently how N26 management put it in an email to its employees. A few months and a legal battle later, the fintech, which has more than 1,500 employees in 80 countries, also has an employee representative committee.

N26 isn't the only startup struggling with a works council, however. Flaschenpost also resisted employee representation at its Düsseldorf location and lost in court. There have also been problems at Lieferando this year: Through the acquisition of Foodora, Lieferando took over the works councils as well. In the course of the merger, the employees in Cologne wanted to set up a new works council covering all employees based there. The management rejected this in the summer. It argued that Foodora and Lieferando in Cologne were still two separate businesses. However, the Regional Labor Court in Cologne took a different view.

Corona vaccination made in Germany

Özlem Türeci and Ugur Sahin originally wanted to develop a cancer drug and founded Biontech in 2008. Instead of using chemotherapy or radiation, they wanted to enable the body itself to fight cancer. The mRNA method they developed, which in a way contains a construction manual for the production of cells, should make this possible. But on 09 November, Biontech, together with US company Pfizer, announced their breakthrough in the search for a vaccine against Covid-19, which apparently offers over 90 percent protection against the virus.

On the stock markets, the mood turned that day. Many share prices shot up, including those of such troubled companies as Lufthansa and cinema operator AMC Entertainment. In the meantime, numerous countries have ordered the vaccine from Türeci and Sahin. The vaccinations have begun.

But the world's hopes also rest on another German company. Curevac, founded 20 years ago, announced the start of its pivotal Phase III clinical trial in December. Researchers expect results before the end of the first quarter of 2021, and the EU already seems to be firmly counting on the trial's success. The EU Commission has already struck a deal for 405 million doses of the vaccine.