Here's how the startup world looks at the Triell

The start-up scene was also eagerly awaiting the Triell, but one day later, the outcome for many representatives can be summed up in one word: disappointing.

Most viewers of the Triell, the three-way TV battle for the chancellorship between Annalena Baerbock (Greens), Armin Laschet (CDU) and Olaf Scholz (SPD) on Sunday evening, will probably remember the word "start-up", if at all, because Armin Laschet claimed to drive an electric car from an Aachen start-up. Privately of course, his company car is a diesel car from Audi. Otherwise, start-ups played no role in the panel discussion; topics such as innovation or digitalization were not addressed. "So much talk about the future. But who is building the future?" asked Christian Miele, head of the German Start-ups Association, on Twitter afterwards. The question of what role start-ups could play was not asked. The lack of venture capital was also not an issue. Only Laschet spoke once about the land of inventors and tinkerers, but he did not get specific.

Investor and entrepreneur Carsten Maschmeyer also took stock: "105 minutes of discussion - and no mention of digitalization, #startups and founders," he wrote on Twitter. And calls it "shocking that such important topics are not on the agenda at all." However, the criticism is not only directed at Annalena Baerbock, Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet, but also at the topics set by presenter Pinar Atalay and presenter Peter Kloeppel. Maschmeyer is not the only one who sees omissions here. Miele also writes: "Digitalization played no role in #Triell. In my eyes, journalistically negligent." Investor Frank Thelen takes a similar view: "That was weak, even from the presenters, who otherwise did a good job," he wrote on Twitter.

For the investor, who is an avowed CDU fan anyway, Armin Laschet is the clear winner of the triell, as he underlines with #Arministback, writing: "I think @ArminLaschet is finally strong again." Others also see Laschet ahead, as Getyourguide founder Tao Tao and Stefan Groß-Selbeck from BCG Digital Ventures told the Handelsblatt stated. For Maschmeyer, there was no winner in the triell: "That wasn't even possible, because he wasn't there. For me, it was the @fdp and @c_lindner." It comes as no surprise that entrepreneurs and investors are missing the FDP. Just a few weeks ago, some of them, including Thelen and Tao, announced that they had donated half a million euros to the Free Democrats, while investor Georg Kofler also made a donation in April.

Maschmeyer is more specific in his criticismon Linkedin and Instagram. What was missing in the Triell, he said, were topics such as "attractive tax incentives for employees, future funds, broad access to venture capital, taming the bureaucracy monster" or, in summary, "start-up-friendly policies". In the career network, co-founder Hans Uszkoreit from Giance Technologies also complains that the topics focused a lot on details, but not on the "increasing backlog in technological innovation and digital transformation", although this is "crucial for economic success, lasting prosperity, successful energy transition and effective pandemic control". He asks: "Are the three largest parties not genuinely interested in finding a solution?" Aidien Assefi, CEO of Mainz-based Circl Link, is also disappointed and tweets: "We've heard everything (and nothing) but start-ups and digitalization weren't mentioned."

Scholz, Baerbock and Laschet still have two chances to convince the start-up world: they will meet on public television on September 12 and on ProSieben, Kabel Eins and Sat 1 on September 19.