The German startup ecosystem is off to a strong start in 2026: Between January and June, 3,053 new startups were founded. This represents a 52 percent increase compared to the second half of 2025 and means more startups were founded than in all of 2024.
Yeah but most of these startups were founded because people fear for their job and want a redundancy…
Isn’t that kinda what you’d want to see though? I.e. if older less competitive businesses are not able to operate or compete, we don’t want them to just hold onto talented people, and we don’t want those talented people to be jobless. It’s good if those people go and start new, dynamic, competitive companies.
Obviously there’s a balance to be found, and we don’t want companies to be allowed to just dump employees for no reason every time they hit a hiccup, but Germany has very generous worker protections, and a strong social safety net. It’s good to see these people starting new companies.
Or have been made redundant and now use their severance.