Janina Jänsch
Director General for SMEs, Future Technologies, Startups
Sessions (2)
Sessions featuring Janina Jänsch at Bits & Pretzels 2026 | Founders Festival in Munich
Startup Germany: What's Next?
The core message of the session was that Germany’s next startup agenda is to turn its existing strengths—research, industry, Mittelstand companies, investors, and ambitious founders—into more scalable companies that grow in Germany, Europe, and international markets. Janina Jeng, who heads the Directorate General for SMEs, Future Technologies and Startups in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, framed the Startup Germany stage at Bits and Pretzels 2026 around a practical question: after recent progress, what must happen next? She pointed to the Deutschland Fund, the rollout of EXIST startup factories, and the federal government’s July adoption of the new Startup and Scaleup strategy as recent milestones.
One Year of Startup Factories
The session’s core message was that Germany’s Startup Factories are intended to turn public funding into a larger, faster, privately backed ecosystem for research-based startups and scaleups. In the opening exchange, Janina framed success over the next two to three years as seeing more startups and scaleups scale in Germany and Europe, supported by more private and institutional capital and completion of the Startup and Scaleup strategy’s 152 measures. The moderator then introduced the Startup Factories as a “sharp new tool” from the Federal Ministry: €100 million for 10 factories across Germany, with the discussion focused on what has already changed after roughly one year and what gaps remain. Arik Willner described Hamburg’s starting point as a comparatively empty ecosystem versus places like Munich, and said the Startup Factory competition created a rallying point that Hamburg had not had before. He highlighted how the Otto family, the Joachim Herz Foundation, politics, and other actors gathered behind the idea of a Hamburg factory, bringing capital that had not previously been attached to the startup ecosystem. Philippa described a similar momentum around BRYCK, the RAG-Stiftung, industry partners, and startups. Her concrete example involved a paying customer seeking faster water analysis: instead of finding a ready-made solution, BRYCK found a very early two-person team whose process could detect metals in a way others could not, leading to trust and a pilot. Janina emphasized that the factories are structured as public-private partnerships: the government provides €100 million over five years, but applicants had to bring equivalent private capital. She argued that this structure forced companies, universities, and startups to work together from the start and build a shared ecosystem vision. Arik added that Impossible Founders had gone beyond matching its public funding, with €40 million in private money alongside €10 million public money, which he linked to speed and power for startups seeking international competitiveness. He also stressed that newer factories need to learn from established ecosystems like UnternehmerTUM because they do not have 25 years to mature. The discussion then shifted to the harder work of making the ecosystem function for early-stage researchers and founders. Philippa argued that Germany has many necessary ingredients but must mix them better, especially by building trust, relatable role models, and greater risk affinity among people leaving research for entrepreneurship. Arik challenged the assumption that every researcher should become a founder, saying excellent researchers should be allowed to remain researchers while professionals and entrepreneurs-in-residence help bring ideas to market. He pointed to the Weizmann Institute in Israel as an example where company development is disentangled from the researcher, while Philippa maintained that Germany still needs a cultural shift away from excessive caution and toward seeing opportunities rather than threats. The provided transcript ends mid-discussion at 14:44, so later portions of the 27:08 session are not available for analysis.