AmCham Germany conducted an interview with the awardees of this year's Female Founders Award, Maria Birlem and Julia R枚mer. The winners share their perspectives on the process of building their businesses as well as all the exciting aspects of being an entrepreneur and their thoughts on the start-up ecoysystem in Germany.
Interview with Maria Birlem, Co-Founder & CEO, Yuri GmbH
Can you give us a short overview of how you came to start your own business?
My co-founder and I were working at a big corporate and had established our own department with innovation money. We were creating services and a business case to do things quicker and more cost effectively. There was no chance to do this inside or with the corporate and after long discussions with no decision, we quit our jobs and started our own business. We had a lot of experiences and a great network and were in a situation, were we thought that, if we don鈥檛 try it now, we would never do鈥� and we had a big contract with European Space Agency (ESA) showing up on the horizon.
What differences and similarities do you see in the entrepreneurial culture in Germany versus the U.S.?
The U.S. is a great nutrient floor for start-ups. The mindset and mainly the investment situation and the attitude towards risks and taking risks is very positive for starting a new company. Start-ups in the U.S. are the big corporates from tomorrow.
In Germany and Europe, Start-ups are pushed more and more, but not sustainably. We need the state as an anchor customer, but even public guidelines are still quite strict and written for big corporates, which have stable numbers and positive annual financial statements. That makes it hard for young start-ups to have access to bigger contracts. Also, the investment situation is not very risk friendly. For the starting phase and incubation of Start-ups in Germany I personally think that there is a quite good situation to push Start-ups. But for a longer term and sustainable business, there must be chances to get contracts.
What do you think could be done to promote female founders?
Women still have the lack of role models in STEM subjects and leading roles in companies. Women with family are still most of the time also the organizational lead at home and have a double load. Furthermore, the childcare situation in Germany is not the way that women in general would continue to go work, also because in a lot of cases the partner earns more money.
There are a couple of reasons why women don鈥檛 take chances to found a company. I do believe that educating and showing examples can work and motivate or at least to show the possibility. But in general, it is a 360掳 situation where the situation for women in general need to be adjusted.
Interview with Julia R枚mer, Co-Founder & CEO, Coolar UG
Can you give us a short overview of how you came to start your own business?
During my studies, I learned about the fundamental technology that underpins our work at Coolar. From the very beginning I was fascinated by the idea that you can use heat to cool. The root cause of the problem of perishing supplies, spoiling medicines or uncomfortable room temperature is harnessed as the energy source driving the solution. Until then, this technology had only been used for niche and very large-scale industrial applications. But I felt strongly that it should be made much more widely accessible to everyone, in all places where heat is available, and cooling is needed.
The first application that came to my mind was the refrigerator. Everyone has one or needs one. So, I wrote my master鈥檚 thesis on the technical feasibility of a heat-powered refrigerator based on an adsorption cycle running on silica-gel and water. After that I started Coolar鈥攆irst as a kind of project while still enrolled at TU Berlin and with the help of fellow students and co-founders. Then after two years and after receiving first funds that enabled our prototyping, we incorporated as a limited company.
During that time, our focus increasingly shifted to the cooling of vaccines and medicines in remote areas, as we identified a significant problem that we aimed to solve with our technology. The idea of bringing our technology to the places where it could have the greatest impact became our company鈥檚 mission.
I had never really planned to start a company, but working on this idea and believing that it could truly make a difference led to the founding of the company鈥攁nd today, to a real heat-powered off-grid refrigerator that has been deployed to countries like India and Kenya.
What do you think can be done policy-wise to improve the start-up ecosystem in Germany?
Our biggest challenge was financing the research and development of the refrigerator and the technology鈥攇oing from the first demonstrator to the final product. In the very beginning, we were able to pitch for and secure startup support programmes. However, these usually included mostly in-kind support - a few months of office space, mentoring, etc., all of this helped, but the programmes didn鈥檛 fund prototyping materials, tools, or a workshop. So we tried to convert this support into prototyping budget by applying for small prizes and grants.
When you're developing a hardware product rather than a digital one, with the necessary development time, funding options quickly become scarce. The government research grant programs available in this field often come with significant effort. Around 60 pages or more for detailed grant applications are not uncommon 鈥� even though the path of the project can often not be determined in such detail and creating huge sunk costs for the work startups put into writing them. Lead times for funding decisions are long and the likelihood of success is often very low. Additionally, the application requirements are frequently misaligned with the realities of startups. Even if an application is successful, the accounting and reporting workload within these programs is enormous for teams with small administrative overhead. Moreover, follow-up financing is often not planned or provided.
As a result, startups often turn to private investors鈥攂ut in the case of hardware development, these are harder to come by. In the German-European investment landscape, investors often expect a significant reduction in uncertainty, typically in the form of at least a finished prototype.
More attention should be paid to design programmes in a way that allows startups to access funds without excessive bureaucracy, structured in tranches to manage risk and with pitch presentations in front of experts as key requirement for unlocking funding instead. This would provide the quick feedback and flexibility while still ensuring structured research and development support. And in my opinion, investors in Germany and Europe could also afford to take on a bit more risk.
What do you think could be done to promote female founders?
For me, it was actually the classic "engineering disease" that was the motivation for founding the company鈥擨 was determined to bring this technology into wider application. But I鈥檝e often been asked what motivated me to become an engineer in the first place. For a long time, I couldn鈥檛 really answer that question because, to me, it just felt natural to be an engineer.
I then spent a lot of time thinking about why people even ask me this question鈥攚hy it isn鈥檛 as obvious for everyone as it was for me. And that鈥檚 when I realized: it was so natural for me because my mom is also an engineer. And she always worked full-time in this profession, just like many women in our circle of friends. Most of them met during their studies and are still working as engineers today.
So to me, it was never in question that women could make their career as engineers or inventors 鈥� I had plenty of role models in my immediate environment. By reflecting on this and that this is not a given for other girls and women, I realise: role models are incredibly important. This applies to engineering careers just as much as to female founders. Women and girls need more visible role models and direct access to them 鈥� people nearby whom we can observe, experience, and ask questions. We unconsciously shape ourselves through imitation, not just through active learning.
The question shouldn鈥檛 be whether I, as a woman, can start a company鈥攊t should simply be a natural option. Every female founder is, at the same time, a reflection for someone who might see themselves in her. It鈥檚 never about perfection, but about authenticity.
That鈥檚 why awards like this one are important, but so is being approachable in private conversations 鈥� talking about both successes and failures, allowing the ambivalence of emotions, and not sugarcoating the challenges. Only in this way are we able to create real insights and new norms.
Learn more about the Female Founders Award here.
