#hubstartups: Climedo

What advice would you share with other founders?
Always be optimistic and set big goals, but focus on a clear niche at the beginning. Test your hypotheses step by step, based on small, fast experiments (#DisciplinedEntrepreneurship). In one sentence: "Think big, start small, move fast."

What surprised you the most when you started out?
What’s surprised me the most is how much more difficult it is to answer this question than it might sound. I’m also amazed at how open-minded so many companies and people are, when it comes to working with and helping startups. We are often admired for our "courage" and this can lead to exciting partnerships that develop right at the very beginning of an enterprise.

What do you want from politics and from Germany as a business location?
Less bureaucracy and caution, more flexibility, experimentation, and openness. This is the only way to bring about true innovation, because there is always a certain degree of disruption and risk involved in anything that’s really new. The right environment has to be created to make it more attractive for investors in Germany and Europe to invest in startups. Founders in Germany have lots of great ideas, yet most of the money is invested in Silicon Valley, so there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Why doesn’t Germany have a leading startup ecosystem?
As I just mentioned, Germany needs to be made more attractive for investors. However, we’re definitely on the right track here - especially thanks to numerous entrepreneurial initiatives and networks, such as CDTM, EIT Health, Medical Valley, UnternehmerTUM, Zollhof, to name but a few!