For the fifth time, the startup hotspots of Munich, Cologne, Berlin, and Hamburg crowned their Startup Champs. This year's competition, centered on fintech, covered a broad range of topics. A high-profile jury of investors selected four regional and one overall winner from three companies each from Germany's leading startup hotspots. Munich was represented by the startups Sub Capital, Onpier, and Pigtie.
The city victory finally went to Sub CapitalsThe company offers its clients an automated, artificial intelligence-based investment strategy. The vision behind it is to develop a fair product for private investors in the long term and thus achieve greater equality in the financial markets. The startup will now represent Munich at the international startup conference Slush in Helsinki in November. Sub Capitals will also have its own booth at the Munich Startup Festival.
The twelve finalists also included the Munich-based startups Onpier and Pigtie. Onpier is an industry-open B2B2C platform for non-insurance services. Through the connection to Onpier, insurance companies can offer their customers additional services that go beyond traditional insurance solutions. The microinvesting app Pigtie helps millennials with investing. To get started with their own financial planning, users of the platform round up their transactions to the nearest euro and invest these rounded amounts in ETFs.
Startup Champs overall victory goes to Hamburg
However, the title of "Startup Champ 2024" goes to a fintech from the far north. The Hamburg startup Participated has developed a payment software solution for the social economy. It is designed to enable people in care to participate in digital life while simultaneously reducing the administrative burden in care facilities.
Startup Champs was born out of close collaboration between Munich Startup, Werk1, Berlin Partner, Cologne Business, and Hamburg Invest and serves to connect the respective ecosystems. The pitch competition contributes to increasing the visibility of young companies and is thus an important stimulus for the further development of Germany as a startup location. This year, the event was part of the FIBE Fintech Festival in Berlin.
