"We asked 100 Munich founders..." — that, at least, was the goal of a survey by startupdates, a monthly newsletter featuring all upcoming application deadlines for accelerators, incubators, and startup competitions in Germany. While the survey didn't ultimately attract a total of 100 participants, the results provide exciting and entertaining insights.
Josef Seidl, one of the initiators, didn't want to ask boring, standard questions, but rather the truly interesting ones: questions that would reveal the dark, fun, and unique side of Munich's startup scene.
Joseph says:
"As Munich founders, the local startup scene here is very important to us, and we wanted to give something back to the community that has supported us so strongly so far."
Questions that concern founders – and that no one else asks
Young founders are concerned with questions such as "Should I charge full price for my first customer order? Or might it make sense to 'sell' it only in exchange for feedback?"“ One goal of the survey was to find out how other founders in Munich do things.
The survey creator Josef adds:
"The motivation for the survey was, above all, to better understand the local scene here in Munich and to ask the founders questions that no one else asks, but which we are constantly confronted with in our daily work at the startup."
At the same time, questions were also asked about how many hours per week the founders actually work here or what career aspirations they had in primary school.
So what did the survey reveal?
A surprising number of them aspired to great heights even as children—to become pilots or even astronauts. Some, however, already knew they wanted to become entrepreneurs or inventors. The founders earned their first money in a variety of ways: often through more or less legal activities (selling pirated software, taking notes on homework, or providing snacks), but some also through PC repairs or similar activities.
This is how the Munich founders work
Half of the founders surveyed work seven days a week. Nearly two-thirds work at least six days a week, and about a quarter of founders follow a traditional five-day work week. Full-time founders work an average of just under 60 hours a week. Part-time founders still work at least half-time, where they work just over 25 hours per week.
And the team?
When it came to questions about the team and employees, the survey creators got creative. Josef Seidl explains:
"Here we first asked, 'When you tell others about your startup, how big is the team?' And then we asked how big the team actually was.
It turned out that Munich founders are actually very honest.”
Because they usually disclose the actual number of employees to external parties (e.g., for marketing purposes) and rarely sugarcoat the numbers. The difference between "actual team size" and "reported team size" is only 0.4.
On average, the respondents have just under eight employees. Nearly every second employee in the startups surveyed is a C-level employee. The Munich startups employ an average of 271,448 people. Women.
The first customer
The question about the first customer order was also answered. The result, hardly surprising, was that the first customer order is a challenge for many founders. Almost 401 of the founders surveyed managed to sell the product to the first customer at full price.
The same number of startups also offer the product for free to the first customer. The remaining startups sell the product to their first customer for a lower price or in exchange for feedback.
And what about the office?
The question of office space is also interesting. After all, rents in Munich are really high. And a central location and a good community are very important to the founders. However, Munich founders are creative when it comes to office costs, as almost one in three of the startups surveyed manages to rent an office (13%) or a co-working space (16%) for free. A quarter of the startups also save on office costs by working in the home of a founder or employee.
