2019/2020 DACH Landscape Report

For 2019/2020, Helena & Felix decided to revamp the report completely to feature the big questions on all of our minds:

1. What is the impact of Covid on LPs, VCs and tech M&A?
2. What are the most interesting emerging tech sectors in DACH?
3. What DACH based startups are best-positioned to succeed in a post covid world?

Here are some interesting nuggets we found along the way:

• VC spend in DACH has doubled in the first half of 2020, reaching its largest quarterly spend ever ( $2.6b in Q2)
• Liquidity is bouncing back with M&A spend already back to pre-pandemic levels. [thanks to the €1.2b Flaschenpost acquisition by Dr oetker]
• LP risk appetite isn’t wavering: DACH based VCs raise $3b this year [4 of which are debut funds].
• Austrian startup BitPanda raises the largest series A in Europe of 2020.
• Switzerland establishes itself as a truly unique hub: 2x more fragmented than Germany and 3x more than Austria, yet leading DACH both in RnD spend and prowess of universities in yielding successful founders. We’ve also seen some early signs of consolidation of enterprise tech: big rounds raised this year by the likes of Scandit ($80m) and Beekeeper ($60m).