The end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 saw three out of the five fastest unicorns in Europe minted—with all three companies coming from the DACH region. While Gorillas remained the startup that reached the $1 billion milestone the quickest (nine months), Flink, Razor Group, and SellerX (each 15 months) all became unicorns at a rapid pace over the last year. That means DACH startups hold the first four spots for Europe’s fastest unicorns says Antler´s 2022 DACH Unicorn Founder Roadmap, a systematic unicorn and soonicorn companies in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) report.
While the DACH ecosystem was the birthplace of 40 unicorn companies in the period between 2000 and August 2021, in the last 10 months the unicorn group grew by 25 new members—representing almost 40% of all unicorns minted in the DACH region to date.
The 2022 class of unicorns contained some of the fastest unicorns ever minted in the DACH region. However, there were also outliers at the other end of the spectrum, taking close to two decades to reach the $1 billion mark. As a result, the record-setting Flink, SellerX, and Razor Group have been offset by other outliers like the e-commerce player Chrono24 and FBA-incumbent Berlin Brands Group who became unicorns after an average of 17 years.
A factor that could explain why the most current startup batch took slightly longer to reach unicorn status is the more prominent presence of Swiss companies. On average, Swiss startups are working on predominantly tech- and science-heavy products which take longer to develop and put onto the market. Swiss unicorns include the likes of SonarSource (cybersecurity), Roivant Sciences (health), and Climeworks (energy).
Last year Antler observed that close to 60% of unicorn founders went to the same top 10 universities, while 47% attended the top five institutions. In addition, when considering unicorn team composition, they saw that 50% of founding teams had at least two founders who went to the same university. The more recent class of unicorn builders is attending a more diversified range of education institutions than previously, as only 30% attended the top five universities and around 45% have attended the top 10 . Overall, 42% of unicorn teams had at least two founders who went to the same university.
With this year’s 25 unicorn additions, the ranking of the top universities remains similar, with WHU still leading in terms of both the most unicorn founders and the most unicorns, followed by TU Munich, ETH Zurich, and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. University of St.Gallen and LSE share the fifth spot in the overall ranking. Interestingly, founders from ETH usually team up with each other when founding, as is also the case with founders from TUM, another technical university. A driving reason for this is that several technology companies were started by founders during their student years, and were spun off later on. Examples from TUM include Celonis and Lilium, while ETH spin-offs include GetYourGuide and Climeworks.
The new clear leader when considering the number of unicorn founders per 1,000 university alumni is Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM), with 9.11 unicorn founders per 1,000 alumni. The joint program of Munich-based TUM and LMU has produced five unicorns and eight unicorn founders. CDTM entered the top 10 ranking with a bang, with four new unicorns as part of the 2022 unicorn class. WHU continues to impress by producing 1.53 unicorn founders per 1,000 alumni, well ahead of the larger pack.
Source: Antler
07-24-2022