Fintech boom in Frankfurt
The city is establishing itself as a magnet for the international start-up scene and as a fintech hub. These are Frankfurt’s three strengths.
Frankfurt am Main has the most experienced founders and the best educated talents. These are two results of the first comprehensive survey of the Frankfurt start-up scene carried out by the company Startup Genome based in Silicon Valley. The survey identified three internationally highly competitive areas in the Frankfurt start-up ecosystem:
- Fintech
- Artificial Intelligence, Big Data & Analytics
- Cybersecurity
No other place in the world has so many fintechs in relation to the total number of start-ups as the financial metropolis Frankfurt. Between 2012 and 2017, 55 per cent of the venture capital flowed into this sector. The initial impulse came with the sale of the start-up 360T to the German stock exchange Deutsche Börse. The foreign exchange trading platform sold for 725 million euros. It is regarded as the largest sale in the sector.
A community to trade ideas
The Frankfurt region to become a leading fintech hub
“The survey shows that we have every prospect to make Frankfurt into an international hotspot of the start-up scene,” says Hesse’s Minister of Economics Tarek Al-Wazir. “The survey already ranks us in a leading international position in the networking of the fintech scene. But we also recognize the potential that we have not yet exploited.” That is why the government of Hesse has developed a master plan together with the Frankfurt TechQuartier, enterprises and universities in the region: within five years the Frankfurt-Rhine-Main region is destined to be developed into the leading fintech hub in continental Europe and into an internationally recognized tech region.
Co-operation with start-up accelerator from Silicon Valley
The brain behind the master plan is Sebastian Schäfer, Managing Director of the TechQuartier. On two floors of the co-working space at the Frankfurter Messe 100 start-ups, 30 corporate partners and five universities are working together. Short distances, speedy decisions, numerous funding formats – co-working at its best. But Schäfer wants more and quicker. “We want out network to become even bigger, faster and more successful,” he says. For this reason he has made a co-operation agreement with Plug and Play, the worldwide largest start-up accelerator from Silicon Valley. The idea is to develop Europe’s largest multi-corporate innovation platform with this advisor as partner.
