Call for Founders: What has to change?

Tell us what’s slowing your startup down in Germany. Two questions, five minutes, until 30 October 2026. 

You lost months on a visa before your first international hire even started. You waited on an approval while your competitors shipped. You wanted a first big customer: a public agency, a bank, a hospital. But procurement kept them out of reach. You needed data you couldn’t get to. None of this is bad luck, and it is not on you.

What is holding startups back here is rarely the technology, and almost never the individual. It is the structures behind it, and the gaps between them. Maybe they made you think about scaling your company somewhere else. Maybe you’re here to stay despite it all. 

None of this will fix itself, but all of it can be named and redesigned. That is why it is time to hear you out on what is broken. We are collecting your experiences, not for a report, but to force a conversation.

Two questions

1. The barrier. What were you trying to achieve, and where did it break down? Describe one case — what you set out to do, what got in the way, and what it cost you. And even if it sounds small in hindsight: a single pebble can jam the whole machine. That’s exactly what we want to hear.

2. The redesign. Zoom out: if you could scrap or change one rule that slows founders down in Germany — any rule — which would it be?

Use the short form at the bottom of this page. You do not need a solution. We’ll worry about that. But if you’ve got one, we’ll take it.

What happens next

Your input feeds straight into a Ideathon at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. There, founders sit down with people from public administration, business and academia to redesign exactly these barriers. Your account goes on the record as concrete evidence, and we may invite some contributors to join our discussion. This call is part of Forum. Venturing Futures. at HIIG. We bring entrepreneurial thinking and public structures together, grounded in our research, to find out what blocks the path from idea to application – and how to redesign it.

We will treat your submission confidentially. You may leave your contact details so that we can get in touch with you for follow-up questions or to invite you to participate. Your information will be used exclusively for research purposes and anonymised for analysis. All data will, of course, be handled in accordance with the GDPR.

Short form

You can answer in German or English (select your language via the flag icon in the top right of the form below).