Particularly many graduates of the University of Cologne go on to found a company. 3.6 per cent of all founders in Germany obtained their highest academic degree at the University of Cologne. That is the result of Deutsche Startup Monitor (DSM) 2024, which was presented yesterday in Munich. In this year’s ranking, Cologne is once again the most start-up friendly non-technical university in Germany. Compared to the previous year, it improved its position from 4th to 3rd place. Only TU Munich and RWTH Aachen University were ranked ahead of the University of Cologne by DSM. With around 1,800 founders surveyed, the annual study by the start-up association and the auditing company PwC is considered the most comprehensive study on the start-up scene in Germany.
The survey of founders in Germany showed that start-ups play an important role in putting research results into practice. More than one in two start-ups (55.1 per cent) worked with or received support from a university or research institutions during the start-up process. According to the authors of the study, the close collaboration with universities is considered a unique selling point of Germany as a start-up location.
Rector Professor Dr Joybrato Mukherjee said: “Making the results of our research available to society is one of our most important goals. I’m very pleased to see that our efforts are paying off so well and that we have created effective structures to support start-ups with the Gateway Excellence Start-up Center. This also allows us to contribute to the economic prosperity of the city of Cologne and the entire region.”
Marc Kley, Managing Director of the Gateway Excellence Start-up Center at the University of Cologne, said: “We have established ourselves as the most start-up friendly non-technical university. Our approach of using specialized transfer scouts to support spin-offs from the wide range of excellent research at the University of Cologne has proved successful. Our nine new start-up-oriented professorships also anchor entrepreneurship, innovation and digitalization permanently at the Faculties.”
The University of Cologne had substantially expanded its start-up funding as part of the ‘Excellence Start-up Center’ initiative of the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2019. The number of start-ups has increased from 14 in 2020 to 33 in 2023. In the future, the University of Cologne plans to collaborate with RWTH Aachen University to help established start-ups to grow even more. To this end, both universities are establishing a ‘Startup Factory’ with the Start2 Group and the ‘Gateway Universities Cologne’ association. This ‘Gateway Factory Startup’ project is one of the 15 projects invited by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action to submit a comprehensive concept in 2025. As part of the ‘Startup Factories’ lighthouse competition, five to ten projects across Germany will ultimately receive up to 10 million euros over a period of five years.
Press and Communications Team:
Marijan Kojic
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m.kojic
gateway-unikoeln.de
Further information on Deutsche Startup Monitor:
https://deutscherstartupmonitor.de/
Further information on the Gateway Excellence Start-up Center at the University of Cologne:
https://gateway-unikoeln.de/en/