Where Germany's Pre-Seed Investors Actually Sit
Of the pre-seed investors we track in Germany, most cluster in two hubs: Berlin and Munich, with Berlin holding the larger share. Hamburg, Stuttgart, and a scattering of smaller cities across North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg make up most of the rest.
Investor headcount is only half the story, though. Bavaria overtook Berlin in total startup funding for the first time in 2025, pulling in about €3.3 billion in venture capital against Berlin's roughly €2.7 billion, even though Berlin still recorded more individual deals, 218 against 149. That figure covers every funding stage, not pre-seed alone, so treat it as context rather than a pre-seed-specific number. But it points to something real: Munich and the wider Bavarian scene increasingly write the bigger, later-anchoring checks, while Berlin still processes more deals overall, including the earliest ones. If you want the widest pre-seed deal flow, start in Berlin. If you're hoping to land an investor who can also anchor your seed round down the line, a Munich-based fund is worth the extra flight.
What Pre-Seed Funding in Germany Looks Like Right Now
German startups pulled in about €8.4 billion in venture capital in 2025, up 19% from the year before and the third-highest total on record, according to EY's Startup Barometer. Read that on its own and it looks like a great time to raise. Look closer and the picture is more mixed: the number of financing rounds actually fell for the fourth year running, to 716, because the growth came almost entirely from a small number of very large rounds. EY counted 18 deals over €100 million in 2025, six more than the year before, while the smallest deals, the ones closest to pre-seed size, kept shrinking.
In plain terms, the big checks got bigger and the door at the very start of the funnel got a little narrower. That doesn't mean pre-seed is dead in Germany, and it's not, but it does mean you need a sharper story and a tighter target list than founders needed three years ago, which is exactly what a filtered list like this one is for.
What Germany's Pre-Seed Investors Are Looking For
The market mix here skews technical. Information technology, B2B software, and consumer internet businesses pull in the most pre-seed attention in Germany, with e-commerce and fintech close behind. That's not a coincidence. Germany has a deep pool of engineering talent and a corporate base that's hungry for B2B tools, so investors here tend to gravitate toward founders solving problems for other businesses rather than flashy consumer apps. If your startup sits in one of those categories, lead with it in your first line. If it doesn't, don't force the comparison. Just be ready to explain why your market is different and why that's an opportunity rather than a gap.
On check size, Germany doesn't deviate much from the global norm. Angel investors typically write checks in the $25,000 to $500,000 range, and early dilution at this stage usually lands between 15% and 25%. What does shift locally is patience: German investors, especially the public-private funds, tend to ask more detailed questions about your go-to-market plan before writing a check, and they're comfortable with a longer diligence process than you might see from a fast-moving angel elsewhere. Build that timeline into your fundraising plan so a slower "yes" doesn't feel like a "no."
Who's Writing the Checks
Most of the pre-seed investors in our German database are angel/individual investors, not funds. That matches how early-stage investing tends to work in Germany: a first check often comes from a founder-turned-investor or a small family office before an institutional fund gets involved.
Where Germany looks a little different is its public-private seed funds. The best known is High-Tech Gründerfonds, based in Bonn, which was set up with backing from the German federal government and a group of industry investors specifically to fund high-tech founders at the very earliest stage, and now manages well over a billion euros across its funds. It's a useful reminder that not every German pre-seed check comes from a private fund; some of the country's most active early-stage capital has a public partner behind it. Once you move past pre-seed, venture capitalists typically write $2 million to $100 million or more, so it's worth mapping who on your list can follow on later, not just who can write the first check.
How to Approach Pre-Seed Investors in Germany
A few things are worth knowing before your first email goes out. German investors, especially the ones who've been burned by messy cap tables before, want to see the numbers up front: how much you're raising, at what valuation, and how much dilution that means for the founders. Stating it plainly in your first message signals that you've done this kind of math before.
Timing matters more in Germany than in most markets. August is effectively dead for fundraising outreach, and the last two weeks of December aren't much better, since investors are on holiday and won't reply until January. Plan your outreach push for spring or early autumn instead.
Language is less of a barrier than founders often assume, at least in Berlin and Munich, where most of the angel and fund investors on this list run their portfolios in English. Outside the two big hubs, a German-speaking co-founder on the intro call, or a deck with a German-language summary slide, still goes a long way.
Germany's approach to data protection also shapes how investors expect to receive information. Sending a cap table or personal founder details as an open email attachment reads as careless here. A data room with access controls does the same job without raising eyebrows, and it's worth setting up before your first real conversation, not after someone asks for it.
Once conversations start, keep track of who said what and when. A simple fundraising CRM beats a spreadsheet the moment you're juggling more than five or six live conversations, which happens fast once you start working through a list like this one.
Germany's pre-seed scene rewards founders who show up prepared: a clear ask, honest dilution math, and a target list that starts with Berlin's angel investors and Munich's public-private funds rather than a mass email to everyone in the country. Start with the pre-seed investors in our German database and work outward from the ones whose focus actually matches what you're building, or browse the wider German investor base once you're ready for follow-on rounds.
Pre-seed investors
