Ascon Systems is one of the #Top50Startups in Germany

Press release 27 January 2021

Top 50 Start-ups: Innovations made in Germany

• Top 50 startups chosen from more than 700 winners in 2020
• Start-up economy shows potential: experiments in space, vaccines based on the modular principle, comfortable period underwear or the Tesla of agriculture
• Thanks to innovative business ideas, start-ups defy the Corona crisis and look ahead to 2021 with confidence

The Top 50 Start-ups Ranking: Popular brands like FOND OF, mymuesli, true fruits or industry unicorns with a billion-dollar valuation like Celonis have one thing in common: they also look back on numerous awards in start-up competitions. The early stages already reveal the SMEs of tomorrow, which are already making big things happen today. That’s why we have been analyzing the results of well over 100 startup competitions since 2014. From the many hundreds of award winners, the top 50 start-ups of the year are determined on the basis of various factors using scoring. Following the annual publication as a PDF magazine, the top 50 start-ups now have their own portal at www.top50startups.de.

Start-ups active on land, sea and in space
The business models of the Top 50 Start-ups reflect the megatrends of our time such as the environment, health or mobility. Whether solutions for space, agriculture, higher energy efficiency, against infectious diseases or the use of blockchain – the Top 50 Start-ups 2020 are active in many areas of our lives. This is illustrated by the following examples:

• Yuri (Rank 2): The start-up enables more cost-effective experiments in weightlessness, for example on board the ISS on behalf of Nasa.
• Ooia (Rank 7): Innovative products for women, such as the self-developed period underwear, which stimulate discussions and make their everyday life more carefree.
• Airstier (Rank 19): Development and production of an electric motor that can save up to 50% energy.
• inveox (Rank 25): Improve the safety and reliability of cancer diagnoses by automating and digitizing sample receipt in the laboratory.
• PVT (Rank 32): The core product is an Orf virus-based vector platform for generating next-generation vaccines.
• Bracenet (Rank 46): Freeing the world’s oceans from plastic: Salvage ghost nets and handcraft them into new products.

To the complete ranking of the  Top 50 Start-ups 2020

“The Top 50 Start-ups of 2020 show us a wealth of ideas and innovation coupled with initial entrepreneurial successes,” summarizes René Klein, CEO of Passion4Business GmbH. More facts, figures and data on the top 50 start-ups and their regional origins are shown in the infographic in the appendix and a data analysis on the plattform.

2/3 of startups achieve or exceed annual targets despite Corona crisis
According to the results of the survey of the top 50 start-ups, the Corona crisis has not had as strong an impact as it has for many classic companies. Only one third of the start-ups did not achieve their annual targets. Despite the crisis, half of the companies were able to achieve the targets set for 2020 and 16 percent even exceeded them.

Namely, founders from the health & life science and related sectors such as medical technology and biotechnology were able to take advantage of market opportunities: “As a quick response to the global pandemic, we already expanded our supply chain in March 2020 to include the supply of medical supplies that are currently urgently needed everywhere, such as Sars-CoV-2 test kits and protective masks,” says inveox from Garching near Munich. (Ranked 25th in Top Startups 2020 and 1st in 2017).

We have summarized how other start-ups were able to launch new products or optimize processes in the Corona Special of this year’s issue.

The outlook for 2021 is extremely positive: 49 of the top 50 startups are “very optimistic” or “optimistic” about business development; only one was “pessimistic”.

The upbeat mood carries over to hiring plans. Almost two-thirds of the start-ups expect to hire up to 10 employees. Twenty-two percent even plan to increase staff by double digits. Only 14 percent see the number of employees remaining constant in 2021.

About the portal Top50Startups.de

The aim of the new platform www.top50startups.de is to create visibility for innovations and networks in the start-up economy. At the heart of the platform is the eponymous annual ranking of the Top 50 start-ups, based on the results of well over 100 start-up competitions.

The Top50Startups.de platform belongs to Passion4Business GmbH, in which the F.A.Z. publishing group also holds a stake via F.A.Z. Business Media GmbH.

Commerzbank and LEXROCKET are involved as the platform’s main partners.

• Commerzbank supports start-ups with a high-performance business account. Services such as CashRadar help them grow. At the start, the bank is offering a start-up package with discounted terms.
• LEXROCKET is Lexware’s start-up support initiative. Its goal is to provide start-up assistance to founders and young entrepreneurs throughout Germany and to lead them to long-term success.
The KfW Award Gründen is the platform’s main competition partner.
• KfW Bankengruppe has been honoring young companies with the KfW Award Gründen since 1998. The focus is on innovative business ideas, original products or services, job creation and sustainable entrepreneurship.