In a workshop in Palo Alto Tuesday, presented by the German Silicon Valley Accelerator, some startups aimed to get some Silicon Valley venture capital.
Hosted by SAP Labs, eleven German startups pitched to local venture capitalists in the hopes to get funding, money that according to them wouldn't be available in their country.
Barbara Holzapfel, senior vice president and managing director of SAP Labs, welcomed the startups and members of a German delegation that included Phillip Rösler, the federal minister of economics and technology.
"We have some of the best investors from Silicon Valley and hottest startups in Germany here," she said. Holzapfel hoped the workshop could help build a bridge between Germany and Silicon Valley.
And building this bridge would help infuse capital in the growing German tech sector.
"Berlin has become a dynamic center for the European Internet scene in the same breath as London and Tel Aviv," Rösler said. "But Silicon Valley's venture capitalists can still show us a thing or two about innovation and taking risks."
"We want to double the number of startups," Rösler said.
Andreas "Andy" von Bechtolsheim, co-founder Sun-Microsystems and the first Google backer, also believed that there should be more investment in German startups. A German himself, Bechtolsheim said he would invest if not for the "arcane tax laws" of both the United States and Europe.
But German investor Wolfgang Seibold of Earlybird Venture Capital explained there is some German investment, but mostly at the seed and startup stage.
"Later stage venture capital is still harder to get," he said. "But this is good for overseas investors because they get more well developed companies."
Seibold highlighted the splash several German companies have already made in the U.S. like Spotify and SoundCloud, which "represent great opportunities to invest" for U.S. backers.
The eleven startups at SAP on Tuesday, were all chosen by the German government to try their "glück" at some VC money. Some offered cloud or gaming services, e-commerce or user-behavior platforms.
The latter was the case of Stephanie Renda, founder and CEO of Match2Blue, which builds context-based mobile solutions. She hoped her pitch convinced a VC, or several, to give her company $5 million. This would be her first pitch to American investors because she thinks German VCs don't allow startups to deviate slightly from their business plan, which can be limiting. That's why she's in Palo Alto pitching.
"They don't give money for dreams," Renda said.
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