Jörn "Joe" Menninger
speaker
1,749 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 13 Aug
Jörn "Joe" Menninger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Almost 10 billion in the second half of that year alone, according to EY's data.
I want to mention, this is not for nostalgia, but because that period now distorts the conversation.
People who have entered the German startup scene in 21 or 22 think 18 billion euros is the normal benchmark.
It is not.
That was a liquidity driven acceleration on top of a zero interest rate, on top of an unusually abundant global capital, on top of a pandemic era digital tailwind.
Chris and I were on the mic when that machine was running.
That archive matters now because it lets us say with evidence rather than opinion 2021 was an anomaly.
The benchmark for German venture capital is not 18 billion.
The benchmark is whatever the market can sustainably produce under more normal conditions.
And the question is whether that sustainable level is enough for what Germany now needs to finance.
2022, when the vocabulary changed.
By late 2022, the vocabulary in the German startup scene shifted.
The conversation was no longer about unicorns and mega rounds.
It was about funny crunches, dry powder, valuation resets.
runway, discipline, and what people started calling the new VC cycle.
The KFW data captures that correction with brutal clarity.
18.8 billion in 2021, 10.7 billion in 2022, almost half.
7.1 billion in 2023, 7.5 billion in 2024.
7.2 billion in 2025.
In other words, from the 2021 peak, the German venture capital market has dropped by more than 60% and then plateaued at roughly that lower level for three years in a row.
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