What Europe Can Learn from Asia

0:00You are now listening to the EU Start-ups Podcast. Hello and welcome to the special episode of the EU Start-ups Podcast. We're here at the A5X conference in Singapore by Mutation, the National University of Singapore. Throughout this next few days we're going to be chatting about innovation, funding, and the developing bridge between Southeast Asia and Europe. Not to mention, they sing in port defense tech hackathon, whose winner is going to show up at our very end of the series in a special episode. So I hope you're looking forward to hear us talking about the challenges, the innovation, and how we're all comparing when it comes to localized markets such as Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe, and even the global challenges. Not to mention, the lessons we can learn from each other. Okay, thank you very much for joining me. It's a pleasure to have you here on the EU Start-ups Podcast.

1:00Cool to be here. Yes. I'm thinking before we get started, you just give us a quick rundown as to who you are, what you do, and why you're here. Right, so I'm Hemwood. I'm one of the founders of Untanema Tomb, which is one of the leading entrepreneurship centers in Europe. It's based in Munich, and the academic home is the TUM, the technical university of Munich. And it became really big, so it's a fully integrated startup factory. So we have about 17,000 students with us per year, 17,000 students per year. We run about 1,400 projects per year and start every week about three growth companies, attract every week about 40 million euros of venture capital. So this sums up to over 2 billion euros per year. Yes, actually, isn't the first time I've heard of Internet TUM, although I've never had to say it out loud.

2:00You do it, right? Right still. Thank you. So this is the first for me on that sense. So we've seen at EU Start-ups who've heard, and we've seen kind of the money goes around this project. But I think the point where I want to begin this conversation is just kind of what you see as the general challenges in scaling university projects, research projects into functioning companies. So really to build a scale up unique years, okay? It's a journey of five to ten years. And on this journey, you have multiple challenges. So first, it's about finding a team, about finding the right problem space, the right solution, the building, the first prototypes, then incorporating the company. And then you start the company and then basically we're still at the beginning of your entrepreneur journey. So the special thing about Unterneumertum is that we really cover the whole journey.

3:05So we have not only like all the education programs and incubators, but once the company is founded, there are accelerator programs. We have a lot of infrastructure to build deep tech companies. And we also have a large venture capital fund called UBC Partners. So we also invest about 100 million to a year. Okay. So just to kind of deepen on that is what would you say is kind of the, the main challenge one, because we're here in Singapore, right? So that makes me wonder about how you see what the challenges between German startups and the way they scale and continent wide, I don't think continent wide across Europe versus how you see Asian startups and how they scale. Okay. So Europe is a big continent Asia. It's also big continent. So I would really differentiate from the ecosystem. And we are here in Singapore. Sure. Singapore is a very rich and elaborated ecosystem.

4:09A lot of great universities, a lot of money and a very strategic thinking government, for example. And in Munich, you have this industrial base, which is enormous, which is also on a global scale, really strong with large companies like BMW and Siemens and all these middle stance companies. So I think every ecosystem has its strengths and then the question is as an entrepreneur, okay, where do I need a base to really bring the company to the next phase? And the question is not only Singapore, only Munich or only Barcelona, but if you really want to build a global company today, you have to leverage many ecosystems. Okay. When I speak to founders and entrepreneurs, one of the main things that they point out is the idea of regulation and that they feel, some of them feel that Europe, as it generates a whole,

5:13it puts it difficult for founders in terms of scaling when it comes not only continent wide or country wide, but even just from university to the market. Right? Do you feel that is kind of a difficulty when it comes to Europe? I would say this is a difficulty in Europe, but everywhere. So look at the ESA aerospace, for example, that's a satellite launching company. Okay. So at the beginning, you need test sites, for example. And so this is heavy infrastructure, large infrastructure, and very noisy. Okay. So you probably can't do this in a place where there are a lot of people. So this meant for ESA, for example, to go to Sweden, because that's Europe, okay? And in Sweden, they have huge areas where you can have these test sites. Or then if you want to launch such a rocket, you can't launch it out of a country where there's

6:17a lot of population. So it ended up in Norway, the first launching site. And so this is what I mean with building global companies, meaning this company has attraction in many countries. And with ESA, it's mainly European, for example. But if you look at other companies from our ecosystem, like Silonis, for example, they started in Munich and then turned out the biggest marketers in DS. Now they have also a large presence in New York City. And this is how you build global companies. And then where's the value in that in connecting Kyrus Singapore? Because today, it was announced the partnership with NUS and your organization. So what's the value there in what you're seeing in Singapore that you can bring over to Europe? There's multiple values so far. As Singapore's one of the leading innovation ecosystems in the world. And especially great talents. So we are sitting here right now at NUS, which is one of the top 10

7:18universities in the world, great talent. And if you want to build great companies, and it's great people, then you need a lot of capital. And Singapore's one of the most wealthiest capital pools in the world. And last but not least, you need also customers. And in this case, I have a Singapore or as a bridge to other large Asian nations, Singapore is a great destination. And vice versa for our Singaporean friends, they not only want to serve Asian markets, but global markets, and then Europe is on the map. And then the question is, okay, where do you have a landing pad for that? Where do you have friends? Where can you build up your subsidiary and then Munich is a good choice? And so, you know, bridge goes both ways, right? So what can Europe bring into Singapore and kind of tying into that idea?

8:19How do you feel about kind of global talent supply chains? You know, is there interest in bringing Singaporean talent into Europe and vice versa? Exactly. And this is already done at scale. So for example, and we do not start in the later stages, we really start in the early phases. So NUS and TUM has a large exchange program for entrepreneurs students. So dozens of students per year are here from TUM here in Singapore and vice versa. And NUS is sending a great talent to Munich to get to know the Munich ecosystem, to get the know-how to build relations and out of this group of students, great companies evolve. So it's really long term thinking. It's not like, okay, we need now an opportunity and how can we do this? Now it's really building a long term ecosystem with hundreds and hundreds of people.

9:21How do you feel about the balance then between promoting international exchange and ideas and also promoting local talent and that local talent rising up and staying within their country and giving back to the economy? Is there a balance there? Absolutely. And so I think the joint vision is to create value, okay, and really at scale. And for that, it's a global game. And for our university TUM, this means also that we have a huge international student base. So over 40% of our students are non-German's, okay. And if you look then at the spin-offs of TUM, you see this talent base. So these companies are then built by people from Singapore, from Turkey, from the US, if Canada, you name it. Okay, so these people build a global thinking and they start global

10:24companies and they can turn out that they started from Munich. But if it's a global company, it will have many touch points in all the regions which matter. What do you feel then is a main challenge with the kind of university system in Europe right now to kind of move the industry along more? Is there, I mean, could we've already spoken on regulation so that that's one topic, but are there other elements that you feel could improve moving forward? So it's really, so it's about speed. So we have to speed up. And so TUM, for example, is a state on university. And what he said is, okay, if you want to preach entrepreneurship and be entrepreneurial, we have to be entrepreneurial ourselves. So the entrepreneurship center, also with the venture fund, UBC partners and and the entrepreneur to the entrepreneurship center, these are actually private organizations.

11:27And the entrepreneurship centers are non-for-profit limited company. And so we are not restricted to any state governance and so on. So we can act as entrepreneurs. And this is the reason why we are on a growth path for over 25 years now. So we grow about 25% per year, which means like every three years we double our operation and every 10 years we 10X our operations. So we really also have to be entrepreneurial ourselves and then we can bring this momentum also to our startups. And how are you promoting kind of young entrepreneurs to get involved in academics and the university system? Because if I think of the classical understanding of entrepreneur, you know, it's a guy in flip-flops who maybe didn't go to college, maybe even dropped out of college. Right? So I have to believe that there's probably an element to many entrepreneurs who must ask,

12:28why do I need the university system to begin with? So the USP is pretty easy. It's the perfect playground because you are a part of this talent base of this also reputation. So you're a part of this outstanding university. So it's easy that doors are open and you can use also all the knowledge and the infrastructure. For example, our universities has huge test sites, huge prototyping workshops, everything. As a solo entrepreneur, you have to first spend like half a million by all these machines. In our case, you go up to the registration desk of our makerspace, get your batch and then 20 minutes later you're sitting at the machine. Okay, and these are unfair advantages you have as a

13:29tomb startup. Right. This is by way, there are so many people coming to us from all over the world because it's for them a very good deal. Well, it's clearly working, but I think to wrap up here and just with my final question, I'm curious to know because you've just announced a partnership. So it's fresh, it's exciting. Where do you want to see it go five, 10 years from now? What does a successful evolution of the partnership look like with NUS? So if we build joint global team, so if we build joint Singaporean European success stories, global companies and which have a strong home and footprint here in Singapore and in Germany, if we can leverage the two strengths of both ecosystems. And I'm totally sure that this will happen. We did this before we've stand forward now for over 20 years and it's amazing and it's this global community

14:34of like-minded people who want to change the world in a positive way, want to create value and everybody's happy to be part of such a global community. Okay. Thank you very much, Helmut. What's the pleasure to man? Thank you.