The big list of German HRTech Startups

5 min readJul 12, 2018

As part of my recent project with one of the leading HR Tech Conferences, I researched HR tech startups globally and was specifically interested in the GSA region and their uprising and NextGen of HR Solutions. The label #hrtech is not (yet) a sexy one inspite of the VC money allocated on HR solutions just this year (Kudos to George LaRoque for compiling this) — with an overall investment of +1.3bn USD. But it is still tricky to research companies in that field since it is very broad, scattered and dominated by #TalentAcquistion solutions.

My taxonomy of segments and subsegments has +50 labels alone and is not even as sophisticated as Jonathan’s Ecosystem from TTL (just released in V 7.0!). Because there are soooo many #PointSolutions = startups tackling an isolated problem puzzle piece in the whole underdigitized world of #HR. Or as market genius Thomas explained it to me once

“When I look at startups, I segment them by: is it a feature, a product, a company or a whole market”.

And I agree this is true for a lot of the especially young companies and no surprise given that it is brutally hard to sell software to (hardly experienced) tech buyers like HR and even more difficult to raise money from VCs for a founder in #HRTech — so yes, they need to start somewhere and don’t scale as fast as other startup segments.

Because on top of having one of the hardest B2B Sales Jobs ever, HR Tech Startups will have a hard time finding Angel investors or VCs dedicated on HR Tech. There are few individuals as an exception (e.g. Wendy, Fabian, Nick, Andreas or Devyani to name a few) that are visible and approachable for seed financing. There are people There are of course the big players like Kelly, Persol, Randstad, Adecco, Cornerstone and SAP with dedicated activities around company building, investment and partnering — but everyone seems to wait for a big VC to show up and build a fund just for #HRTech. (Apart from GreatRok who are focussed only on #SeedStage AFAIK).

Having said all this, I was still impressed to see that Germany has a great variety and overall respectful amount of HR related startups — and it feels as this is getting more and more. Led by the success of companies like TalentWunder, Tandemploy or Personio, there are now around 120 companies working on solutions to #Digitize HR as a function, make #employer-employee interactions smarter or even help #jobseekers struggling with building a career. Some of them seem to just put band aid on broken processes with nice UI/UX but some fundamentally question legacy procedures like #PerformanceReview, #JobMatching or #non-flexible work. #Coaching and #Wellbeing seems to be a topic on the rise in an economy where everyone might be interested to optimize themselves but not really desperately looking for a job.

With that amount of companies, we should be able to be visible internationally — yet most of the below mentioned companies focus on the German Speaking Region and have not (dared to?) go international. Why is that? Because the market, especially with a strong SME ecosystem, is sufficiently good? Because they fear the (e.g. UK?) international competition? Because they don’t have sufficient backing financially?

So here is the looooong but surely not full list of companies from #Germany (Switzerland and Austria to follow soon) I have tracked so far and will keep an eye on.

And yes, the term “startup” is a tough one and has led to discussions with thought leaders (or call them influencers or just the “inner circle of HR Tech” :D) like William, Bill or Hung. Some of those companies will shy away (for good branding reasons) from the startup label, some might still benefit from it.

PS: If your company is missing, ping me or comment so I can add you to the list! I help HR Tech startups grow by advising them, matching them with investors and potential clients. I like to help HR practitioners understand the current HRTech landscape better in order to understand technologies applied in HR and make buying decisions. I also work with and for investors interested in financing esp. early stage HR tech companies. Find out more at www.frauott.com or ping me via anna@frauott.com. I also run an #HRTechMeetup in Berlin with & and the Secret HR Society with (HR Tech Founder) . Follow me on or for updates.

The List

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on July 12, 2018.

The big list of German HRTech Startups

The List

Written by Anna Ott