By Teshia Treuhaft, Chief of Staff at Senic
When you walk into Eureka Park at CES (the startup area at the largest consumer electronic trade show in the world) it’s always absolutely incredible to see the rows upon rows of French, American and Israeli startups making hardware products.
However, as a young company from Berlin, it’s perhaps more shocking to see the utter lack of German Hardware Startups represented. Walking around the trade show floor, we are constantly asking why there aren’t more of us coming from the country renowned for quality engineering and manufacturing. We want to find ways to change that.
I originally moved to Berlin after graduating from the Masters of Furniture Design program at the Rhode Island School of Design. I came to Germany to research and explore the European hardware scene and meet the makers, hackers and community organizers that were helping to build awesome new projects and products.
After completing research, I spent time working with accelerator program HARDWARE.co and eventually joined an alumni startup, Senic GmbH, to launch our first product.
Having spent over 3 years in the German hardware scene, one of the most striking things I have discovered is that the scene offers amazing resources but is still fragmented.
It can take years to get an overview of the players and immerse yourself in the scene. There are so many companies doing cool things you almost never find at typical startup meetups, and valuable manufacturing connections are often made in cities like Triberg or Ingolstadt, not in Berlin (where most of the startups are based).
One of the most important observations I have made over the years has been that the startups in Germany don’t have a simple platform to attract the best employees, get noticed by investors, get in touch with manufacturers or spread the word about their amazing products.
That’s why I’m excited to report that Team Senic has launched a small side project called German Hardware Startups to provide value to the startups like us who are developing physical products.
It’s pretty simple — we want to make a newsletter…
This newsletter will be a simple way to give access to this booming scene. It’s been created for the startups, by the startups to share job postings, announcements, interesting information, events and news.
If you want to support the German hardware scene, looking for a job in hardware, love physical products or simply want to see what’s going on, I would love to invite you to join our newsletter.
Please also take this as an invitation to share back and get in touch with me at teshia@germanhardwarestartups.com — together I think we can make hardware not quite so hard.
All the warmest,
Teshia + Team Senic
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Teshia Treuhaft is the Chief of Staff at Senic GmbH. She likes chairs, Berlin summers and hates karaoke.
