Peter M. Buch

Is the retail giant REWE Group building Germany’s first food-superapp? 🛒📲 Rewe has always been a pioneer in digital offers and now expands its portfolio with investments and partnerships. Last month alone, 2 deals hit the news: 1️⃣ Rewe participated in Flink's new funding round of 150$mn valued at ~900$mn (down about 70% since its peak valuation). With this cash injection, Flink plans to break even in Q2 2025, apparently having reached operational profitability in selected markets already today. Also they plan to open 30 additional warehouses. 2️⃣ Lieferando and Rewe announced a partnership, providing access to 3000 SKUs of Rewe’s assortment via Lieferando’s app, delivered by Lieferando’s courier network. “Rewe Express” promises delivery times of 45 minutes, closing the gap between Rewe’s scheduled delivery and Flink’s ultrafast delivery. With the new offers, Rewe now ticks many boxes that I expect from a food-superapp, combining all things food, and beyond: ✅ Brick and mortar stores ✅ Click and collect ✅ Scheduled delivery ✅ Quick-commerce (via Flink and Lieferando) ✅ Offer promotions in app  ✅ Digital travel agency  ❌ The only piece missing is food delivery. Did you know that the Russian chains X5 and Magnit are also at the frontier of supermarket tech? ➡️ Magnit has integrated AI to monitor inventory at shelf level, ensuring products (including 5000 pharmacy SKUs) are always available for their 30 minute delivery & click and collect. ➡️ Meanwhile, X5 Group deploys smart shopping carts, automatically scanning products for a frictionless checkout. I’ve just talked about why the concept of the food-superapp is so appealing at a conference and will share the takeaways here, soon. 

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Who else sees it? Corona has generated a disproportionate wave of demand. However, the majority of these were probably simply early purchases. No wonder, since during the lockdown people had the capital but very few spending options, and the e-bike was already in demand but scarce. As a result, many people seem to have simply brought forward their purchases. This explains the two years of over-proportional sales. However, the purchases that were brought forward are missing in the subsequent period, which explains the two poorer years. If the exaggeration of the Corona years had not occurred, the market would probably have grown stably once again (despite inflation, war and political uncertainties). However, it cannot be ignored that the self-made “overstock pandemic” and the associated disastrous price wars have led to a massive self-destruction of the industry. Uncertain, wait-and-see and therefore increasingly hesitant customers are (understandably) currently the result. What should we learn from this?

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My most favorite articles (and maybe the only ones??) on how to find the Aha-moment in your product: In no specific order 👉 How to Discover Your App’s ‘Aha Moment’ by Parsa Saljoughian https://lnkd.in/eBAcNpen 👉 Facebook's "Aha" Moment Was Simpler Than You Think By Benn Stancil https://lnkd.in/gMBmVAQ3 👉 A-ha moments in the product: a systematic approach to search By Paul Levchuk https://lnkd.in/gRcPfEpk This one is in Russian, I read it with the help of browser translation into English. There is SO LITTLE writing about hands-on approaches and how to ACTUALLY find the Aha-moment, if you have more resources please share them in the comments. I'd love to add them to my Notion knowledge base. #productmanagement #BCnoBSprodmgmt #productAnalytics #productMetrics  

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Exciting news in the world of angel investing is rare these days, which makes me even more thrilled to share a "double dose" of good news 🎉 – Novaheal GmbH has successfully exited to AMBOSS, a company well on its way to becoming one of Germany’s next unicorns 🦄. This news is particularly exciting for me as I’m indirectly invested in Novaheal through my early investment in allygatr, an "operative HR Tech VC". This makes it a double win ✌️: not only does allygatr now have a stake in a potential unicorn, but it also highlights allygatr’s unique edge over other investors in the HR space. Allygatr's unfair advantage comes from their deep network of investors with extensive HR market expertise. This network enables them to accelerate HR startups’ growth through mentorship, faster product iteration, and securing MVP customers to test solutions in real-world environments 🚀. Additionally, allygatr’s connections help identify strategic exit opportunities, as seen in this success with Novaheal 🔑. But what’s the real secret behind allygatr’s success? Better access to deals 🔥. Founders in the HR Tech space know about allygatr’s network, and as a result, allygatr often funds pre-seed rounds that other investors never even see 👀. Basically allygatr is a "German Y Combinator for HR Tech". We hoped this would happen 3 years ago when we started allygatr (big shout to Mr. Allygatr Benjamin Visser) and it is amazing to see how it now bears first fruit! 🍇 Therefore: Congrats to Novaheal on this fantastic exit, and a huge shoutout to allygatr for their clear and clever investment strategy! 🎊👏 (and big thanks to my smart allygatr co-investors who helped Novaheal and many other startups: Jochen Eckhold, Michael Ensser, Pierre Dejonghe, Matthias Klaesener, Dirk Mundorf, Harald Poeschke, Christine Rittner, Cindy Rubbens, Carolin Schneider, Jens-Martin Schwärzler, Robindro Ullah, Tim Verhoeven, Marc Müller, Olav Sehlbach, Romy von Roeder .... and many more!)

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🌍 Explore the vibrant startup landscape in Germany! Our detailed list features key information on funded startups, including their investors and markets. Don’t miss out—access it here: https://lnkd.in/dpdZUJyi #startup #startups #venturecapital #funding #vc #B2B

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Bye bye enduco. 🥲 ..at least as the companies CEO. A startup journey is full of crazy ups and crazy downs. So far, we’ve managed to handle all of them well together, but after 6.5 years, I took the chance of handing my role over to Lennard. Making highly individual endurance training (and more and more: coaching) accessible to a broader range of people, who so far might have been limited in access to such kind of training, who did not want to work with a human coach (yes, thats customer feedback), or who, for whatever other reason decided to tust a digital coach over a human one – those were the ideas, the visions, that made me started working on what the enduco app is today. This journey surely has been filled with countless challenges and wins, and I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved together as a team. This success would not have been possible without the dedication and passion of every team member, partner, and supporter. I really am deeply grateful for your trust and commitment, which have been the bedrock of enduco’s growth and achievements. Being on my side almost from the beginning, Lennard, being our COO over the past years, will now take over leading the company, while I’ll support him and all the others from the sidelines. 🤝 PS: The pic isn't the most recent one, but that day captured the spirit I loved at enduco pretty well. Keep it up guys!

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As investors, it’s always tough to say no to founders, especially when you have taken time for diligence. An additional challenge when it comes to feedback: choosing between being frank or being "nice." Founders also often feel that VC feedback lacks specificity or adds little value. After spending some time as an investor, I made a conscious decision to take the harder route of being blunt, even if it risked making founders feel bad. In hindsight, I believe it’s been the right choice. Most founders appreciate the candor, feel heard, and have gone on to become long-term friends of the fund. So, I’m taking the liberty of sharing a few of those difficult conversations we’ve had over time: 1. Declining due to lack of customer insight: We recently passed on a couple of high pedigree teams because they hadn’t spent enough time talking to their customers to understand the problem to be solved. 2. Lack of key skills on the team: In some cases, we declined based on the absence of specific key skills in the team, like GTM or strong business thinking. 3. Team chemistry: In one case, we told the CEO — who was a new addition to the 3 member founding team — that it would be difficult for him to gel with the other two co-founders. 4. Failure to unlearn from past successes: In another case, we passed because the founders weren’t showing signs of unlearning from their past successful ventures. 5. Role of co-founders: We once had to tell a two-founder team that their roles should be reversed — that the CEO should actually be the COO, and vice versa. Imagine us telling founders how to structure their roles 🙂 6. And the hardest one: We had to decline a founder we really liked because we didn’t believe in their thesis. This one hurt because we knew how much the team matters in the early stages. At the same time, if we invested, the debate was: a) Will we be able to support the founder on the board if we don't agree with their thesis?, b) If we don’t see eye-to-eye by the next round, will we be able to continue funding the company? As always, founders time and again prove us wrong. I’m sure this will be true in many of the above cases. But my strong preference is to share what I conclude (no matter how shallow my thinking might be) rather than fake a reason.

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I was working in fashion sales when Apple released the Snow Leopard system. Safe to say, my world was not rocked. But as our CTO, Dominik Wilkowski explains, that release wasn’t about turning heads—it was about building a stronger foundation. Shopify’s latest update, “The Boring Edition,” takes a page out of that playbook. It’s all about refining the essentials: smarter checkouts, AI tools like Sidekick, and optimisations that make life easier for merchants and developers alike. Quiet progress, big impact. Dom’s article dives into why sometimes the “boring” work is what drives lasting success. Curious? Read all the details here: https://lnkd.in/gRVCQMvu #shopifyeditions #wintereditions25 #ecommerce #shopifyplus

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Product tags are ✨ GOLD ✨ for your Catalog Ads They basically help your consumers understand why they should buy this product. Right now. Catalog Ads that leverage this strategy see a 30% better Cost Per Purchase on average. Think about the tags you already use on your shop—“Sale,” “New Arrival,” “Exclusive.” Zalando is a great example. They use tags like "Deal", "Kids", "Exclusive", or "Plus-Size" to make their ads more relevant to shoppers. Why does this work? - Shoppers quickly spot what they’re looking for. - Some tags ("Limited Edition", "Back in Stock", and alike) create urgency and exclusivity. You’re already tagging products for your site. Why not use those same tags in your Catalog Ads? It's a potential gold mine :) Info about the data for the nerds: Data is based on 6.5B impressions and $30.8M ad spend from December 2023 to September 2024. Data is across 568 ecommerce advertisers all over the world, using 3k different designs in the time period. All the Catalog Ads in the study were designed with Confect 🍬

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Diary of a female founder seeking 1M investment pre-seed for FemTech - It's dawning on me that I might be insane for trying. Angelika Birk, Beate Rosenthal, Ellen K. Fischer, Svenja Lassen Ida Tin what do you think? Come with me on my journey from idea to pre-seed funding! This will be a series pretty much live as I go though the process. Tag who could be interested. What happend so far? I went to a conference and studied regulatory developments in my field and 🥁 🥁 🥁 I had an idea. If said regulation was lifted, a new market would open. It's a first mover topic and I am hyped. I fall in love 💘 with the idea. Before I propose to get married to the idea though (e.g. invest a lot of time and money) I talk to my co-founder and we decide how much "time budget" I can allocate to the idea over the next 31 days. On day 31 we will deecide with the traffic light system if the idea gets another 31 days 💚 💛 💔 So, in order to pitch my idea I need slides - FAST! I type up the voice line as I am pretty strong with words and send it to Christian Völlinger at Virtual Entity and without a CI, without any visuals or anything other than my voice line and basically in no time (4 days including a weekend) he whips out a pitch deck that can look for it's likes. It's SMASHING! I win over 2 doctors, an owner of a software development company and a marketer over the weekend and have a first investor who sits on a 100M fund lined up for today. I sit in the meeting and they pull a no show. WOW. That feeling when you're in love but the love is not returned. As I type this I am picking up my 👑 , dusting myself off and moving on for the next possibility that might come my way. I don't dwell on rejection. AND THEN: my phone rings. It's the investor. STAY TUNED for the next episode! (This woman below is looking for 1,000,000€ ⤵)

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founders: this is a good summary of why VCs reject you, though keep in mind that stellaris isn't an early stage fund. that is, it's just fine if you haven't figured out everything in the early days. but by the time you are raising series A, you need to have clarity on many fronts- Just don't wait for everything to fall in place before you startup.

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"Most founders start planning their next funding round too late." The best time to start working on your next funding round is right after closing the previous one, by drafting the new fundraising deck immediately. This inspiring topic we discussed during my latest workshop with our portfolio company Valuecase with Dr. Jan Niklas Wick & Lennart Prange and Mika Weissenberger from XAnge. I've noticed a pattern among our most successful founders they're already visualizing and planning their next milestones while the ink is still drying on their current term sheet. The strategy is simple: Work backwards from the next funding round! Here’s a quick example: One of our portfolio founders wrapped up their Seed and immediately mapped out their Series A milestones in a draft deck (such as Paul Hock & Nina Germanus @ Green Fusion GmbH). Six months later, not only were those goals achieved, but the original deck turned into the blueprint for their next pitch. They saved valuable time and secured a successful future by having a clear plan from the start. Here’s why this "VC manifesting" approach works: 📍 Crystallizes the goals for your next milestone. 📊 Creates clear accountability to achieve them. 🎨 Shapes the narrative evolution of your company. 🧭 Provides a north star for team alignment. The (next round’s) deck becomes more than just a fundraising tool, it’s your company’s strategic compass. And here’s the magic: when you actually hit those milestones, the deck becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re not scrambling to piece together a narrative at the last minute; you’ve documented the journey from the beginning. Pro tip: - Include specific numbers. - Make it a living document. - Review it quarterly. - Let it evolve with your learnings and market dynamics. This approach ensures the final version is stronger, clearer, and ready when you need it. Remember, the best founders don’t just build to raise, they raise to build. Having a clear picture of your next chapter? That’s just smart business. What’s your process for preparing your next funding round? Would you try working backwards like this? #VentureCapital #Startups #Entrepreneurship #Fundraising

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Are you looking to elevate your e-commerce game with a new webshop? Look no further than Gambio GmbH! Trusted by over 25,000 businesses, our ECOMMERCE ONE portfolio company Gambio GmbH offers a robust, all-in-one webshop solution tailored to meet the needs of startups and established enterprises alike. Key Benefits: 🌐 Hosting in Germany: Enjoy the peace of mind that comes with hosting your online shop in Germany, coupled with exceptional German customer support. Our servers ensure top-notch performance and security. 🛠️ Ease of Use: No coding skills? No problem! Gambio's intuitive interface allows you to set up and customize your shop effortlessly. With our StyleEdit tool, you can design a professional-looking store without any technical know-how. 🔍 SEO Optimized: Enhance your online visibility with our built-in SEO tools. From search engine-friendly URLs to automatic sitemaps, Gambio helps your shop rank higher and attract more customers. 📊 Comprehensive Features: Benefit from extensive functionalities including multilingual support, SSL & data protection, automatic updates, and a wide range of free themes. Our platform supports unlimited articles and categories, making it scalable for your growing business. 👥 Community & Support: Join a vibrant community of merchants and get access to our customer portal for continuous support and updates. Set up your own shop in seconds at www.gambio.com

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What would you wish to have told your 10 year younger self? Here are some pieces of advice. From Christoph Deckert, Strategy Expert at Personio & a16z scout. 1/ Invest in your passion. This is the main driver behind everything. Let it come through. Let us see your passion. 2/ Nurture your relationships. Personal. Professiomal. All kinds. People will always support people. 3/ Trust yourself. Trust your skills. Trust what you can achieve. What about you? What piece of advice would you offer to your younger self? #venturecapital #angelinvesting #startupfunding #europe

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🚨 Red Alert for Germany’s Startup Ecosystem: A 30% Drop in Active Investors – How Can We Keep the Innovation Engine Running? A recent article from Handelsblatt (link in comments) points out that early-stage startups are especially at risk during this downturn since they depend on venture capital to scale. The expanding funding gap will further stifle growth in areas where innovation is most needed. Yet, within this challenge lies opportunity: 🌱 Resilient Sectors Lead the Way Sectors like #GreenTech and #AI are still drawing investment, showing their potential to drive innovation. These industries highlight where Germany can have the most significant impact. 🏠 Family Offices as Growth Catalysts As traditional investors pull back, family offices can step up. By leveraging patient capital, they can empower promising startups and lay the foundation for long-term success. 🤝 Venture Clienting as a Key to Co-Innovation Strategic partnerships between startups and established businesses bridge the funding gap. These alliances not only drive digital transformation but also deliver mutual value and foster innovation. At D11Z. Ventures, we believe Germany’s competitive edge depends on collaboration. That's why we invest in high-potential startups and create co-innovation opportunities with family offices and industry leaders. Together, we're fostering an ecosystem that drives innovation and supports long-term growth. 🚀 💬 How can family offices and industry leaders support the next wave of startup innovation? Share your ideas below! #D11ZVentures #Innovation #StartupEcosystem #VentureCapital #InnovationLeadership #FamilyOffices #CoInnovation #ArtificialIntelligence

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These are the new figures for German e-commerce - HDE Online Monitor 2024 📊 54 percent of German e-commerce sales were generated via online marketplaces in 2023 - according to the HDE in the new edition of its Online Monitor 2024. My great Co-Founder Ingrid Lommer already posted the detailed figures to this: https://lnkd.in/daTR5H-j The data from the Online Monitor is always a perfect basis to look at the marketplacebusiness in Germany.  It simply shows at a glance how incredibly dominant Amazon is in German e-commerce - and how difficult it is to do without online marketplaces in the sales mix. But let's start from the beginning: according to the study presented a few weeks ago by Handelsverband Deutschland e.V. (HDE) and IFH COLOGNE, German e-commerce turnover in 2023 was 85.4 billion euros, around 1 percent more than in the previous year. Disclaimer: This figure differs significantly from the Bundesverband E-Commerce und Versandhandel Deutschland e.V. (bevh)'s calculation, which predicted a 1.8 per cent decline in sales for German e-commerce in 2023. The reasons for the differences are complicated and lie in the methodology... To put it simply, the bevh surveys German online consumers once a week about their online spending, while the HDE surveys German companies once a year about their online revenue (B2C). If consumers don't admit that they shopped at Temu again last week and companies attribute their cross-border sales to the German company, discrepancies arise between the two perspectives. There are many more reasons. If you want a deep dive on this, let us know. A whopping 60 percent of these 85.4 billion euros are turned over on Amazon.de! 17 percent is accounted for by Amazon's own business (own brands + vendors), 43 percent via the Marketplace (sellers). And 11 percent of e-commerce sales - or 9.3 billion euros - are generated by other marketplaces such as eBay, OTTO, Kaufland Global Marketplace, Zalando, Douglas, MediaMarktSaturn... according to HDE. This means that the marketplace business model's share of sales in German e-commerce has once again risen slightly - but it was almost exclusively Amazon that was able to secure the additional market share. Nevertheless, the other marketplaces also increased their sales - or to put it another way: Online growth in Germany in 2023 took place on Amazon and a few other marketplaces. Nowhere else. How is your experience in the German ecommerce business from last year? Do you agree to those numbers? Where do you see a difference? AND what do you think about the domination of Amazon? Let´s share it in the comments.

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