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Competitive advantage diversity:

Gülsah Wilke

(m.) starts the investment vehicle with

Soheil Mirpour

(l.) and

Sophie Chung

Photo: PR (3)

Sophie Chung

(40) did it.

The doctor has now received more than ten million euros in venture capital for her health start-up Qunomedical.

At the beginning, investors and founders often told her that she shouldn't get her hopes up too much.

She heard more than once that she had “hardly a chance.”

Chung, whose parents fled from Cambodia to Austria in the 1970s, believes that others gave her such limited opportunities because she looks different than most founders in this country.

Of course, no investor said this to her face.

But it wasn't the first time in her life that Chung had the experience: "For anyone with a migration background, being underestimated is nothing new." And she's not alone in that.

“Access can be very difficult,” says ex-Rocket Internet board member

Soheil Mirpour

(34), who now runs an AI start-up.

Mirpour, whose family comes from Iran, experienced this firsthand.

And that despite an impeccable CV with positions at the WHU business university and in investment banking at Morgan Stanley and KKR.

To make things easier for the next generation of founders, Mirpour and Chung have now joined forces with around 80 other private investors (business angels).

Her new investment club is called 2hearts Angel Collective.

The goal: make money – and at the same time make the start-up scene more diverse.

Disadvantaged when it comes to financing

According to an analysis by the startup association, one in five founders in Germany today comes from an immigrant family.

And in a good 60 percent of German start-ups with billion dollar valuations, at least one founder has a migration background.

Nevertheless, it remains more difficult for this group to convince venture capitalists.

According to the report, first-generation migrant founders received an average of only 1.1 million euros in external capital in 2021 - less than half of what start-ups normally raise on average (2.6 million euros).

And this despite the fact that founders with an immigrant background are often better educated than their competitors.

The new investment club emerges from the 2hearts initiative of the same name.

This started around three years ago as a mentoring program to support young people with a migration background in the tech industry.

Or, as 2hearts puts it: for those with two hearts in their chest because they grew up in two cultures.

The idea came about by chance, says investor

Gülsah Wilke

(36), one of the initiators of 2hearts.

She and other members have already invested in companies that were started by founders from the 2hearts network.

“And at some point we thought about how we could approach this more systematically.”

Wilke immediately found three volunteer leaders for the investment club in her network: the founder

Richy Ugwu

(35), the investor

Selma Meryem Peters

(27) and the PR agency boss

Tolgay Azman

(33).

The entire group organizes itself via the communication platform Slack.

There, the investors share the due diligence of the start-ups with each other, i.e. the precise examination of the business figures, the market and the founders themselves. If you want, you can then invest as an individual investor or together with others.

According to the organizers, an investment fund could emerge from the collective at some point.

There are two requirements for the founders who pitch an investment to the 2hearts Angels: There must be at least one person with a migration background in the founding team.

And it has to be a classic case for venture capitalists, i.e. a business model that can grow exponentially.

“Not a pity event”

In recent years, women's networks in particular have emerged in Germany's start-up scene.

The proportion of female founders has stagnated for years at just around 20 percent.

A living example: Encourage Ventures.

The network was founded by

former SAP top manager

Ina Schlie (56), together with other prominent women from business such as the current Weleda boss and ex-Douglas CEO

Tina Müller

(55), railway board member

Sigrid Nikutta 

(54 ) or Mulit supervisory board member

Simone Menne

(63).

According to the company's own information, 550 donors have now registered and have invested in several hundred start-ups via the network.

According to Gülsah Wilke's plans, the 2hearts club should quickly achieve a three-digit number of investments per year.

Ideally, the approximately 80 backers should conclude two to three deals a year, says Wilke.

“They shouldn’t become index corpses.”

Ex-Rocket board member Soheil Mirpour also has corresponding intentions.

Now that he has left the crumbling Samwer empire, he wants to invest more privately.

During his time at Rocket Internet, he said he was responsible for around 50 investments for the fund.

Mirpour describes himself as having “strict investment discipline”.

The criteria for why he joins a company remain the same, he asserts: regardless of whether he invests via 2hearts or elsewhere.

“This is not a pity event,” says Qunomedical boss Sophie Chung. For her, the focus is on the economic advantages of being part of the investment club.

She hopes to gain access to interesting entrepreneurial teams.

Many founders with a migration background had “the experience of always having to prove themselves, of always working a little harder than others or of being able to deal with scarce resources”.

These are personalities that Chung also wants to bet on as an investor.

The real question for her is: “If, despite all these difficulties, there are already so many entrepreneurs with a migration background – how many would there be if it weren’t so hard for them?”

Co-investor Wilke

emphasizes that 2hearts is committed to an open and free society - and that the German economy simply cannot afford not to attract appropriate talent.

The correctiv revelations about plans to deport people of foreign origin that are being made in the AfD environment are alarming the investors in the new club.

They point out that Germany is already becoming increasingly unpopular with foreign skilled workers.

“If we want Germany to remain competitive, we have to fight for every individual,” says Soheil Mirpour.