If someone sprinkles salt from Egypt on a pretzel, that's already an innovation in Berlin," says the founder, who - the pretzel gives it away - comes from Stuttgart and shortly afterwards regrets the sentence so much that he prefers not to be quoted with it.

To put it bluntly, the statement sums up quite well what some people in the Swabian start-up scene think about the hustle and bustle in Berlin.

Gustave parts

Business correspondent in Stuttgart.

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There – as quite a few here see it – allegedly innovative business models are first celebrated and pumped full of money, only to take a dip when investors become more cautious, as is currently the case in view of the economic crisis.

They lay people off, withdraw meekly after a few months from markets they just wanted to conquer, and valuations plummet.

In Stuttgart, on the other hand, as the founders describe it, everything is a bit more solid, rational and down-to-earth.

But maybe that's why it's less dynamic than in the capital.

"Stuttgart can benefit from the bursting bubble," says Martin Weber, one of the founders of Sparetech.

The company has developed software that gives industrial companies a better overview of their spare parts.

Employees who have been fired from start-ups in Berlin are currently looking around for new employers and are increasingly contacting them, he says.

But even on the part of the investors, none of the founders feel a waning interest, contrary to the trend in the start-up world.

A cluster of supply chain startups

This applies in particular to a cluster of companies from the Stuttgart area that were founded in recent years, are currently growing rapidly and are dealing with an issue that burdens the industry more than almost anything else: the supply chain.

In addition to Sparetech, there is Laserhub, which has built a platform primarily for metal parts: if a company needs such parts, it can turn to Laserhub, who will then forward the order to producers.

There is Partscloud, which takes care of the logistics for spare parts.

And then there's Markt-Pilot, which reads price data online and can thus help machine builders in particular to set their prices better - and thus earn more money.

As is almost always the case with start-ups in the south-west, they are all business-to-business (B2B) business models, so the customers are not private individuals but companies.

An old, modernized factory building, in the center of a metropolis, the walls are made of brick, old pipes on the ceiling - that is the natural dwelling of a start-up.

Not a more than 500 year old, winding half-timbered house in a small Swabian town.

But here, in the center of the picturesque old town in Esslingen, located in the Stuttgart bacon belt, market pilot boss Tobias Rieker (27) welcomes him for an interview.

The conference room is framed by old beams, the ceilings are low from the Middle Ages, and on this midsummer day the hose of a mobile air conditioner hangs out of one of the crooked windows, cooling the room down to working temperature.

He talks about his own experiences in the industry.

He did internships with the mechanical engineers in the region, which pass as small family businesses in the southwest, although they are larger than the largest companies in entire federal states in eastern Germany.

"I took care of the pricing strategy every time, and every time I had the same problem: I didn't have any market data." Rieker, as he says today, went there and, together with a software developer, automated the data search to make it faster and more thorough find out how much the companies can charge for their spare parts.

"My former supervisor then showed me an evaluation: We generated more than 3 million euros in contribution margin." He first founded a small business with the software developer,

At the same time, after secondary school, Rieker did his technical qualifications, an apprenticeship and an engineering degree at the Esslingen University of Applied Sciences.

The first customer recommended him.