Business angel Birte Kattelmann-Jagdt screened about 200 German startups and made 10 green tech investments since May 2024. Her rule: being greener is not enough. Your product has to be cheaper, faster and better. Host Jörn "Joe" Menninger asks her what that means for founders and investors in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Full blog post and sources:
Read the full episode notes on Startuprad.io
Why this episode matters: Birte spent more than 20 years at BASF and in corporate advisory before she started investing her own money. She won the first BAAR Green Angels Award NRW in 2026. She knows how large industrial companies buy, and that is where most climate tech startups win or fail. This is one of our investor interviews for german startups that sell to industry and for anyone building growth partnerships with corporates.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why she only invests when at least one woman is an operating co-founder with real equity and a real vote
- What makes a pre-seed funding pitch investable, and the 2 patterns that make her pass
- Why nobody pays extra for green, and the "Cheaper, Faster, Better" test from Tom Steyer's book
- How big companies really decide: outside triggers, hidden budget owners, 12 to 18 month sales cycles
- The €5 million to €50 million funding gap for hardware-heavy green tech in Germany
- Why North Rhine-Westphalia, Aachen and the Ruhr are underrated for industrial climate tech
Chapters:
00:00 Why a corporate advisor became a green tech angel
02:47 From advising transformation to financing it
05:55 How industrial companies really change
08:41 What financial investors miss in green tech
11:51 Capital as responsibility: 2 non-negotiables
14:40 Female founders: the data behind the rule
20:40 10 deals from 200 pitches
24:14 Cheaper, faster, better: greener is not enough
28:28 Courage to confront: questions founders need
35:45 Green tech as industrial infrastructure
41:37 The €5–50M valley of death
43:10 Selling into large industrial corporates
45:05 NRW: an underrated green tech region
47:48 What to prove before your first angel meeting
55:26 One principle: clarity first
Related episode: Germany's AI Bottleneck May Be Electricity
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Host: Jörn "Joe" Menninger, founder of Startuprad.io, Frankfurt am Main. Joern Menninger on LinkedIn
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