2026-10-01
The rare program types in Germany
On Haus, the German stack is lopsided: 172 accelerators and 126 incubators, then a handful of everything else. The rest of the file is two fellowships, two bootcamps, one venture builder, six competitions, and one grant. Use those rarer types when the mechanic matches the job. exist Women is a university-gated qualification. Berlin Startup School’s 10-week bootcamp is a taught build class. DLR_Startup Factory is company-building on DLR technology, while BayStartUP and WECONOMY are networks and juries rather than cohorts that live with you.
What exist Women actually funds
exist Women is for women at Hochschulen and research institutes who already have a first founding idea. The live program page describes up to ten months of qualification, mentoring, and a mandatory two-day Gründerin seminar in Berlin or Munich. Participants can receive 2,000 euros in Sachmittel. Some also get an optional three-month stipend of 1,000 to 3,000 euros, depending on status, plus 150 euros per child. Hochschulen apply on your behalf. You do not cold-pitch the Bund.
The design is an on-ramp into EXIST Gründungsstipendium or Forschungstransfer. If you need twelve months of living-cost cover for a science team, you are looking at those later instruments, not this one. Haus lists one other fellowship: innoclub in Dortmund. We did not open that page for this piece, so we will not invent its terms. Start from the exist Women page if you need the qualification year, and from EXIST itself if you need the stipend stack.
How the bootcamp and the venture builder work
Berlin Startup School’s 10-Week Startup Bootcamp is a taught sequence: four weeks of validation, then six weeks of MVP work. The cohort is 20 to 30 people, with a Monday check-in at 18:00 and a workshop at 19:00. Kick-off and demo day are hybrid. The official landing page does not publish a price. It does mention a money-back FAQ and an accelerator fast lane they are trying to restart with a 2,200 euro monthly grant per founder. Haus marks the bootcamp equity-free, which only answers the share question.
DLR_Startup Factory is the only Haus listing typed venture builder. Official terms run through five stages from ideation to financing, and DLR technology is required. The door is open to DLR staff and to external founders who want to build on that tech. Helmholtz Future Innovators sits at the front of the path. Under certain conditions DLR may take a shareholder seat later. If your product has no DLR link, this one is closed.
What competitions actually give you
BayStartUP is Bavaria’s startup-financing network. It runs regional business-plan competitions and a Female Founders Contest. The organization claims that its investor network places around 50 million euros a year. On Haus the listing is based in Nuremberg. The useful output is a map, a jury, and a deadline, plus a way into Bavarian angels. It will not give you lab space or a weekly cohort room.
WECONOMY, run by Wissensfabrik with UnternehmerTUM and Handelsblatt, has been picking teams since 2007. Their own line is that winners get what money cannot buy: time with German C-suites. For the 2026 cycle the page listed applications from 1 May to 30 June, a Top-20 jury on 1 October 2026 in Ludwigshafen, then themed WECONOMY Tage into 2027. CureVac and komoot sit in the alumni reel. The format assumes you can use a boardroom conversation. Teams that are still naming the company will get less out of it.