TUM Entrepreneurship Day 2025
- Gunnar Gombert STRATEGY CONSULTING
- Jun 27
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
PropTechs in the Shadow of a Giant
Gunnar Gombert Strategy Consulting participated in the TUM Entrepreneurship Day, one of the leading innovation events in the German-speaking region. The event provided inspiring impulses, in-depth conversations with founders and investors, and valuable insights into the current startup landscape in the DACH region. Special thanks go to the Technical University of Munich and the organizing team for the kind invitation and the excellent platform for exchange.
Real Estate: Highly Relevant, Yet Underrepresented in the Startup Ecosystem
The real estate sector is a major pillar of the German economy:
Approximately 20% of GDP is directly or indirectly related to real estate.
Around 10% of the workforce is employed in the sector.
Despite its economic relevance, a recent analysis of funded startups (founded between 2014 and 2024) shows that only 4.8% in Germany, 4.4% in Austria, and 3.8% in Switzerland fall under the Real Estate category. Across the DACH region, the average share is just 4.6%—significantly below the sector's economic importance.
In comparison, sectors like Health, Enterprise Software, and Fintech show much higher shares, with Health reaching over 26% in Switzerland.
Why Is Real Estate Structurally Underrepresented?
Five key reasons explain the gap between the real estate sector's economic weight and its presence in the startup scene:
High Fragmentation: The real estate industry is not a unified market. It consists of multiple subdomains—from development and financing to operations, regulation, and technical services. This fragmentation makes scalable digital solutions difficult to implement.
Capital Intensity: Business models in real estate are often asset-heavy, long-term, and capital-intensive—posing challenges to typical VC expectations.
Regulatory Complexity: Entering the market requires deep knowledge of national and local legal frameworks, creating high entry barriers for many founders.
Low Data Transparency: Lack of standardization and limited data access make it hard to identify and address inefficiencies with technology.
Investor Focus: VCs tend to favor scalable, software-driven business models. Real estate is often viewed as too conservative or not digital enough.
Impulses from TUM Entrepreneurship Day
This is exactly why TUM Entrepreneurship Day is so valuable: it bridges academic excellence with entrepreneurial practice and brings technological innovation into dialogue with application sectors. The event highlighted the untapped potential in PropTech initiatives, especially when approached strategically and structurally.
High-impact areas include:
Digital ESG tools and automated reporting
AI-based location and market analytics
Platform solutions for operations and maintenance
Standardized interfaces to legacy systems
New investment and transaction models
Conclusion: From Silo to Platform – Time for Systemic Real Estate Innovation
The real estate sector is economically indispensable—yet structurally limited in terms of innovation. The TUM Entrepreneurship Day made clear that there is a strategic opportunity here: not technology for its own sake, but targeted solutions to address fragmentation, complexity, and inefficiency.
Gunnar Gombert Strategy Consulting supports companies and founders in closing this gap—with deep market knowledge, strategic guidance, and a firm understanding of real estate sector realities.
