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This is the second edition of the WHU Founder Report 2025, showcasing all WHU-founded startups that raised funding rounds in Q2 2025. This issue features three founder interviews: Mike Mahlkow (Fastgen, YC W23) shares his Silicon Valley insights, David Budde (trawa) reflects on his transition from consulting to entrepreneurship, and Moritz Wobith (LemonDocs) discusses founding a HealthTech startup during his master's at WHU.

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In addition, the report presents funding data collected by the WHU Entrepreneurship Center and highlights key developments within the WHU startup ecosystem.

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The Insurance Report 2025 by confluentes analyzes key trends and challenges facing the industry amidst technological disruption, demographic shifts, and stricter regulation. The insurance sector is undergoing a profound transformation: artificial intelligence, digital sales strategies, and evolving customer expectations are forcing insurers to rethink their business models. At the same time, increasing regulatory pressure – such as the EU AI Act and DORA – demands professionalization of governance and compliance structures. Strategic change management, forward-looking data architecture, and a modern corporate culture are becoming essential success factors.

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Through practical case studies, the report illustrates how confluentes effectively supports insurers in digital transformation, business model innovation, and regulatory readiness.

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This is the first edition of the WHU Founder Report 2025, which provides an overview of all WHU start-ups that closed a financing round in the first quarter of 2025. A special highlight of this issue are three interviews with leading players in the start-up and venture capital world.

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The DACH 2024 Private Equity Report analyses the most important trends and challenges in the sector. Rising interest rates, inflation and geopolitical uncertainties have tightened financing conditions, which led to an adjustment of investment strategies. Instead of leveraged takeovers, PE companies are increasingly focusing on operational optimization and strategic portfolio monitoring. ESG compliance is also becoming more important, even though standardized assessment methods are missing. Industry-specific, there are investment opportunities, particularly in technology, healthcare and renewable energy, while the semiconductor market is influenced by geopolitical developments. Despite a slight decline in deal activity, the DACH region remains stable compared to other European countries. Based on a case study, the report shows how Confluentes PE can support customers.

The new semester has just started, hence, for the confluentes Board 2023/24, the time in charge ends.

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The vision of confluentes is to be the leading student consultancy in Germany and to provide our consultants with the opportunity to engage in different and interesting projects with various customers from different industries, to broaden their horizons. As a consequence, confluentes would not be possible without all of our partners, and especially our consultants, which we would like to thank for all the hard work in 2024.

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We also want to express our gratitude to the leaving confluentes Board 2024, including Maximilian Borkowsky (MSc 2024), Peter Kasper (MSc 2025), Julius de Gruyter (BSc 2024), Ceyda Delibas (BSc 2025), Sophie Maser (BSc 2024), Aryo Omrani (MSc 2025) and Benjamin Pankrath (BSc 2024), and thank them for their dedication and hard work over the past months.

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It is our greatest pleasure to introduce the members of the new confluentes Board 2024 and hand over the daily operations to:

Chairman of the Board: Jonathan Fischer (MSc 2024)

Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board: Ben Litzinger (BSc 2025)

Members of the Executive Board:

Charlotte Kopp  (BSc 2025)

Olga Bartels (BSc 2025)

Johannes Niemöller (BSc 2025)

Leonard Wölk (BSc 2025)

Luis Brune (BSc 2025)

Mats Kühlenborg (BSc 2025)

Moritz Habetha (BSc 2025)

If you are interested in working with confluentes in the coming year, we look forward to hearing from you!