{"id":336902,"date":"2025-12-09T23:50:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T23:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/angel-investor\/urte-zahn-helping-entrepreneurs-grow\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T23:50:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T23:50:45","slug":"urte-zahn-helping-entrepreneurs-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=336902","title":{"rendered":"Urte Zahn: Helping Entrepreneurs Grow"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Urte Zahn<\/span><\/a> sees herself as a sparring partner, especially for female founders, by providing strategic business and mental support as a coach, mentor, or advisory board member. With 25 years of professional and leadership experience, she guided over 30 startups as they grew and founded three successful startups herself. Find out which advice for founders she shared with us, what\u2019s going on in the startup ecosystem in Berlin, and what she predicts for the near future.
\"A\"A
<\/span>1. Hi Urte. Thank you for agreeing to do the interview. Could you please tell us about your background and connection to the startup world?<\/b><\/p>\n

My pleasure. I\u2019m a very curious person with a broad background. When I need help understanding things, I always ask questions. This is how I\u2019m still learning every single day. I walk through life with my eyes open, fascinated by what happens. I also always ask myself if and how I can contribute.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to my education, I learned Agriculture and studied Business Economics, and I have a master\u2019s in Energy Management, which means I\u2019m also an engineer. Regarding my work experience, I spent 25 years in IT. While working for big companies, I founded my own startup with one of those companies and found myself in the middle of the startup scene.<\/span><\/p>\n

My conclusion was that technology is never the problem, but people often are. People have barriers, face challenges, and sometimes have no idea how to move forward. I found this very interesting and decided to dedicate my time to helping entrepreneurs grow.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. You\u2019re a \u200b\u200bUniversity Lecturer, a founder, a coach, and an advisory board member<\/a>. Tell us about your current mission. What\u2019s motivating you now, and what would you like to achieve?<\/b><\/p>\n

I work in all these areas, and I try to encourage a shift towards more regenerative businesses and sustainable relationships. I do this when coaching, lecturing, at the advisory board, Friends for Future, and working on my business.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I try to help startups, I first listen and try to understand their challenges and culture. It\u2019s often unclear that if you start to build a startup, you have already set the foundation for the culture. This culture is influenced by values, interactions, founders\u2019 personalities, and cultural backgrounds. For example, Germans are known as perfectionists, which comes with costs. If you first make your product perfect and then put it on the market, it could be that everyone else is already ahead of you.
<\/span>
<\/span>Working with different personalities and cultures enriches my life, and seeing founders grow, especially female founders makes me proud.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. What\u2019s going well in the startup ecosystem in Berlin at the moment? What\u2019s the ecosystem lacking? How do you feel you\u2019re contributing?<\/b><\/p>\n

The ecosystem got more mature. There are many VCs and business angels in the market, and they specialize in different areas, so they have more expertise on board.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is also a rise in female founders in Germany. I currently work for an accelerator, and about 50% of the founders are female. Besides that, I see a lot of diverse founders, not only in culture but in age. There are many older founders nowadays, and I like supporting that.<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to what\u2019s the ecosystem lacking, I think early founders try to skip certain steps because they believe they need to be faster. For example, they skip the stage of asking potential users for feedback. Later, they have to invest the time to do that, or they fail, even though it\u2019s much easier to find out early on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m contributing by guiding or accompanying the founders and brainstorming with them. Helping them resolve conflicts in the founder team, improving their finance strategy, or getting rid of pitching bottlenecks. I listen to what they want and need and think of bolder steps they can take in the next couple of days.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A\"A
4. You founded three successful startups and guided more than 30 as they grew. Which advice for founders would you share with our readers?<\/b><\/p>\n

There are some virtues that are good to have for every startup founder:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n