From news blog to the central platform of the Munich startup scene

When we took over, Munich Startup ran as a WordPress multisite with a customised standard theme. The focus was almost exclusively on news from the Munich startup scene – too little for a portal meant to represent the whole scene.

Maintaining the English content was cumbersome and cost the editorial team unnecessary time. And although the portal wanted to be the scene's central hub, there was no up-to-date data on the startups themselves: how many there are, which industries they work in, who has just been founded or funded.

Based on the modernised design by our partner agency State of Glow, we developed a custom theme – deliberately with as few plugin dependencies as possible. This keeps the system lean, secure and maintainable in the long term.

The biggest step for the content came with connecting Dealroom as a data provider. Since then, the portal has shown current figures on the Munich scene: number of startups, industry focus areas, new foundings, funding rounds and headcount. An interactive Startup Map was built on this foundation.

We expanded the news and events section and added a calendar function, so that the scene's events are gathered in one place. An improved search makes articles, events and content on the portal much faster to find.

For the editorial team of several people, funded by the city for the portal, we rethought the workflows: clearer input forms, simpler maintenance of the English content and clear structures for news, events and data.

A news blog became a platform that fully represents the Munich startup scene with data, a map, events and news.

The Munich Startup Pinboard also gave rise to a dedicated, integrated platform for free listings: jobs, premises, co-founder searches and other collaboration requests. The pinboard has established itself as one of the scene's most important points of contact.

Until 2022 we provided technical support, maintenance and continuous development for the portal.