Florian Stöhr
The coolest sounds of the German music scene come from the capital city, with the Berlin band “Seeed” right at the forefront. By the way, they really do spell their name with three ‘eee’s, and are masterminded by singer Peter Fox with laid-back lyrics like this: “Baby wach auf, ich zähl bis 10 – das Leben will einen ausgeb´n und das will ich seh´n!” [Baby, wake up, I’ll count to 10 – Life’s got something for us and I want to see it!]
This is the kind of sound that could go through the visitor’s mind when entering the Seedhouse start-up centre, located in the Science Park on a former army barracks complex in Osnabrück-Westerberg. It looks just like how you might imagine a stylish advertising agency or a trendy IT company: brick walls, a sophisticated coffee machine and a multi-coloured freezer offering a free choice of currently popular ice-cream flavours.
Needless to say, our interview with managing director Florian Stöhr takes place around a table tennis table, and not in a conventional conference setting. But then, despite all of the urban nonchalance, it soon transpires that the main focus at Seedhouse is on business, in other words, figures, ideas, com-mitment, innovation, inventive talent – and on hard work as well. “We help business founders when it comes to develo-ping their business models. We know all the funding pro-grammes and have connections with established companies in the region that are potential partners for our founders.” But every start-up starter must be well aware of one thing: “It’s always more tempting for young professionals to settle in the well-feathered nest of permanent employment, rather than building a company of their own, because founding a com-pany is definitely work, work and more work.”
To ensure that business founders – and their preferably pio-neering ideas that the world has just been waiting for – don’t fail already before they get started, due to the small print and such trivial things as office space and inadequate support and advice, 32 shareholders, notably including SME firms, have come together also with support from the State of Lower Saxony, and created the Seedhouse in a format that has given Osnabrück a secure position on the national map of the start-up scene. Florian Stöhr, the managing director of the start-up centre, has been involved right from day one because he has the start-up gene, as well as having Osnabrück running in his veins. “I’m from Lake Constance originally, but I’ve really come to love Osnabrück since I came here as a student.” Already during his time at Osnabrück University, he demonstrated his abilities as someone who gets things done, in the role of vice-president of the student parliament and as a member of the senate, qualities which he continued to develop further during the course of his career.
“Actually, it’s always been a case of building companies as a shareholder, or developing lines of business or new focal aspects.” Stöhr thus made a name for himself as a driver of innovation and a networker with excellent connections, so he could scarcely refuse when head-hunted to run the start-up centre.Stöhr made a name for himself as an innovative driver and well-connected networker and could therefore hardly refuse when a head was sought for the start-up center.
In terms of content, the focus is on agriculture and the food sector: after all, the Osnabrücker Land is known as Germany’s “grease spot”, with its leading agricultural engineering and agricultural technology companies. But gradually, the range was extended to cover all parts of the digital world. At the same time, the Seedhouse helped to make Osnabrück the start-up capital of Lower Saxony, or at least: “Enquiries about our funding and support come in from all over Germany and even from Israel. We actively connect such applicants with our regional industry.” Nevertheless, there’s also a small fly in the ointment at the moment for the convinced Osnabrücker-by-choice: “Even if there are lots of clever minds with great ideas at Osnabrück University and the University of Applied Sciences, I do wish that lots more applications would come from the immediate neighbourhood.”
Apart from Osnabrück, the focus of start-up support from the state of Lower Saxony has been limited just to the start-up centres in the larger cities such as Braunschweig, Lüneburg, Oldenburg, Göttingen and of course Hannover. Due to this fact, the Seedhouse in Osnabrück has now extended its sights to the rural area and is promoting a start-up from Lingen in the Emsland. This is going both positively and successfully: “Of course we’ve got our network in the Emsland too, and it’s really very promising to see how well the trial balloon is flying, with a corresponding effect on other projects.” The trial balloon he is referring to here is called “Easy Snacks”, a company founded in 2023 by five school children and students.
The idea is to make it quicker and easier to order and pay for things in school kiosks and university refectories. The young founders had the idea while queuing for school meals. Their digital system now not only accelerates the process but also helps the refectories and school kiosks when it comes to stock-keeping, management and planning, particularly for very large numbers of school children and students. Florian Stöhr gets excited about every single idea in the Seedhouse, but there is another important aspect about the project in Lingen that is worth mentioning: “It gives us practical experi-ence, live and in the flesh, of how far from a central hub in Osnabrück we can still support a remote start-up; at the same time, it teaches us what kind of targeted support is needed.” Stöhr is sure that this knowledge will then help other rural start-ups.
Thanks to this pragmatic approach, which the managing director brought to the Seedhouse from experience gained at various stages in his career, the success rate of Osnabrück’s “start-up accelerator” has put them in the lead in Lower Saxony. “We have given an initial boost to more than fifty firms, of which only twenty percent didn’t make it, but with well over twenty percent really taking off.” As a result, the Seedhouse Osnabrück’s performance is significantly better than the average when compared to the other start-up centres, as Florian Stöhr emphasises with a healthy portion of self-confidence.
When asked for examples, he leans back from the table tennis table, sits up in his chair and begins with an example whose name is already very fitting: “If we go back to our early days, there’s one company worth mentioning from the agricultural sector that is called Seedforward, which is all about seed treatment. They started with maize, but are now active in other areas as well, right in line with the growing trend for long roots so that plants are able to withstand even drought conditions.” But Florian Stöhr is also particularly proud of Lambus, the travel app from Osnabrück: “They even rejected a deal on the TV show ‘Höhle der Löwen’ [German equivalent of Dragons’ Den], because they were so convinced of their success. Lambus then went on to be the Apple App of the Day, that is really very impressive.” The Seedhouse continues to be closely connected with Lambus, jointly pursuing the decidedly ambitious target of revolutionising travel planning with AI.
The Seedhouse thus has many little cogs that work together to ensure that as many founders as possible can turn the big cog so that it moves them from the initial idea to a functioning business. Even if the admittedly rather hackneyed marketing phrase says that grass doesn’t grow faster if you pull it, this doesn’t apply to the seeds that germinate and flourish in the Osnabrück Seedhouse. “The fact that we have no topic restrictions and welcome enquiries from all sectors means we are also in a position to put founders in touch with each other so that they can make progress more quickly,” says Florian Stöhr.
Which just leaves the question as to what it is that quick-witted Stöhr himself would invent? Something for family life, perhaps, as the father of three young daughters? Possibly. Or, perhaps more likely, a cool den with a laid-back team where youngsters get support for their fresh ideas and are given the courage to simply make a go of it and start their own business? Preferably in a setting with brick walls, a sophisticated coffee machine, a multi-coloured freezer offering a free choice of currently popular ice-cream flavours and a table tennis table as conference table? Oh no, that idea has already been implemented and is called Seedhouse. All we need now is the sound of “Seeed“ with three “eees”, who sing “Ich mach Kaffee, der tote Tanten weckt“ [I make coffee that wakes dead aunties] – and the coffee machine is ready and waiting.
Seedhouse Accelerator GmbH
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