To get an overview about who is who and who is doing what in the German (speaking) Startup scene, a regular visit of  Deutsche Startups is recommended. The portal, whose editorial office is located in Berlin, publishes a daily newsletter, offers a huge  list of existing web startups, a long list of potential investors and an equally interesting list with companies already in the “dead pool“.

For entrepreneurs and employees equally interesting is the  Jobboard with jobs for interns. The shareholders of the portal are chief editor Alexander Hüsing, Stefan Vosskötter (managing director of DS Media and founder of „Webnews“) as well as the European Founders Fund (a.k.a. the Samwer brothers) and Holtzbrinck Ventures.
Since the end of 2008 on one can experience Deutsche Startups also offline, Alexander Hüsing has established a series of events called Echtzeit, which has been organized with the help of sponsors already twice in Berlin. I was on the 3rd of February at Echtzeit II Berlin in the premises of  Zanox with over  170 other guests. The topic of the day was “External Financing vs. Bootstrapping”, very suitable for the economic situation of the first quarter of 2009. Since the event is an invitation only event the percentage of entrepreneurs and investors was very high among the guests. I can only recommend to use Deutsche Startups.de online (if you know a little German) and offline to get introduced to what is happening in Germany and German speaking regions in the web 2.0 area.