Furo’s founders left Silicon Valley — and it’s paying off

U.S. venture capitalists once insisted that international startups move stateside before they would write a check. The three 28-year-old founders behind Furo are convinced that their decision to leave Silicon Valley and move back to their home country of Germany has paid off in both VC dollars and business growth.

The startup, which developed software for industrial battery storage systems, has secured $4 million in funding from mostly U.S. backers. And just a year after its founding, Furo has locked in enterprise clients such as German rail company Deutsche Bahn.

“We’re currently moving faster in Europe than if we’d have stayed in the U.S.,” Furo co-founder Lena Sophia Voß said.

On paper, Furo is a Delaware C Corp. that raised a funding round led by U.S.-based TQ Ventures with participation from Neo and Sheryl Sandberg’s fund, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners. But its journey is also representative of an observation recently shared by VC firm a16z that “there is now an advantage to having one foot in your home country, and one foot in Silicon Valley.”

Furo’s bridge to Silicon Valley was Munich’s Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM), which also participated in its round. It was through this program, which is tied to their alma mater TU Munich, that Voß and her co-founders Leonie Wagner and Simon Wittner made it to the Bay Area, where they studied at Stanford and UC Berkeley. 

When they decided to start Furo with the ambition of helping industrial companies reduce their electricity costs, they determined that the problem was more pressing in Europe. Voß said it was especially critical in Germany, where over the last five years the country went from one energy crisis to another.

Furo could have addressed this market from the U.S. — and briefly did so when it joined Neo’s accelerator program under its former name, Lumera Energy. But Voß said being far from Germany made their work more difficult.

“If you are an early-stage company, very often it’s mostly about your network, and also about being close to your customers,” Voß said.

Amid concerns over immigration restrictions that are also affecting tech employees, the German entrepreneur insisted that in the trio’s case, going home after their respective stints at Apple, Google X, and AI startups was a deliberate move. She said they all had full-time offers from the companies they’d worked at, and all of them could have stayed with visas.

“So it was a decision to go back to Europe not because we needed to, but because we see that right now, it’s a better time to build an energy startup in Europe instead of the U.S.,” Voß said.

According to Voß, starting Furo out of Munich was “highly beneficial” for its growth, “because a lot of people in our network recommended us to our first customers,” as well as for “operational expertise” and mentorship. “Every time we have a challenge, we know exactly whom to call,” she said, adding that being close to technical universities is also helpful for hiring.

It doesn’t hurt, either that “if you compare the salary of an engineer in the U.S. versus Germany, it is just way cheaper,” Voß said. She recalled that Furo’s U.S. investors wondered whether it would be able to source talent for the amount it had budgeted, which was actually at the top end for salaries in Germany. “So it’s definitely better that you can do more with the money,” she added. 

Salary is just one aspect, though. Voß said the quality of talent is also on par, while workers are more accessible because there is less competition with Big Tech and also thanks to Furo’s CDTM ties. “It’s such a great network in Germany and in Europe that people somehow start to know you.” 

The startup is also maintaining its U.S. network.

“We’re back in the U.S. three or four times a year for admin stuff, but also to catch up with our investors and maybe see new investors,” Voß said.

It’s a reminder that, even for startups that are now happy at home, getting the best of both worlds may still mean fundraising from the United States.

Pictured from left to right: Furo co-founders Lena Sophia Voß, Simon Wittner, and Leonie Wagner.