Interesting article, but I think it's not contradicting to the OP post. What is a "successful specialized high-quality mid size company"? It's formerly a succes

Interesting article, but I think it's not contradicting to the OP post. What is a "successful specialized high-quality mid size company"? It's formerly a successful startup, just aiming not to cover as wide audience as possible, but a narrow market. And not aiming to go public or sell out, but retain private ownership and vision of the founders. Think Ebay store vs Valve (Steam) store. The problem is that to become a mittelstand, company must survive early growth phase, and the OP tweet correctly notices that such possibility is severely hampered both by EU and USA media. To continue my example - "we have Valve at home"(c) i.e. for example EU has CDPR with it's GoodOldGames (GoG) store. Yeah, it also went a bit wide in past years, but not because of lack of trying to be specialized. And they still retain that specialization mostly. But they are far far away from the Steam, and I now suspect the marketing playing a key part in it. tl;dr - authors message "Germany should focus on developing the Digital-Mittelstand" is wrong. It is wrongly formulated. It's like saying "country should focus on developing successful companies". Yeah, no shit Sherlock, but before that every successful company must somehow be created and grow. Or, alternatively, we can replace every Mittelstand word in the incentives part of the article and all of the sentences would be true: STARTUP, however, can leverage remote work to further reduce costs. Employees could live in small towns, enjoy lower living expenses, and maintain a high quality of life thanks to Germany’s good transportation infrastructure. Remote work also translates into lower personnel costs, typically the largest expense for any startup. By tapping into these advantages, STARTUP could achieve both profitability and sustainability without compromising employee well-being. If you’re already sold on the STARTUP concept, let’s explore the potential products they can create. There’s a wide range of possibilities: (a list of typical software industries) Rather than pouring large grants into startups with the hope of generating returns for shareholders, the German government should consider introducing tailored incentives to foster the development of STARTUP. Salary Grants - (applicable to startups? of course) Simplify Bureaucracy and Regulations - (same) Expand VAT Exemptions - (same) English Language Support - (same) etc. etc.