European Startups Can Still Build Global Consumer Icons

Note: The following contributions are personal impulses from Max Eckel. They represent individual reflections and are intended to stimulate discussion and further thought.

European startups can still be category-defining around the world. Here’s a small Christmas scene from my living room. My kid sits at her crafting table, right next to the heater, looking out the window. In her hands: a Toniebox. When she first got it with her first tonie (Vogelhochzeit), she couldn't even speak yet. But she understood very quickly how it worked. Put a Tonie on top. Music starts. Stories begin.

By now, she listens pretty much every day. Completely focused. Almost meditative. There is something genuinely magical about it. And while this scene is playing out in our home over the holidays, something else happened quietly in the background.

On Christmas Eve, the tonies app started climbing the App Store charts.

By the end of Christmas:

• #1 in the US
• #1 in Germany
• #1 in the UK
• #1 in France
• Top 10 in Australia

A German toy company. Winning Christmas. Globally. tonies is not a hype startup. Not an enterprise SaaS story. Not a “copy from the US and localize” play. It’s a category creator. A consumer product that parents love, kids intuitively understand, and households keep using every single day. That is hard. Everywhere in the world.

And yes, it’s also a WHU story. Founded by WHU alum Marcus Stahl (EMBA 2000). With Christoph Frehsee (D 2004) leading global revenue and the US business. And Dr. Christian Sprinkmeyer (BSc 2011) shaping the product as CPO. (Congrats to you and your teams!)

But zooming out, the bigger point is this: Europe absolutely can build global consumer champions. We just underestimate how much craft, patience, and product love it takes. Tonies didn’t “hack growth”. They built something that works in the hands of a one-year-old. That’s the bar. 

If we want more global winners from Europe, this is the kind of magic stories we should really celebrate.

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