Interesting Dusseldorf tech companies / startups

Not all German tech is in Berlin. The following list is just based on sampling the news and some Google searching - if something is missing, please let me know. I do, however, not aspire to be complete - I am only going to list things which I find interesting.

Another criterion for inclusion is that there is some (or seems to be) tech development happening in Dusseldorf. So R&D, research and programming qualify, whereas a merely sales-orientied European headquarter (of which there are plenty in Dusseldorf) doesn't count. Sometimes I am not sure, and this will then be mentioned.

Big success stories

• Trivago - majority stake acquired for $632M by Expedia. Easily the biggest German tech buy-out in 2012.
• Qiagen - not really a recent one, but still the only large German biotech company (well, 'large' only by German standards, but still with a market capitalisation of a couple of billion Euros). Slightly strategically troubled by the emergence of 'next-generation' sequencing technologies, of which it now (after acquiring Intelligent Bio-Systems and their sequencing technology) hopes to profit more strongly. Let's see how this goes...

Community

• 1stMOVER - Germany's first incubator focusing on mobile apps and development. Just set up a couple of months ago (as of March 2013), so a bit too early to judge.
• K-LAN - (Co-)working space with an inclination for tech and mobile apps. Home to 1stMOVER, and quite close to the Vodafone Germany campus in Oberkassel.
• GarageBilk - another notable co-working space in another part of town, maybe not so much focused on (rapidly scalable) tech. coworkingloft also gets mentioned, for the nice views.
• Business with Soul -  Community event including talks and drinks. Seems to be nice but never managed to attend one.
• StartupDorf - is going to be an online community for startups in Dusseldorf. At the moment, however, it only offers a map of startups in town.

Aspiring

• Auxmoney.com - consumer-to-consumer lending, apparently the German market leader. Recently closed a $12M round with Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures.
• Evocatel - biocatalysis and custom-made enyzmes. Just completed a round B of EUR 3.5M.
• Rheinfabrik - company behind the reasonably successful time-management app Eisenhower.  One of the founders, Andreas Kwiatkowski, also has an interesting blog.

Interesting novel

• Emmas Enkel - the traditional German corner store ("Tante Emma Laden") beamed into the 21st century, online shop included. I am not at all convinced that this model will work, but I am going to watch quite closely!
• Springlane.de - apparently an online shop / magazine mashup, all about cooking and culinary quality lifestyle. According to the founders, already team of >= 40 people.  
• Just Spices - create your own spice cocktail.

Interesting established

Some established companies, included purely on subjective judgement.

• E.ON Global Commotidies - the energy trading arm of E.ON, once (maybe before the Energiewende) the world's largest invester-held utility (or eletrical utility? People cite multiple slightly different versions of this claim, but E.ON was - and still is - big).
  

The mobile tech cluster
Dusseldorf is home to the (German) headquarters of a substantial fraction of mobile companies  (some of those are actually home-grown - Vodafone Germany was, for example, created from the take-over of Mannesmann of Dusseldorf, which at this point was the second-largest mobile network operator in Germany).

The city markets this under the Mobile Capital brand. The website also has a list of the companies present in Dusseldorf, which I am not going to reproduce here.

Why Kraftwerk are (still) amazing

1. The albums have a theme, but no message.
2. The themes are futuristic, realistic, and important.
3. The song is the theme - the music is the description.
4. They mix long melodies and short rhythms in the right way.

Notes:

1. It is more important to say what is or will be than what should be (or at least equally important).  Musicians should not aspire to be philosophers. When they try message (or moral), they often sound silly.
   
   (The notable Kraftwerk exception here is of course "Radioactivity", and the message - "Stop Radioactivity" - is certainly well-intentioned and less certainly - philosophically, scientifically - up to their standard).
   
2. (The unity of) Europe, (the influence of) computers, radioactivity (or maybe the importance of physics). Biology and biotechnology do sadly not appear.
   
   Many of these songs have interestingly turned out to be anticipating the future (again, only in a descriptive, not in a normative way). But even from the perspective of a realized future (i.e. now), they are still quite futuristic. Quasars? Still cool. The Man-Machine? Still expected to make its appearance in ca. 50 years' time.
   
3. "Metal on Metal" and "Trans Europe Express"sound like a train travelling through Europe. "We are the robots" sounds like work-singing robots. The music is the essence of the description, and vice versa. (To a limited extent, this also applies to the visuals displayed on concerts).
   
4. Kraftwerk songs have long-running background melodies and short-lived electronic elements that appear and re-appear throughout the song, so carefully mixed that the songs appear hypnotic and are fun to listen to. In the 1970s and 80s, their music (the mere composition of their music) was revolutionary. Even today, "Radioactivity" (in its Minimum-Maximum version) can claim to contain some of the finest electronic tunes ever played.
   
5. And indeed, there is an element of humour to Kraftwerk. Haha.