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BERLIN, Nov. 4-- Two thirds of startups in Germany expected their business to improve during the next six months, a survey by the German association of startups and auditing and consulting firm PwC published on Monday showed. "While concerns about an economic crisis are increasing in many industries, startups continue to see good market opportunities," commented Franziska Teubert, managing director of the association. Nearly two thirds of the around 2,000 German startup companies surveyed expected sales of at least 500,000 euros (557,700 U.S. dollars) next year. For the current business year, only 44 percent expected to generate such sales. One key to success, Teubert noted, was that startups in Germany "consistently focused on future issues such as digitization and sustainability." According to the survey, almost two thirds of German startups already had digital business models which focused on key technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality or blockchain. German startups were not only driving economic growth but also digitization and "thus shaping technological and social progress," said Tobias Kollmann of the University of Duisburg-Essen, author of the study. Sustainability was also becoming an increasingly important concept during the founding process of German startups. Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed assigned their products or services to the "green economy". | 
