Munay Zamorano took over a company as a working student. And is now working to ensure that not everyone always thinks about starting a business. The numbers prove her right.
Berlin. Munay Zamorano could do it like the others. She could be strolling down the hall or standing in the long line for coffee. But she doesn't do it. Suddenly she is there, rushes towards a group of women, stops briefly, says hello, then quickly steps away again, smartphone to her ear. She is wearing a black blazer, black trousers and sneakers. No sneakers.
A Thursday morning in October, a multi-purpose hall in Berlin, the German Founders and Entrepreneurs' Day, deGUT for short. Zamorano is about to give her first of two lectures, once again telling her story.
The pace at which Munay Zamorano, 28, moves is consistent with what she has set in recent years. As a working student, she took over a company and sold it again. Now, as a self-proclaimed successor activist, she is campaigning for young people to not only think about starting new companies, but also about taking over existing ones.
She says, “Followship is like starting a business, only simpler.” But she also says: “You shouldn’t do it like me.”
Rather?
And why is the topic so important to her?
She talks as fast as she goes
When she stands on one of the stages a few minutes later, she tells her story at the same speed as she walked through the hall, most of the time with a grin on her face. She has already told them on other stages, in podcasts, on her LinkedIn and Instagram accounts.
On the one hand, there was little to suggest that she would one day become an entrepreneur. She comes from a family in which everyone works at universities in some form or another; her grandfather was a professor of natural sciences, her mother organizes research trips, and her aunt and uncle work at the Technical University of Berlin. “My family has no contact with the real economy,” she says.
On the other hand, she wanted to work at the age of 13, took a babysitting course and then looked after the daughter of the course leader. She started waiting tables at 16, taking care of the breakfast service at the Hilton from 4 a.m. and then taking care of school. With some effort, including various school changes, she fought her way through to high school. “Following rigid structures and instructions without understanding them was not my strength.” So you could say: entrepreneur mindset.
Zamorano said, “I’ll buy it!”
She wanted to be a fashion designer, but because she lacked the financial understanding of business, she enrolled in business administration. But instead of practice, there was a lot of theory. At the age of 23, she started as a working student at a start-up that sells natural cosmetics. Their job was to sell goods to business customers.
One day her boss announced that she wanted to sell the company in order to devote herself entirely to her own brand after a deal with “Höhle der Löwen”. While still in the meeting, Zamorano said she wanted to buy it. Pure gut feeling, she says afterwards. “It was really just this feeling of ‘I work here anyway, I enjoy it’.”
At first the boss didn't take her seriously. That only changed when Zamorano raised her concerns again and again in the coming months. The boss recommended her financial advisor. According to Zamorano, he paid him 2,000 euros, which was roughly her entire savings, so that he could advise her. When she liquidated the fund she had been saving since school, she still had 30,000 euros in equity.
It took several meetings before a bank gave her a loan to buy the company. A bank representative then told her that she only got the loan because of her entrepreneurial personality. She didn't have much more to show. She had no experience as an entrepreneur and had announced that she would drop out of her business studies to take care of the company.
First real job, straight away boss
She was also visibly pregnant at the time. The bank therefore asked her to write in the business plan who was looking after the child. "That was objectively discriminatory. I still resent the bank for that to this day," she says. The child's father took on most of the care work. “I lived the 1950s model in reverse.” Then finally she was the managing partner of a company that would later have up to five employees. Her first real job, and immediately a boss.
Zamorano taught himself a lot through self-study, YouTube videos, networked a lot, and of course made a lot of mistakes. Turned in work late, occasionally relied on numbers where she should have relied on her intuition. She didn’t have a preconceived idea of how to run a business. “That was incredibly valuable.” According to their information, the company had sales of 300,000 to 350,000 euros per year.
But after a good start the situation changed.
“I had a great time, and then I had a hard time,” she once says in an English-language podcast.
For one thing, she developed a dislike for the industry. Natural cosmetics also advertised with before-and-after pictures: “Buy our product and you’ll look better!”
On the other hand, a major customer who accounted for 40 percent of sales quit. Too much for the small company. Zamorano set up his own online shop for end customers to buy himself time while looking for a buyer. She sold it to him at plus/minus zero, and he took over the current loan at the same time.
She doesn't want to sugarcoat it today, but she also says: "What I took with me: life experience, wisdom, entrepreneurial thinking and acting - you can't value that in gold." She didn't even know exactly what a loan was before.
Succession is in crisis
Since then, she has taken a break from being an entrepreneur, advises young entrepreneurs, but also wants to inspire people to be a successor. She says they hardly know young people. “I only got to know the term succession two years after I took over,” she says.
She doesn't want to denigrate founding, but she wants to put succession more at the center with all its advantages. Usually a working business model, with your own salary right from the start. The USA has its own term: Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA). In Germany there is a lot of reporting on start-ups in particular. "But who really supports our economy? The gross domestic product is created by medium-sized businesses. Our economic crisis is a successor crisis. It won't be solved by a few tech start-ups."
The numbers prove her right: Succession, also due to demographic developments, is in a crisis that is getting worse every year.
According to the DIHK successor report 2025, there were 9,636 senior entrepreneurs in the consultation compared to only 4,016 people interested in taking over. For every person interested in the takeover, there were 2.4 companies. A gap that is getting bigger and bigger. In sectors such as hospitality, retail and logistics, the disproportion is even more dramatic.
Succession consultant: “Many people see their company as part of themselves”
DIHK medium-sized business expert Marc Evers says that company succession will determine how much entrepreneurship and how much inventiveness Germany will still have tomorrow. "Thousands of medium-sized companies are threatened with extinction. According to the experiences and figures from the IHK consultancy, almost 60 percent could be left without a takeover." Most, he says, have to stop for reasons of age, 72 percent, not for economic reasons. 27 percent of the companies advised are considering closing, also because they cannot find a successor.
The average age of transferors has risen to 64 years, according to the current succession monitor, a joint research project by the Association of German Guarantee Banks, Creditreform Rating and the Competence Center for Entrepreneurship & Medium-sized Businesses. The data refers to takeovers supported by guarantee banks.
Crash course “Succession”
Zamorano takes her message even further on this October day in Berlin. At lunchtime she also promotes the takeover in her workshop and gives a Powerpoint presentation at the usual pace, a crash course on “succession”.
We're talking about professional, personal and entrepreneurial qualifications. It's about how you actually find a company that you can take over, it's about financing and handover. If the old owner actually just wants to finance a yacht through the sale, you finance his yacht. And she warns: It is essential to adapt your private environment to how much you will have to do as an entrepreneur.
She has also held such crash courses in more detail, most recently for a day for schoolchildren and students from the German Business Foundation.
She didn't have many of the qualifications she listed, but she took the plunge anyway.
But she thinks it's smart not to do it the way she does. So it's better to have some work experience in an industry, preferably also management experience. And also gladly: take over with several people. “It’s a lever that we don’t use enough,” she says. According to Succession Monitor, around 80 percent of companies are taken over alone. For example, if your own employees want to buy the company but see how much the boss works, it helps to know that you are not alone. The purchase price is also easier to manage with several.
Zamorano would like to see follow-up courses nationwide in Germany. Also so that women are more likely to take on a job. According to the successor monitor, the proportion fell to 18.9 percent in 2025. “Many women feel like they need a course to invest for the first time, to take over a business,” she says.
Succession as foundation
At least something is happening. The DIHK refers to the seminars, workshops and webinars for those interested in taking over that are offered by the 79 regional chambers of industry and commerce, as well as 300 IHK experts throughout Germany. There are successor centers in Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Because succession is increasingly viewed as a form of founding, start-up funding is possible. Zamorano would like to see a Germany-wide program. Federalism is not so helpful.
