Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel held a roundtable on Thursday with executives from start-ups, venture capital firms, shareholder rights advocates, banks and stock exchange operator Deutsche Boerse to discuss how to address the country's undernourished market for small company IPOs.

Germany has lots of innovative companies with the potential to grow, but they are often held back by financing restrictions in their most capital intensive growth phase, Gabriel said in a statement on Friday.

"Stock market listings offer the chance to generate the necessary capital to grow and become internationally successful," he said.

Deutsche Boerse said on Friday it was working to build a pre-IPO platform to bring companies and capital providers together as part of its effort to improve the attractiveness of German listings.

However, the exchange operator has said the creation of a special segment for young companies would not in itself solve the problem of insufficient venture capital in Germany.

While Germany is one of the world's largest economies, its 'shareholder culture' lags far behind the United States, for example, where ownership of shares in listed companies is common.

Regulators and stock market officials also want to avoid a repeat of Germany's "New Market" for young companies, which launched during the technology boom of the late 1990s and collapsed with the "dotcom bubble" a few years later.

"We have to make sure that a wave of half-ready companies that can't perform do not come onto the market," said one person familiar with Thursday's discussion.

A second roundtable discussion is due to be held in the summer of next year.

(Reporting by Jonathan Gould and Matthias Sobolewski; Editing by Crispian Balmer)