Would it have been possible at all for European countries in the middle ages to have and hold on to Colonies

The Middle Ages aren’t exactly where I shine in my knowledge of history, so I have no idea if they even tried to have colonies. I don’t think they did, but I was watching a video about the Scramble for Africa the other day and how Germany was slow to the race and ended up with very little. I started wondering what would have happened if Germany and other countries had tried to colonize centuries earlier. What if a powerful German territory had tried to colonize somewhere in the 1300s? Would it have been successful, or just a huge waste of time and resources?