Young entre­pre­neurs meet investors: Under the motto “Enter the next level”, this year’s Investor Days Thuringia kicked off today with 55 appli­cants and another 600 par­tic­i­pants from Ger­many and abroad. In the new mul­ti­func­tional arena in Erfurt, the inno­v­a­tive young and growth com­pa­nies present them­selves to poten­tial investors in order to inspire them with their busi­ness model.
At today’s Thuringian Ele­va­tor Pitch, 21 selected start-ups pre­sented their inno­v­a­tive busi­ness con­cepts to a broad audi­ence and took the oppor­tu­nity to net­work with busi­ness part­ners and investors. Like in a lift pitch where there is lit­tle time, the start-ups had the oppor­tu­nity to con­vince investors of the unique­ness of their inno­va­tion with their 3‑minute pitch. Another 22 start-ups were able to present their busi­ness con­cepts in the Inno­va­tion Arena. The selected pitch­ers included not only projects from Thuringia and all over Ger­many, but for the first time also from Israel, Brazil and Rus­sia. This takes the Investor Days Thuringia to a new level and offers cross-bor­der oppor­tu­ni­ties for new busi­ness and cooperation.
“The Ele­va­tor Pitch is a direct and very effec­tive way for young com­pa­nies to attract ven­ture cap­i­tal,” said Thuringia’s Min­is­ter of Eco­nomic Affairs Wolf­gang Tiefensee. “Thuringia is an excel­lent loca­tion for inno­v­a­tive start-ups, not least because pri­vate and pub­lic equity cap­i­tal rein­force each other here.” To wel­come the audi­ence, Eco­nom­ics Min­is­ter Tiefensee spoke on the topic of “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for inno­v­a­tive start-ups in Thuringia”. As part of the cof­fee talk, the Foun­da­tion for Tech­nol­ogy, Inno­va­tion and Research Thuringia pre­sented the founders of Crow­dAr­chi­tects GmbH with an exclu­sive invi­ta­tion to Sil­i­con Valley.

Fol­low­ing the pitch pre­sen­ta­tions, there was inspir­ing input from keynote speaker Benedikt Böhm, the risk-taker and suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur. Again this year, investors and guests took advan­tage of the audi­ence vote and invested their notional invest­ment amount of €500,000 in what they con­sid­ered the most con­vinc­ing start-ups. Prior to the event, a pol­icy talk con­ducted by the Fraun­hofer IMW took place in which experts from the ven­ture cap­i­tal indus­tries dis­cussed new ways of con­nect­ing inno­va­tors with cap­i­tal providers at an early stage.
At the end of the evening, prizes were awarded for the five best pitches:

• Main prize of STIFT and bm|t (in the amount of 3,000 euros).

The main prize went to Pamyra UG from Erfurt. The com­pany has trans­ferred the con­cepts of online com­par­i­son plat­forms and ride-shar­ing ser­vices to logis­tics and com­bined them into an easy-to-use online plat­form. Pamyra is the first inde­pen­dent price and ser­vice com­par­i­son of trans­port com­pa­nies — “the booking.com of logistics”.

• Prize from Ernst & Young GmbH (non-cash prize worth 2,000 euros) and audi­ence prize from Star­tup­Con (Early Stage Stand at StartupCon).

The two prizes went to Hey­fair from Weimar. The project has devel­oped the first short-term vis­i­ble hand dis­in­fec­tant with the aim of estab­lish­ing it as a new stan­dard for pro­fes­sional hygiene require­ments. The colour­ing makes it eas­ier for the user to ensure com­plete wet­ting and dis­in­fec­tion is car­ried out more regularly.

• Prize from GRUENDELPARTNER Recht­san­wälte Steuer­ber­ater Wirtschaft­sprüfer (lawyers, tax con­sul­tants, audi­tors) (non-cash prize worth 2,000 euros)

The prize went to Forex­fix from Berlin. The project hedges com­pa­nies against exchange rate fluc­tu­a­tions and thus takes the risks out of trans­ac­tions in for­eign cur­ren­cies. This solu­tion is the first offer­ing that makes it pos­si­ble to hedge cur­rency risks com­pletely online — and to do so eas­ily and quickly.

• Prize from APROPRO (non-cash prize worth 2,000 euros)

The prize was awarded to Lean Plas­tic Tech­nolo­gies (LPT) from Ilme­nau. The project deals with plas­tic pow­ders for indus­trial 3D print­ing. The new LPT process makes it pos­si­ble to pro­duce con­sid­er­ably more cost-effec­tively and to tap the indus­trial poten­tial of 3D print­ing via new plas­tic powders.

Under the motto “Scal­ing-up”, the sec­ond day, 14 June, will focus on inno­v­a­tive and tech­nol­ogy-ori­ented growth com­pa­nies. Among the investors present are not only early-stage investors, but also other financiers from the pri­vate equity, fam­ily office and cor­po­rate ven­ture sec­tors. The pres­ence of numer­ous busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tives pro­motes stronger net­work­ing and enables the start of coop­er­a­tions. After­wards, par­tic­i­pants will have the oppor­tu­nity to develop their busi­ness model inter­na­tion­ally and make valu­able con­tacts in var­i­ous work­shops on the tar­get mar­kets of Hong Kong, Great Britain and Israel.
The Investor Days Thuringia are an ini­tia­tive of the Foun­da­tion for Tech­nol­ogy, Inno­va­tion and Research Thuringia (STIFT) as part of the project “ThEx inno­v­a­tiv” and beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh (bm|t) to bring inno­v­a­tive start-ups and growth com­pa­nies together with poten­tial coop­er­a­tion part­ners as well as investors and busi­ness angels. ThEx inno­v­a­tiv is part of the Thuringian Cen­tre for Start-ups and Entre­pre­neur­ship (ThEx) and is specif­i­cally geared towards inno­v­a­tive start-ups and is funded by the Euro­pean Social Fund (ESF) and state funds.

More infor­ma­tion on the Investor Days Thuringia 2017 at:
www.investordays-thueringen.de