Under the motto “Boost Your Dealflow”, the Investor Days Thürin­gen took place on June 15^th and 16^th 2021. This high-pro­file event, orga­nized annu­ally by STIFT and bm|t, once again brought together over 500 par­tic­i­pants from the startup scene, SMEs, indus­try and, of course, numer­ous national and inter­na­tional investors with the aim of gen­er­at­ing strong deal flow and facil­i­tat­ing collaborations.

This year, the dig­i­tal for­mat again attracted great inter­na­tional inter­est, with 67 appli­ca­tions from 10 coun­tries. Inno­va­tions from all over Ger­many, Aus­tria, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa, the Czech Repub­lic, Hun­gary and Uruguay joined the event.  The future tech­nolo­gies attracted a lot of atten­tion from financiers: 165 investors from the DACH region, the Nether­lands, Bel­gium, France, the USA, China, Bahrain and the UK attended the Investor Days.

Mod­er­ated by Chris­tiane Kil­ian (STIFT), Katja Butz­mann (bm|t) and Stephan Beier (bm|t), this year’s event was broad­cast via livestream from Erfurt’s mul­ti­func­tional arena.

The stage for future innovations

At the Pitch Day on June 15^th, 23 selected start-ups and 13 growth com­pa­nies pre­sented their busi­nesses on the dig­i­tal pitch stage. 28 other inno­v­a­tive projects pre­sented their prod­ucts and busi­ness mod­els in plazz AG’s vir­tual inno­va­tion arena.  Between the pitch ses­sions, the inter­ac­tive event offered plenty of space for know-how exchange, inspi­ra­tion and net­work­ing. Here, the audi­ence could not only scout new tech­nolo­gies, but also get to know the founders per­son­ally, whether via video con­ver­sa­tions, dur­ing 1:1 match­ings or via one-minute speed pitches. The range of com­pa­nies was wide as usual — from cyber secu­rity and AI solu­tions, to space tech and robot­ics, to green solu­tions, med tech and smart farming.

Applause for the pitch winners

The high­light of the day was the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Pitch Awards for the best start-up con­cepts. Dur­ing a live vot­ing, the par­tic­i­pat­ing investors voted for the most con­vinc­ing pitch per­for­mances, which were awarded live by the hosts and State Sec­re­tary Valentina Kerst. The audi­ence was also able to sup­port their favorites and vote online for the Pub­lic Award win­ner. Con­grat­u­la­tions to this year’s four winners:

1. poly­tives GmbH from Jena
   (Prize: the STIFT and bm|t: 3,000 EUR prize money)
2. Pee­riot AG from Nobitz
   (Prize: of EY Strat­egy Coach­ing: 2.000 EUR prize money)

3. janova GmbH from Jena
   (Prize of Gru­en­del & Part­ner: mate­r­ial prize in the amount of 1,500 EUR)

4. AI-UI GmbH from Ilmenau
   (Audi­ence award of Apro­pro Haar­beck Tea­men­twick­lung, Man­age­ment: mate­r­ial prize in the amount of 2,000 EUR)

Start-ups meet industry

The goal of the sec­ond day of the Investor Days was to bring start-ups together with indus­try in order to accel­er­ate inno­va­tions as well as to force supra-regional and inter­na­tional knowl­edge trans­fer, trans­for­ma­tion processes and open inno­va­tion. To this end, experts pre­sented prac­ti­cal approaches that cre­ate a basis for new col­lab­o­ra­tions and processes. In addi­tion, two bm|t Investee part­ners, Engin­sight GmbH and Poly­tives GmbH, reported on their expe­ri­ences in coop­er­a­tion between start-up and cor­po­rate cus­tomers or strate­gic part­ners. Addi­tional speak­ers for these top­ics from Fraun­hofer IMW Leipzig, EY as well as the Thürin­gen entre­pre­neur René Mehn­ert from Mehn­ert Lab Erfurt shared their expe­ri­ences with the IDT guests. Match­ing ses­sions at vir­tual tables com­ple­mented the event and made it pos­si­ble to find points of con­tact for cooperation.

About the Investor Days Thüringen

As a joint ini­tia­tive of the Foun­da­tion for Tech­nol­ogy, Inno­va­tion and Research Thuringia (STIFT) and bm‑t beteili­gungs­man­age­ment thürin­gen gmbh (bm|t), the Investor Days Thürin­gen are held annu­ally to bring start-ups and growth com­pa­nies together with poten­tial coop­er­a­tion part­ners and investors.

The Investor Days Thürin­gen have estab­lished them­selves as the largest event of its kind in the region and are also sup­ported by well-known spon­sors and coop­er­a­tion partners.
More infor­ma­tion on the Investor Days at: https://investordays-thueringen.de/