Under the motto “Boost Your Dealflow”, the Investor Days Thuringia took place on June 15 and 16. This high-pro­file event, orga­nized annu­ally by STIFT and bm|t, once again brought together over 500 play­ers from the startup scene, SMEs, indus­try and, of course, numer­ous national and inter­na­tional investors with the aim of gen­er­at­ing the best “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 were in the run­ning.  The future tech­nolo­gies as well as the event as such also 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. The event, mod­er­ated by Chris­tiane Kil­ian (STIFT), Katja Butz­mann (bm|t) and Stephan Beier (bm|t), was broad­cast via livestream from Erfurt’s mul­ti­func­tional arena this year.

Applause for the pitch winners

The day’s high­light was the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Pitch Awards for the best start-up con­cepts. In 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 pub­lic 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 Euro prize money)
2. Pee­riot AG from Nobitz (Prize: of EY Strate­gie Coach­ing: 2.000 Euro prize money)
3. janova GmbH from Jena (Prize of Gru­en­del & Part­ner Legal Con­sult­ing: mate­r­ial prize of 1,500 euros)
4. AI-UI GmbH from Ilmenau (Audi­ence award of Apro­pro Haar­beck Tea­men­twick­lung, Man­age­ment: mate­r­ial prize in the amount of 2.000 Euro)