Ode to the Founders

This newslet­ter will be the last that I write as CEO of bm|t. After a ful­fill­ing and pro­duc­tive seven and a half years of invest­ing in Thuringia’s highly inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies there are still many top­ics that I could write about. How­ever, it became crys­tal clear over my time at bm|t that all of the inter­est­ing top­ics con­cern­ing the nuances of ven­ture invest­ing are not as impor­tant com­pared to where the real magic hap­pens: at our amaz­ing Investee-Part­ners. Thus, my last newslet­ter focuses on the truly inspir­ing founders who take sig­nif­i­cant risks to cre­ate some­thing new in the world, to make a dent in the uni­verse. You have taught us so much and we have immense respect for you! 

The great­est reward for us as investors is see­ing the tremen­dous progress that our Investee-Part­ners have demon­strated and will con­tinue to demon­strate in the com­ing years. One of my last trips for bm|t was to an Investee-Part­ner that started seven years ago with two peo­ple and a highly ambi­tious idea to pro­duce some­thing that no other com­pany in the world can pro­duce. Along the way, there were many set­backs and times when it seemed impos­si­ble to achieve the mis­sion. How­ever, the founders per­se­vered and did not waver in their belief that it was indeed pos­si­ble and that achiev­ing the goal would cre­ate tremen­dous value. This impres­sive deter­mi­na­tion con­vinced us and other investors to con­tinue on the jour­ney. After this last visit, upon see­ing the fast-grow­ing pro­duc­tion floor, the team of nearly 20 engaged employ­ees and the unde­ni­able progress toward achiev­ing this bold goal, we were filled with joy, pride, and mostly respect for what the founders and team accomplished. 

Tak­ing on extremely chal­leng­ing endeav­ors has a crit­i­cally impor­tant para­dox that founders and ven­ture investors alike need to deeply appre­ci­ate: the more trans­for­ma­tional your goal is the more it will feel like you are fail­ing to reach the goal along the way. How­ever, if all par­ties can keep their eyes on the prize, and avoid the temp­ta­tion to dial down the dif­fi­culty level and cre­ate eas­ier-to-reach ersatz goals, once the hard-to-reach goal is attained the rewards are mul­ti­ple times greater. This reward is the essence of the log-rule of star­tups and ven­ture investing. 

This rare abil­ity to seek out chal­leng­ing goals and to endure the pain of set­backs and not be deterred in pur­su­ing the goal is what sets the truly great entre­pre­neurs apart from the rest. Of course, even the most excep­tional founders need sup­port from many stake­hold­ers, includ­ing investors, to achieve their goals. We at bm|t are extremely for­tu­nate to have the fund struc­ture, the man­date, and now the expe­ri­ence and invest­ing track record to be stead­fast in our sup­port of extra­or­di­nary entre­pre­neurs pur­su­ing mean­ing­ful breakthroughs. 

After seven and a half years lead­ing bm|t, I can say with­out hes­i­ta­tion that we sup­port the amaz­ing founders in Thuringia to the best of our abil­ity. And, I am cer­tain that sup­port will con­tinue to be strong and reli­able in the future, because the bm|t team is fully com­mit­ted to our work enabling excep­tional founders to pur­sue and achieve bold visions. 

Thank you all for every­thing you taught me and all that you shared with me; I learned so much from you. Most impor­tantly, I am leav­ing with tremen­dous respect for the brave founders who push the lim­its of what is pos­si­ble and am look­ing for­ward to fol­low­ing your coura­geous lead. 

Kevin and your bm|t Team

2024 Review

In 2024, bm|t’s Investee-Part­ners secured over EUR 76.5 mil­lion in equity and mez­za­nine cap­i­tal despite the con­tin­u­ing tragic geopo­lit­i­cal and increas­ingly chal­leng­ing macro­eco­nomic envi­ron­ment. The invest­ments were dis­trib­uted among 30 com­pa­nies in 47 invest­ment rounds. Funds man­aged by bm|t com­mit­ted EUR 21.9 mil­lion and co-investors com­mit­ted EUR 54.6 million. 

“In light of the mas­sive decline in the over­all fig­ures for ven­ture cap­i­tal fund­ing in Ger­many and most regions of the world, we are extremely pleased to have achieved a sub­stan­tial increase in the amount of cap­i­tal raised by our Investee-Part­ners. The fact that 18 of our Investee-Part­ners raised seven-or-eight fig­ure sums demon­strates the strength and breadth of our port­fo­lio, which has devel­oped well over the last years,” com­mented Katja Butz­mann, CEO of bm|t.

Welcome to the Family

DeepEn GmbH, a spin-off from the Leib­niz Insti­tute of Pho­tonic Tech­nol­ogy, devel­ops world thinnest endo­scopic devices. Founded in 2024, the com­pa­ny’s solu­tion enable min­i­mally inva­sive deep brain imag­ing with cel­lu­lar and sub­cel­lu­lar res­o­lu­tion. These devices are already accel­er­at­ing neu­ro­science, allow­ing researches to study brain func­tion and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases with unpar­al­leled precision. 

Deep­En’s mis­sion extends to enabling access to other hard-to-reach or del­i­cate body regions for broader bio­med­ical appli­ca­tions. bm|t, MBG Thürin­gen and Sparkasse Jena-Saale-Hol­z­land invested a seven-fig­ure sum in DeepEn GmbH in this seed financ­ing round. The cap­i­tal is to be used in par­tic­u­lar to com­plete the devel­op­ment of the Neu­roDeep 1.0 sys­tem and launch it on the market. 

Investor DaysThuringia 2025 — Save The Date

10 years of Investor Days Thuringia…

a rea­son for us to cel­e­brate and we hope that you will be there too.

On June 4, 2025, Investor Days Thürin­gen will bring investors together with start-ups and scale-ups in Erfurt for the 10^th time! You can look for­ward to a day full of inno­v­a­tive live pitches, great net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and excit­ing highlights.