Before we dive in to the impor­tant activ­i­ties in Q1 2018, we wanted to take the oppor­tu­nity to shortly dis­cuss bm|t’s his­tory, devel­op­ment, and our vision with you. bm|t is cel­e­brat­ing its 15^th birth­day this year and some pre­de­ces­sor organizations/funds date back over 20 years. This long and con­sis­tent pres­ence and the valu­able net­works that have been estab­lished have allowed us to build a strong posi­tion in Thüringen.

high ratio of technological prowess divided by investor awareness

For way of back­ground, sev­eral of bm|t’s early-stage funds are sup­ported with money from the Euro­pean Fund for Regional Devel­op­ment, and in the past as part of this pro­gram Thürin­gen has qual­i­fied as a dis­ad­van­taged region char­ac­ter­ized by a ›mar­ket hole‹, mean­ing that it is believed that pub­lic cap­i­tal is needed to fill a void insuf­fi­ciently addressed by pri­vate capital.

Gen­er­ally, we believe that cap­i­tal flows rel­a­tively effi­ciently to oppor­tu­nity; how­ever, our expe­ri­ence here in Thürin­gen does indeed belie this view, as across all the tech­nol­ogy lead­ing regions of the world where we have invested we have never encoun­tered such a high ratio of tech­no­log­i­cal prowess divided by investor aware­ness as we have here in Thüringen.

innovative technologies packed into effective and investable companies for the global markets

There is no doubt that this excep­tional com­bi­na­tion has many fac­tors dri­ving it, but clearly the his­tory of the region and oper­at­ing under another eco­nomic phi­los­o­phy until 1989 has played a very large role in cre­at­ing this unique sit­u­a­tion. Indeed some of the relics from the time of a strong tech­no­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture with lit­tle or no oppor­tu­nity for global dis­tri­b­u­tion or cap­i­tal rais­ing are still present. How­ever, we are glad to report that we believe bm|t’s and oth­ers’ work to fill this mar­ket hole over the last twenty years has borne fruit and we now feel that great strides are being made in increas­ing investor aware­ness for the tremen­dous tech­no­log­i­cal prowess we are blessed to have in Thüringen.

The main con­tri­bu­tion to that accom­plish­ment, of course, lies with our Investee-Part­ners, who have become increas­ingly savvy about how to pack­age inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies into effec­tive and investable com­pa­nies with com­mer­cially-viable prod­ucts and ser­vices for the global markets.

many value creating investments and exits

Cer­tainly we in Thürin­gen still have a lot of wood to chop and def­i­nitely have much room for improve­ment and many oppor­tu­ni­ties to bet­ter exe­cute on the assets that we have. How­ever, thank­fully we sense that Thürin­gen has made good progress in climb­ing out of our ›mar­ket hole‹ and are now that much stronger for it.

bm|t has expe­ri­enced many value cre­at­ing invest­ments and exits over the years, but two from last year per­fectly high­light the progress Thürin­gen has made in terms of becom­ing attrac­tive for global invest­ment. Being the lead investor and largest share­holder for fayteq’s sale to a Sil­i­con-Val­ley based social media giant and for InflaRx’s Nas­daq IPO were cathar­tic events in our devel­op­ment here at bm|t. We also believe strongly that these hap­pen­ings are just the tip of the spear, and that Thürin­gen has many more com­pa­nies that will expe­ri­ence sim­i­larly impact­ful devel­op­ments in the com­ing years.

our position and other conditions in Thüringen have never been better

Of course, we, like nearly all investors, have had some hard learn­ings along the way and some funds expe­ri­enced a longer and deeper J‑Curve than we would have expected before turn­ing sharply up recently. We are cer­tainly bet­ter investors now for those valu­able learn­ings and believe that our posi­tion in Thürin­gen and other con­di­tions for invest­ment suc­cess have never been better.

These devel­op­ments give us sig­nif­i­cant con­fi­dence as we pur­sue our mis­sion and vision.

Mission

We strengthen Thüringen’s Econ­omy through tar­geted Invest­ments in inno­v­a­tive and growth-ori­ented com­pa­nies with high potential.

Vision

By 2025 we will cat­alyze fur­ther Thürin­gen Cham­pi­ons and gen­er­ate a pos­i­tive invest­ment performance

key values

In the pur­suit of this mis­sion and vision we have cho­sen the fol­low­ing three key val­ues to guide our think­ing and actions: Trans­parency, Integrity, and Creativity.

Transparency

• We com­mu­ni­cate openly with our part­ners and expect the same from them.
• We strive for all par­ties to a trans­ac­tion to have a com­plete under­stand­ing and accep­tance of all terms and conditions.

Integrity

• We act with a part­ner­ship men­tal­ity and in the inter­est of bm|t’s mission.
• We have high qual­ity expec­ta­tions, and all poten­tial invest­ments are ana­lyzed with the same standards.

Creativity

• We believe in ideas and the actions that turn ideas into reality.
• We don’t know what the future will bring, but we do know that together with our Investee-Part­ners we can shape a bright and sus­tain­able future.

it’s been quite a journey over the past 15 years

In con­clu­sion, it’s been a quite pur­pose­ful and event­ful jour­ney at bm|t over the past 15 years, and we believe many pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tions have occurred such that we are well posi­tioned for sus­tained strong per­for­mance in the years ahead. Impor­tantly, we at bm|t under­stand our role as investors, col­lab­o­ra­tors, enablers, and sup­port­ers for the main value cre­ators for Thürin­gen, our Investee-Part­ners. We’re extremely proud of the port­fo­lio of Investee-Part­ners that has been built over 15+ years and view it as hav­ing excel­lent invest­ment potential.

We’re look­ing for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to work with all part­ners to cre­ate more suc­cess sto­ries made in Thüringen.