In the exam­ple men­tioned above, the mar­ble that more quickly trans­formed its poten­tial energy into kinetic energy was able to carry its gained momen­tum through the flat sec­tion and won the race. We quickly drew par­al­lels to the busi­ness world and the impor­tance of momen­tum and non-lin­ear approaches to reach­ing the ulti­mate goal. To para­phrase Isaac New­ton, busi­nesses at rest tend to stay at rest, and busi­nesses in motion tend to stay in motion.

While momen­tum plays a crit­i­cal role for all busi­nesses, startup momen­tum is per­haps the most inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non, as a small group of pas­sion­ate peo­ple is tasked with not just keep­ing a busi­ness mov­ing but start­ing it from a stand­still point of zero iner­tia. Big vision. High poten­tial energy. No kinetic energy.

Quickly gen­er­at­ing kinetic energy is essen­tial for most star­tups not only to grow and pros­per but also to avoid com­pletely los­ing momen­tum when the busi­ness encoun­ters the inevitable bumps in the road. Many strate­gies and tac­tics are employed to cre­ate this momen­tum: hir­ing more key employ­ees than the cur­rent busi­ness size might war­rant; sign­ing up beta cus­tomers at low, zero, or neg­a­tive mar­gins in order to accel­er­ate learn­ing and mar­ket accep­tance; engag­ing in bold part­ner­ships or acqui­si­tions to trans­form a tech­nol­ogy offer­ing; rais­ing more cap­i­tal than a lin­ear tra­jec­tory would require, etc. We at bm|t greatly admire entre­pre­neurs who can trans­form energy and cre­ate busi­ness momen­tum, and we aim to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in cat­alyz­ing the needed momentum.

We believe the key is rec­og­niz­ing when lin­early boot­strap­ping a busi­ness is indeed riskier than con­sciously cre­at­ing (indeed some­times forc­ing) momen­tum – maybe even more than one can com­fort­ably con­trol. Of course, each busi­ness is unique and the art surely lies in know­ing when is the right time to gen­er­ate greater momen­tum – cer­tainly one wants to be on an expo­nen­tial curve, not just falling off a cliff. We, at bm|t, believe we can help young busi­nesses prop­erly time and plan their accel­er­a­tions in order to have the great­est prob­a­bil­ity of being on the right growth curve.

Like entre­pre­neurs, investors can also cap­i­tal­ize on the phe­nom­ena of momen­tum and non­lin­ear­ity. In 2018, bm|t worked dili­gently to trans­form the pow­er­ful 2017 events of fayteq’s sale and InflaRx’s Nas­daq IPO into broad-based energy for all investee-part­ners and Thürin­gen. The results were out­stand­ing, as our investee-part­ners raised over 100 Mio. EUR in cap­i­tal, and we were able to gain a record num­ber of 16 new investee-part­ners. You can read fur­ther about the strong momen­tum in 2018 here.

Before pre­sent­ing the quarter’s invest­ment activ­ity and other sig­nif­i­cant news, we would like to offer a big THANK YOU to our great investee-part­ners and co-investors. Work­ing with such bril­liant, moti­vated, vision­ary peo­ple is the fuel that pro­pels us forward!

Your bm|t Team