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bm|t newsletter Q1 2022

»Invest bey­ond the crowd« is an important con­cept for our upco­ming Inves­tor Days Thü­rin­gen event (more about IDT is available below), and we who­le­he­ar­tedly sub­scribe to the invest­ment phi­lo­so­phy that inves­tors gene­rally dis­co­ver more attrac­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties off the bea­ten path, bey­ond the crowd.

In this Newsletter 

Invest Beyond the Crowd

We believe that com­pel­ling invest­ments should be able to meet BOTH of the fol­lo­wing criteria:

  1. The invest­ment is fun­da­men­tally attrac­tive
    AND
  2. There is an evi­dent reason why we, as oppo­sed to other inves­tors, have this oppor­tu­nity to invest

Thü­rin­gen is an excep­tio­nally attrac­tive region for invest­ments when loo­king through this cri­ti­cal lens. 

To the first cri­te­ria, Thü­rin­gen has world-lea­ding tech­no­logy in many fields and is incre­asingly adept at con­ver­ting its ground-brea­king rese­arch into effec­tive and valuable com­pa­nies. The region’s world-renow­ned tra­di­tion and exper­tise in optics (Carl Zeiss / Ernst Abbe) has con­tin­ued and expan­ded to many adja­cent, rela­ted fields (pho­to­nics, robo­tics, life sci­en­ces, mate­ri­als sci­en­ces, etc.) in which Thü­rin­gen now plays in the top leagues globally.

Regar­ding the second cri­te­ria, Thü­rin­gen, despite increased visi­bi­lity in recent years, remains off the bea­ten path for most inves­tors. No pri­vate insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tor who invests tickets over 1 Mio. EUR has an office here and sur­pri­sin­gly few make the short trip from Ber­lin, Frank­furt, or Munich. Thüringen’s record results in terms of total ven­ture fun­ding and seven-figure rounds over the last years cle­arly demons­trate that inves­tors are incre­asingly fin­ding com­pel­ling oppor­tu­ni­ties here. Importantly, we fore­see that there is fur­ther increase in inves­tor awa­re­ness ahead, and we work dili­gently to acce­le­rate this reco­gni­tion of Thü­rin­gen as an attrac­tive loca­tion for investment.

There are num­e­rous reasons why Thü­rin­gen his­to­ri­cally has not been more in inves­tors´ focus. It has some gene­sis in Thüringen’s gene­ral modest nature, as entre­pre­neurs here focus more on deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies and com­pa­nies rather than bea­ting a drum about their accom­plish­ments. Tra­di­tio­nally, most entre­pre­neurs in Thü­rin­gen have also loo­ked to local part­ners for their initial fund rai­ses. We at bm|t have great respect for the respon­si­bi­lity that comes with this trust pla­ced in us and strive to be an excel­lent part­ner for entre­pre­neurs, pri­ma­rily by acti­vat­ing our extre­mely strong local net­works and incre­asingly acting as a spring­board to lar­ger glo­bal investors.

While Thü­rin­gen has flown under most inves­tors’ radars, bm|t has played a cen­tral role in fun­ding the inno­va­tion eco­nomy here as the most active ven­ture inves­tor in the region.  This uni­que mar­ket posi­tion has enab­led us to build a port­fo­lio of Inves­tee-Part­ners over the last twenty years that is truly excep­tio­nal in its qua­lity and variety.

In addi­tion to being a lea­ding inves­tor in Thü­rin­gen, bm|t is tas­ked with incre­asing the amounts of pri­vate ven­ture capi­tal being inves­ted here. Thus, we see it as our job to con­ti­nu­ally intro­duce more inves­tors to the les­ser-known, impres­sive com­pa­nies in the region. In fact, we hope to do our job so well that one day we can call this mar­ket crow­ded, but that day still has some time to come – good news for those adven­tur­ous inves­tors that voyage off the bea­ten path.

An easy step for any inves­tor wan­ting to dis­co­ver Thüringen’s invest­ment gems, is to attend this year´s lar­ger-than-ever Inves­tor Days Thü­rin­gen on June 14th and 15th.  Alt­hough we are expec­ting strong atten­dance after two digi­tal years, we pro­mise it won’t (yet) be overly crowded 😊

Your bm|t Team

Exit

When we first visi­ted >c‑LEcta four years ago, we sen­sed right away that this com­pany was spe­cial and under­go­ing a trans­for­ma­tion from a R&D ser­vices com­pany to a pro­prie­tary pro­duct com­pany, which we stron­gly belie­ved would create great value out of c‑LEcta´s impres­sive assets in the space of enzyme deve­lo­p­ment. Even our high expec­ta­ti­ons were blown away by how quickly the company´s tran­si­tion gai­ned trac­tion with pro­duct reve­nues incre­asing appro­xi­m­ately 10x in the three and a half years we were inves­ted. Not sur­pri­sin­gly, the company´s strong reve­nue growth and uni­que capa­bi­li­ties drew signi­fi­cant inves­tor inte­rest. Kerry Group plc – a glo­bal taste and nut­ri­tion com­pany based in Ire­land and publicly traded on Euron­ext Dub­lin and the LSE – emer­ged vic­to­rious with its attrac­tive bid for c‑LEcta. The stra­te­gic fit is excel­lent, and we are cer­tain that c‑LEcta will con­ti­nue to gene­rate great value in the years ahead.

For more infor­ma­tion about this important tran­sac­tion please see the fol­lo­wing press release:
bm|t sells its shares in c‑LEcta GmbH to Kerry and rea­li­zes a highly pro­fi­ta­ble exit

After last year’s extre­mely pro­li­fic invest­ment acti­vity, which wit­nessed finan­cings for over half our Inves­tee-Part­ners, Q1 expe­ri­en­ced an expec­ted slow­down in invest­ment acti­vity. This pause par­ti­ally resul­ted from a requi­re­ment to rere­gis­ter one of our most active funds after its plan­ned invest­ment period ended at the end of last year but thank­fully was exten­ded into 2022. This pro­cess has been com­ple­ted, and we expect to return to a nor­ma­li­zed pace of new and fol­low-on invest­ments alre­ady in Q2.

Follow-on Investments

IROIN (ren­a­med from Crowd Archi­tects) is now exclu­si­vely focu­sed on its out­stan­ding influen­cer mar­ke­ting soft­ware suite, which it offers on a SaaS basis. Because adver­ti­sing spend on influen­cers is boo­ming, IROIN is well posi­tio­ned to con­ti­nue its rapid growth, having achie­ved a seven-figure ARR run-rate within only five quar­ters of laun­ching its new offe­ring. bm‑t was joi­ned by pri­vate inves­tors and ope­ra­tio­nal part­ners in this invest­ment round focu­sed on turbo-char­ging sales growth and capi­ta­li­zing on newly-avai­led, actionable mar­ket opportunities.

Spotlight on Innovation

On June 14th and 15th, Inves­tor Days Thü­rin­gen (IDT), the pre­mier early- and growth-stage pitch event in middle Ger­many, will be wel­co­ming over 500 par­ti­ci­pants, with appro­xi­m­ately 60 start-ups pre­sen­ting their inno­va­tions and visi­ons. We will host a live event – invest­ment gems, net­wor­king, and beers & brats will all be in ample sup­ply. We are loo­king for­ward to see­ing you in Erfurt this June!

If your part­ners or col­le­agues might be inte­res­ted in our regu­lar updates,
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