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.