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 14^th and 15^th.  Alt­hough we are expec­ting strong atten­dance after two digi­tal years, we pro­mise it won’t (yet) be overly crowded 

Your bm|t Team