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