This month we are cel­e­brat­ing 20 years of invest­ing as bm|t. Notwith­stand­ing many impres­sive fig­ures, such as hav­ing invested over 500 Mio. EUR in over 200 com­pa­nies, com­plet­ing over 500 invest­ment rounds and attract­ing addi­tional co-invest­ment of over 740 Mio. EUR, we feel like a 20-year-old in many ways: hav­ing received an excel­lent edu­ca­tion and hav­ing gained valu­able early expe­ri­ence, we are eager to take on the world, to advance our learn­ing, and to con­tinue hon­ing our trade of ven­ture cap­i­tal and pri­vate equity invest­ing.

Even more pro­found and mean­ing­ful than the above fig­ures, are the core tenets of our oper­at­ing phi­los­o­phy which we have devel­oped over the last 20 years.

• Respect and trust are para­mount and nec­es­sary for suc­cess in this busi­ness. The best way to gain respect and trust is to respect and trust our val­ued partners.
• Integrity and trans­parency in com­mu­ni­ca­tion is essen­tial for build­ing pro­duc­tive rela­tion­ships. Clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion, even about dif­fi­cult issues, is far supe­rior to the assump­tion of implicit understanding.
• Col­lab­o­ra­tion is the ideal way to suc­ceed when invest­ing in longer-term inno­va­tions. Work­ing coop­er­a­tively together with mul­ti­ple part­ners can achieve suc­cess far beyond that which is pos­si­ble when every­one only pri­or­i­tizes their own goals.

With the learn­ings of the past 20 years deeply ingrained in our expe­ri­enced team, we are con­fi­dent that we, and the entire Thürin­gen inno­va­tion ecosys­tem are well-pre­pared for the next 20 years. We clearly sense that the gains of the past 20 years are cumu­la­tive, and that our entire ecosys­tem begins the next 20 years in a much stronger posi­tion than when bm|t ini­tially started. The founders with whom we work are bet­ter informed of their mar­kets and com­pet­i­tive posi­tion­ing, our net­work of co-investors has grown tremen­dously and includes many repeat investors in Thürin­gen, and all the rel­e­vant play­ers in Thürin­gen are well-grooved and work together coop­er­a­tively and pro­duc­tively to sup­port our inno­v­a­tive companies.

Of course, this strong start­ing point does not offer com­plete pro­tec­tion against dif­fi­cul­ties, espe­cially in this period of geopo­lit­i­cal strife and increas­ing eco­nomic chal­lenges; how­ever, it does offer us a strong sense of proven pur­pose, which we know will be instru­men­tal over time. Ven­ture cap­i­tal and pri­vate equity invest­ing are longer-term endeav­ors which require vision, per­spec­tive, patience, and for­ti­tude. Over the long term it is these attrib­utes, not the pre­vail­ing tem­po­rary con­di­tions, that deter­mine the out­comes. Our mantra at bm|t, and we believe it applies to Thüringen’s entire inno­va­tion sec­tor, remains: we can have a large impact on our out­comes, and thus we must give our best.

As bm|t turns 20, we feel espe­cially grate­ful to be able to play a cen­tral role in Thürin­gen’s inno­va­tion land­scape and are extremely con­fi­dent that the next 20 years will bring even more pos­i­tive devel­op­ments to our Investee-Part­ners and Co-Investors and thus to investors in our funds and the entire Thürin­gen ecosystem.

Thank you to all our val­ued part­ners for the amaz­ing last 20 years; we’re look­ing for­ward to an even bet­ter next 20 with you!

Your bm|t Team