The European Pirate Summit - Cologne, August 26-27th 2013

High-Tech Gründerfonds invests risk capital in young, high-potential technology companies that convert promising research results into business success. The seed finance provided aims to enable start-ups to take their R&D project through to the creation of a prototype, a proof of concept or the market launch. Investors in this public-private partnership are the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the KfW Banking Group as well as strategic corporate investors including ALTANA, BASF, B. Braun, Robert Bosch, CEWE Color, Daimler, Deutsche Post DHL, Deutsche Telekom, Evonik, Lanxess, media + more venture Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, METRO, Qiagen, RWE Innogy, SAP, Tengelmann and Carl Zeiss..

High-Tech Gründerfonds was started in 2005 as an initiative of the Federal German Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) and investors in the fund include BASF, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Daimler, Robert Bosch and Carl Zeiss, as well as the BMWi and the KfW Banking Group. The public-private partnership has an available fund volume of 573.5 million Euro (EUR 272 million HTGF I, EUR 301.5 million HTGF II).

Minimum investment: High-Tech Gründerfonds engages in providing seed finance of 500,000 euros and may in subsequent rounds invest up to a total of two million euros per business.

Investments: About 380 investments (as of February, 2013, see www.hightechgruenderfonds.de), e.g. Heliatek GmbH, Cleanmobile GmbH, Antispameurope GmbH, Cuculus GmbH, Mister Spex GmbH, kimeta GmbH, Zimory GmbH, nFon AG, cLecta GmbH, Gilupi GmbH, Biametrics GmbH, SemiLev GmbH, ConWeaver GmbH, Chromotek GmbH, Next Kraftwerke GmbH, Paul Secret GmbH (Outfittery).

Services: Hands-on management through the early stages, a wide network of public and private investors, business angels, experts and established corporations.