Summary EVM Frankfurt/Eschborn at EY

 

European Venture Market - EVM – October 27th , 2017

On October 27th our 28th EVM was hosted by EY in Frankfurt - Eschborn

 

We were honoured to host our EVM for the first time in Frankfurt at the EY offices. Frankfurt is of course more known as a financial hub, and especially now since Brexit is a possibility. There are many FinTech Startups located in the area, but there is also an active scene for Startups with different topics, which we are targeting with the EVM. As in other areas in Europe EY is very involved with its Start-Up-Initiative (http://start-up-initiative.ey.com/) showing the young companies what benefits the cooperation with a global service-provider can have as the Start-Ups build their businesses and how established companies can benefit from the innovative force of Start-Ups!

If you have questions regarding EY’s outstanding services please contact Rembert Knappe +49 6196 996 27565 for detailed information – he and his team are looking forward to hearing from you!                                  

After the opening by Rembert Knappe from EY and Markus Kuntze as the organizer of the EVM, we started with information from INVEST

Rainer Gärtlein from INVEST introduced us to "INVEST 2.0: Venture capital grant specifics and adjustments in 2017" provided by the German government. The aim of the program is to improve the access to risk capital for young and innovative companies and thereby their capital base. Therefore the program encourages private investors to buy shares of young and innovative companies. The shares must participate in all business related risks and chances. The investor will receive a grant of 20 % of his total investment if he holds his shares for at least 3 years. And now the limits have been raised and the flexibility has been improved to make it even more attractive for investors.

These are right steps in the right direction and in connection with other EU programs this is very interesting for Angels and Start-Ups. Contact Rainer Gärtlein for further questions!

And then we continued with an important legal issue "General Data Protection Regulation – Impact on Start Ups" presented by Dr. Moritz Hüsch from Heymann & Partner. Heymann & Partner is a boutique law firm founded in April 2005. Today, they are 17 lawyers of which 8 are partners. The core areas of Heymann & Partner Rechtsanwälte are M&A, private equity, venture capital, restructuring, technology, intellectual property and outsourcing.

Moritz Hüsch outlined the upcoming much stronger requirements for data protection and the corresponding laws and urged the participants to make sure to comply since the penalties are quite rigorous. And he made it very clear that you can easily make mistakes! If you have any questions regarding the issue please give Moritz Hüsch a call +49 (69) 768063453

Then we went in medias res with the first company presentation block: moderated by Katrin Redmann from SAP. Katrin has vast experience in Marketing and Sales in different industries. Since 18 years she is working at SAP in diverse positions She is leading strategic Digital Transformation projects and for the collaboration between SAP & Wissensfabrik, she contributes as a mentor in the WECONOMY DAYS Entrepreneurship. She is in the jury of Global Entrepreneurship Summer School (GESS) and in the program of Entrepreneurship Summit and START in St. Gallen. As a mentor she offes experience and insights in Go-to-market, sales, target group definition, marketing, business development, product & pricing.

 The company to start the pitching was

INFLUIE is an online marketplace which easily connects advertisers with influencers. It gives advertisers and influencers a platform to easily connect, discuss and share all details and information required to promote a product or service on demand. Imagine... you have to promote a product or service to an audience you have no access to… How about getting in touch with the most influential people in the category to blast your pitch to their audience? Simple, right? The question is HOW? How to get in touch with influencers and rapidly raise awareness for your product/service while at the same time keeping your effort at minimum and for a price that meets your budget? A scenario which most creative people, start ups, entrepreneurs, and many companies around the world find themselves in. The answer to the problem: INFLUIE!

 

 

Dynacrowd - YOU OS. realtime - connected - interaction. Platform for digital businesses.

Most characteristic for future markets is disruptive change of customer behavior, customer interaction and integration of connecting new technologies. Corporates need to establish and continuously adapt their Digital Business Model incl. processes and workflows. YOU OS enables corporates to gain market momentum with 50 % time and 25 % costs saving compared to mainstream IT-project setups. With no focus on a specific vertical, we build cloud based B2B and B2C solutions.

[thing-it] is a Cloud-based Business Process and Data Analytics Platform which allows Smart Facilities such as buildings, hotels, hospitals, airports, shopping malls or farms to interact with Sensors, Mobile Users and External Software Systems. Device data and services initiate or provide the context of specific business processes (incident management, room booking, parking, emergency, day care, patient examination, cargo clearing) executed by (mobile) users in their respective roles (facilities manager, janitor, doctor, cargo team) and integrated software systems (payment, ERP, general ledger, hotel booking).

Commercial real estate organizations use Thing Technologies to power their “Smart Buildings”, giving their clients the ability to interact with their daily environments via a single phone app, and in a way that is unique to every building. We currently have projects involving offices, hotels & hospitals, city quarters and logistics.

Personal Care / Beauty / Natural Cosmetics Skincare Lifestyle Brand Concept Cosmetic formulation development, marketing, retail sales and direct to consumer channels

The global Natural Cosmetics market will reach $19.8 billion by 2022. The global market for organic cosmetic and personal care products is expected to register a 10-15% 5-year CAGR during 2016-2022 -- double the CAGR of the total cosmetic market. Skincare is the largest segment, and Europe + North America account for 43% of sales. Two-thirds of women say they have skin that is reactive, sensitive, and intolerant to many cosmetic products and ingredients. The size of the opportunity has attracted many new entrants; large global players have entered mainly via acquiring local/regional startup brands. Marketing and regulatory know-how will be key drivers of success.

So, the ice was broken! Thanks Katrin!

During the following well deserved networking break you could already see participants in very engaged conversations! And it is always hard for us as organizers to motivate the participants to join us for the program to continue, but we have become very insisting and for good reasons since the information you can obtain as a Startup can help you on your path!

We continued with a Panel Discussion "From Zero to the Moon! How can Investors, Corporates and Advisors accelerate a Startups Growth and what should be avoided?"

Peter E. Braun from EBAN was so kind to moderate and invited Titus Walek from Heymann & Partner, Kaan Turgay from Procter & Gamble, Peter Fricke from Deutsche Börse, Anke Hecht from Target Global VC, Pawel Schapiro from TA Ventures and Andreas Thümmler from ACXIT Capital Partners to join him! Friedrich von Diest from Sirius-Equity called early in the morning and excused himself with a severe tooth ache – we wish him to feel better!

Since the panel was very diversified an interesting discussion emerged: It was interesting to hear that all of the panelists pretty much agreed, that the European Market is very lucrative for Startups with approx. 500 million potential customers. From the Corporate side Kaan emphasized that P&G is active as an investor only sporadically, but that they can add tremendous credibility once a Startup becomes their client. And that of course possibly worldwide! Peter outlined that Deutsche Börse is supporting Startups not only by their financial vehicles up to an IPO but that they offer ongoing support through mentoring and coaching as well to prepare candidates best for an IPO. Anke and Pawel also stressed how important it is for them as VCs to get to know Startups early and make sure they fit in the investment criteria and have the personalities to realize that while growing there might be necessities to change the corporate structure and prepare for possible exits, further investment rounds or IPOs. Titus made clear that the early professional legal support can prevent future disasters – changing a wrong structure is simply difficult and can lead to turmoil in the future! So to continuously working on your path to an exit or an IPO you should make sure that the Startup and its Investors seek the best possible legal advice early on! Andreas as M&A- and Tech-Specialist and as an Investor also pointed out that it is important to get to know Startups early on – actually the “Secret Sauce” for good advisors – and support them on their path with contacts and networking to gain access to the best advice. He also made a point that a European weakness could be too much diversity with too many Stock Exchanges competing for example for the IPO-Business. Also the panel agreed that it is difficult for Startups to compare all available public support systems within Europe since every country has a different approach.

To sum it up: There is a lot of support available in Europe, it is just sometimes difficult for the Startups to find the right path and the best fitting Advisors and Investors, and that’s why attending the EVM is a good chance to meet trustworthy and excellent partners!

Thanks Peter and all participants for a lively discussion and good insights!

Time for the second company-seesion moderated by Masoud Kamali - WestTech Ventures. WestTech Ventures is a technology-oriented early-stage investor in Berlin. WestTech Ventures can support your project in various phases: as a business angel and within their deep tech incubator Project Flying Elephant and and also later as a SeedVC. The focus of WestTech is on topics such as: software, software engineering, B2B, SaaS, mobile services, media, media technology and education.

 

CARGODRONE - The founders have a vision for the future to replace truck and rail transport for electric and autonomous large-scale drones. Imagine a world where we do not have billions in infrastructure costs but highly flexible and environmentally friendly airways. Autonomous vehicles such as trucks are a good solution, but only an intermediate one. They believe that the future of transport will be in the airspace and CARGODRONE is the company to make it a reality.

With global GDP doubling by 2030, airline traffic worldwide could grow by around 4.7% per annum over 2010-30; air freight could increase by around 5.9% p.a. over the same period; maritime container traffic could increase by more than 6% p.a.; and rail passenger and freight traffic worldwide could increase at around 2-3% p.a. On this basis: Air passenger traffic could double in 15 years; Air freight could triple in 20 years; and Port handing of maritime containers worldwide could quadruple by 2030.

skyglyph optimizes crop insurance with the help of drones, Image Recognition and Machine Learning. Crop insurance claim processing is time-consuming and inaccurate. This inefficiency costs the industry about 6Bn USD. We believe that penetration of autonomous machines in insurance is unavoidable. With fusion of drones and Machine Learning we deliver a cloud platform for crop damage detection with aerial drones. It accelerates the claim processing, saves money and avoids fraud.

The size of the worldwide crop insurance market is probably $30-$40 billion (including $5-$6Bn in Europe). With the help of our technology we can save $1bn in Europe & $6bn worldwide.

APPbyYOU  offers a "communication integration platform", called COMPANY-MESSENGER. The focus is B2B to integrate IoTs, Bots, Widgets, Mini-Apps to the messaging plattform. The hype-topic of the internet is to create chatbots for a human-machine communication. In Industry 4.0, APPbyYOU combines machines (IoTs) to the messaging platform to get status information from the machine to the employee.

APPbyYOU offers not only the software licence of the B2B Company-Messenger-Platform, but will also provide a Bot-Shop for selling Chatbots, AI-Chatbots, widgets and Mini-Apps in the future. The architecture of our platform is similar to the "WeChat"-Platform used in China.

Cybershoes. Walk free and endless in virtual reality. Cybershoes® solves a core problem of VR at low costs and excellent usability (high "immersion"). How can humans walk in a potentially endless virtual space while being in a finite real space? How can one play an "Open World Game" (e.g. Fallout 4 VR) while being confined to the living room?

1. Cybershoes are very effective because they concentrate logics and mechanics in the shoes.
2. Cybershoes combine standing with sitting. The user has a high feeling of freedom and comfort. No expensive support systems are needed. The fact that the users are halfway seated was not relevant to our initial 700 test users. The brain plays a trick on you!
3. Other systems require the user to be strapped into a harness with a bulky support frame (Virtuix, Omni, Cyberix, Kat VR)

Cybershoes have the potential to become the market leader for feet based VR locomotion in B2C and B2B. The VR/AR market size is 5.6 billion as of today and it's forecasted to be 35 billion in 2020.

• We've assumed that 1 out of 1000 (Kickstarter), later 1 out of 200 VR gaming addicts that are interested in games where running is essential buys Cybershoes at a very low-end consumer price tag of $499 - $399. This equals 0.06% of the global AR/VR market and makes 3D.RUN a company with a revenue of 5 million per year in 2020.
• Our goals are more ambitious! Scenario: a VR-platform provider buys the already successful Cybershoes company and makes a product like the Wii. Now, this provider has the USP for locomotion in VR games. The Triple-A game developers will be part of it.

Hybrid-Airplane Technologies GmbH (HAT) is a spin-off of the University of Stuttgart and has developed the patented unmanned flight system h-aero™. Two products h-aero™ zero and h-aero™ one are now ready for serial production. The fundamental idea is a science-backed combination of long established flight concepts (i.e. helicopter, airplane, balloon) to preserve their respective advantages while overcoming their respective disadvantages by creating a synergetic arrangement of the components. The sweetspot of our current activities lies in the field of data gathering and providing.

Their business specializes in the development of hybrid aircraft systems, the provision of services, research and development, engineering as well as production and the distribution of aircraft systems, airborne systems, communication platforms and communication links as well as in the domain of autonomous robotics and cybernetics. We have the permission to fly over crowds and others (drones) do not. We reduce risks on both sides, investor and technology (scaling). We raise the social acceptance of our technology. First validated target groups are: Events, Sponsoring, LED, Logo, Security via Cam, Streaming and Universities and Research Institutes for AI and sensor challenges.

Masoud did a great job introducing the companies and conducting the Q&A session – thanks a lot!

After a well deserved lunch we continued and gathered for a very interesting Keynote by Jens Munk from Kennet Partners "Capital has a Personality - and how do you deal with it".

Jens has about 28 years of experience as a Startup-Entrepreneur first and then as an investor, and he recently and within two and a half years turned around a fund that was struggling and generated profitable exits and was able to repay investors with a nice profit.

He urged Startup-Entrepreneurs to pay attention to the financial needs of their company and focus on it with the same intensity as on their technology or market development. His message was clear: Find the right investor who fits in with you personally and understands the needs of your company! And if you can avoid external investors while building your company without jeopardizing your efforts – also not a bad idea! You could see that the entrepreneurs were following his thoughts and he got great feedback later for his encouraging yet warning thought! Thanks Jens, a great pleasure to have you with us!

The last company session was moderated by Holger Michael Wagner form EnBW Ventures. His fund is an evergreen fund concentrating on the energy sector (e)-mobility, storage, - smart home and connected devices, smart city, virtual power plant and all related topics like security, data analytics etc.

Hexagon provides Global Sourcing and Forward Sourcing as well as Imports on its global platform. It utilizes inefficiencies in the markets and enables purchasing companies to obtain offers from many more producers worldwide to secure best quality and prices fast. Hexagon is able to act as an intermediary or offer full service with delivery door to door. The company has traction and even though organic growth is possible is looking for investment to grow and scale faster.

Jobfox HR-Tech: Jobfox disrupts blue-collar recruiting. With its highly simplified and standardized process, recruiting and searching for a new part-time job is more efficient than ever - and even fun. Released in early 2017, Jobfox is now live in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Cologne, with over 10,000 jobseekers and 700 employers already using the platform and 15 applications generated on average for every new job offer. The Jobfox mobile app is available on both Android and iOS, and there is also a desktop browser interface on www.jobfox.co for larger employers.

Today, the market for blue collar recruiting is highly intransparent and inefficient. Searching for part-time and blue-collar employment is a time-consuming, frustrating process - and so is the search for blue collar staff. A lot of talent, time and money is wasted on both sides, and jobs are rarely filled with the perfect candidates. Hence, the opportunity for a more efficient blue collar recruiting is huge, and it is growing: in Germany, unskilled labour represents about 25% of the total workforce, and 55% of new hires, due to a much shorter average length of stay in blue collar vs. white collar jobs. Globalisation, immigration and labour market flexibility will result in further growth of the blue-collar recruiting market that is estimated at 150M in Germany alone.

James-Digital IT, Hospitality industry. James Digital offers a digital and scalable concierge by creating a service marketplace, connecting intuitively the guest, hotel and service provider to facilitate the best amenities to the guest. Services by local companies such as wellness, laundry, chauffeur services, food delivery, event tickets are brought to the guest's device through a web application using WLAN. Additionally, hotel and serviced apartments can provide tailored recommendation to their guests within a few clicks.

Star-rated: 20k hotels in Germany, 90k hotels in Europe, 350k hotels world wide. Overall: more than 2,3 million hotels world wide plus an unknown number of private and service apartments. We aim for a 10% market share. Digital Local Marketing: Predicted global revenue increase from € 21 Bn. to € 76 Bn by 2015-2021. Revenue is generated by earning a margin on provided services, tailored advertisement and hotel fees.

Mindcoa.ch One of the largest global problems is maintaining mental health, causing an economic burden of more than 2 trillion US$. According to current studies nearly everyone has to deal with this problem once in the lifetime. Unfortunately only a small fraction of people needing psychological assistance get access – and when they do it is often years too late. Using our own approach and IBM Watson technology we provide access to a mental support system that is available 24/7 via PC or smartphone, focusing on prevention of mental disorders and on personal growth. mindcoa.ch provides virtual coaches, based on cognitive technology and on newest psychological research. We have created an integrated mobile health platform, enabling a wide range of apps – for status analysis, guidance through an improvement process and ongoing reflection.

Market research and feedback from potential users as well as experts confirmed that we are addressing a large market need. A beta version will be released in 4Q2017. According to McKinsey the digital health market consists of 6 categories. Our solution belongs at least to the “Quantified Self” and “Virtual Access”. In 2022 the mHealth market will be US$ 90B. We address two market segments:

1. individuals looking for any kind of psychological advice and
2. companies in the healthcare market.

Thanks Holger Michael Wagner for the moderation and keeping it within the time frame!

And we continued with Rembert Knappe our host from EY and the partner at EY responsible for the Start-Up-activities in the region. He spoke about „Innovation powered by EY“. A lot of younger companies would probably be hesitant to give EY a call to ask for their help, but Rembert Knappe and his colleagues Josephine Bayer, Program Manager at EYnovation,  and Francesco Pisani made it very clear that they and their colleagues are eager to help and have put together various packages for Start-Ups that make it easier and actually very attractive to talk to EY: it is not only nicely priced services in the beginning, it is also the enormous expertise and the worldwide network of 220.000 people EY has to offer! On top, the new program at EYnovation offers Startups a chance to become part of it and enjoy the support and coaching of the EY-Professionals! So don’t hesitate, give them a call with your questions and test them!

Dr. Martin Steinbach also from EY followed with an abbreviated version of his usually very interactive workshop "From Zero to IPO"

He gave great insights about the development of the IPO-Markets over time and hands-on advice to Startups to consider the option IPO early! The average time until a company realizes an IPO is 6 years and the preparation takes about 3 years, so in combination with Jens Munk’s advice to make sure you strongly focus on financing from the beginning this is a path to really consider! Martin is one of the most experienced professionals in the field and ready to be your sparring partner once you decided to go in the direction IPO!

And then it was already over! We did not only see very interesting companies and stimulating keynotes and a great panel but noticed that the interaction in the networking breaks was initiated by all sides: investors who wanted more answers after the questions already asked in the sessions, companies actively seeking the contact with investors and services approaching possible partners with their extensive experience and their networks!

We then met in the lobby and let the day fade out with a glass of wine or beer, enjoyed some tasty finger-food still exchanging business cards and ideas! What a fun day!

Thanks again to all of you and especially the EY-Team for making the EVM again a very amiable and interactive event!

And we have to emphasize that the Coaching-Day one day prior to the event is a key element of the EVM and has helped the attendees in Frankfurt tremendously! The whole focus of the presentations and their messages was often completely turned around for the better and we made sure we kept it within the time frame of 5 minutes! So if you plan to attend one of our next events make sure you show up for the Coaching Day - it is more than worth it!

Please give us some Feedback and let us know if you need support and assistance since we at CONTINUA and as the host of the EVM can help you in developing your business plan or improve your presentation and last but not least introduce you directly to investors. Call us anytime +4930-440386-0 to discuss your options and of course if you need help approaching other participants!

 

 Markus Kuntze                     Katja Rowedder                   Birgit Jungwirth