Broadening collaboration between start-ups and industry
April 19, 2010
Growth through innovation: How government and industry are to spur technology projects in Germany is a subject that about 200 high-calibre guests will discuss at High-Tech Gründerfonds’ first technology conference on 27 April in Bonn.
The objective of this High-Tech Partnering Conference is to ease and facilitate portfolio companies’ access to potential joint venture partners. A select 50 high-tech businesses will meet with more than 100 representatives of the most significant innovation drivers from industry and explore opportunities for collaboration. The technology focal areas are life sciences, automation, optical technologies, energy efficiency, software and internet technologies as well as telecommunications. The conference will provide both major industrial groups and medium-sized enterprises with a good opportunity to quickly and efficiently familiarise themselves first-hand with innovative technologies and products.
The right time for joint ventures in industry
After five years of investing, the Fund has built up a high-tech portfolio comprising more than 180 companies. Both the size of the portfolio and the degree of maturity of the technologies and products it contains provide numerous points from which to follow on for industrial companies. This may involve development or distribution joint ventures, targeted expansion of customer relationships or even investment.
Dr Michael Brandkamp, Managing Director of High-Tech Gründerfonds, emphasizes: “Collaboration between young, high-tech enterprises and larger industry partners is becoming more important than ever. Major industrial groups always want to enhance their innovative power and young technology businesses with substantial potential for innovation need strong partners. Fruitful collaboration is beneficial for both sides. We would like to turn our technology conference into a regularly-held event: we will thereby create added value for both our portfolio companies and industry investors in the Fund.”
About High-Tech Gründerfonds
High-Tech Gründerfonds invests venture capital in young, high-opportunity technological companies implementing promising research results in an entrepreneurial manner. The start-up companies are planned to lead their R&D projects to the production of a prototype or a “proof of concepts” or market launch by means of the seed financing of up to 500k EUR. The High-Tech Gründerfonds has a fund volume of around 272m EUR. Investors of the public-private partnership are the Federal Ministry for Economics and Technology, the KfW bank group as well as the six industrial groups BASF, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Robert Bosch, Daimler and Carl Zeiss.
Contact:
High-Tech Gründerfonds Management GmbH
Gabriela Fricke
Ludwig-Erhard-Allee 2
53175 Bonn
Phone: +49 228 96568505
Fax: +49 228 96568550
g.fricke@high-tech-gruenderfonds.de
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de
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