Celonis has been involved in process mining since it was founded in 2011. Its valuation: more than 10 billion euros. The HR software start-up Personio was valued at 8.5 billion euros in mid-2022.
The founders and CEOs of these success stories are alumni of the Technical University of Munich. The TU in particular plays a role in many successful start-up initiatives, writes the German newspaper Die Welt. There are matching events or such where alumni report on their start-up experiences. Ideas and contacts are exchanged, and those who want to can take part in workshops or further education.
The self-supporting projects
The “Unternehmer TUM” is a university-related institution of the Technical University of Munich that supports resourceful founders. The “Munich Urban Colab” is a place of work for those who are in the early stages of setting up their business. Here, the focus is on the early stages of start-ups, where a lot of manual work is required, either in creating a physical prototype or in developing and testing a digital offering. But there are several offerings of this kind, such as the startup incubator “Xpreneurs”, a “Digital Hub Mobility” or the “applied AI Initiative”.
However, the “Unternehmer TUM” institution is itself set up like a startup and not like a funding program. As Die Welt notes, BMW heiress Susanne Klatten provided many millions at the start, but always with the proviso that everything would soon have to pay for itself. Today, the hub can point to an annual turnover of around 40 million euros and a capital reserve of 50 million euros. Like other venture capitalists, Unternehmer TUM profits directly from increases in value and sales proceeds.
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The idea and its realization
Among other things, it is also about putting the participants’ ideas into practice. Together with partners from industry, other companies, or SMEs, the aim is to develop offers that are ready for the market after five to ten years. The importance of the linkage with the economy in the region for the Munich ecosystem can be seen in many places. Siemens, for example, was one of the first customers of the now-important software developer Celonis. The team learned a lot from the company and was able to make its own product more relevant for the market, writes Die Welt.
The fact that Celonis itself set up its headquarters very close to the university was a very conscious decision. The cooperation runs in many directions. Around 200 Celonis employees have a TUM background, including many former working students who were then taken on.
Millions from the state
The Munich start-up scene also receives support from the state of Bavaria. In 2022, the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts supported the establishment of the TUM Venture Labs with two million euros. The initiative of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and TUM entrepreneurs is part of the Free State’s high-tech agenda. It focuses primarily on artificial intelligence, robotics, and quantum technology.
The goal is to drastically accelerate the transformation of cutting-edge research into marketable applications. Bavaria wants to be a model for the whole of Germany: by creating entire ecosystems in important fields of technology, the TUM Venture Labs are to become a model for start-up funding at German universities.
