UnternehmerTUM is a center for Innovation and Business Creation at Technische Universität München. UnternehmerTUM offers founders and startups a complete service from the initial idea to IPO. A team of experienced entrepreneurs, scientists, managers and investors supports founders with the development of their products, services and business models. The experts accompany them actively with building up their companies, market entry and financing – also via Venture Capital.

UnternehmerTUM was founded in 2002 by the entrepreneur Susanne Klatten. With more than 50 high-growth technology start-ups each year and its unique offering, it is the leading center for business creation in Germany.

The accelerator programme TechFounders coaches technology startups over a period of 20 weeks up to an initial venture round, and paves the way for joint ventures with established companies. For industry partners, UnternehmerTUM is a unique platform for cooperation with new companies, and for expansion of their innovative strength and culture.

At the new Entrepreneurship Center on the Garching Research Campus the Technische Universität München and UnternehmerTUM bundle their programmes for entrepreneurs under one umbrella. Start-ups, innovators and makers will find here a unique infrastructure to realize their start-up projects – from initial idea to growth stage. The departments of the TUM Entrepreneurship Research Institute channel their research results directly into the promotion of business start-ups. 

UnternehmerTUM is organized in four companies:

• UnternehmerTUM GmbH - inspires and empowers students, researchers and professionals by providing outstanding, hands-on entrepreneurship training, by incubating technology-based startup teams and by giving access to prototyping infrastructure.

• UnternehmerTUM Projekt GmbH - runs the start-up accelerator program TechFounders and collaborates with young and established companies to identify, develop and realize joint projects to successfully generate new business.

• UnternehmerTUM Venture Capital Partners GmbH - runs a venture capital fund to finance cutting-edge technology start-ups with international market potential. It is a Munich-based early-stage venture capital firm, investing in technology-based startups in Europe. UVC Partners focuses on B2B business models in the areas of Industrial Technologies, Enterprise Software / SaaS and Mobility. The fund typically invests between € 500.000 and € 3m initially, and up to € 12m in total. Thus, the focus is on the seed, series A and early series B phases.

• UnternehmerTUM MakerSpace GmbH - Covering 1500 square metres, ‘MakerSpace’, Europe's largest publicly accessible high-tech workshop, enables companies, startups and creatives to produce prototypes and small batches using state-of-the-art machines such as large 3D printers.

The supporting activities of UnternehmerTUM consists of 5 areas (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Supporting activities of UnternehmerTUM
(Source: https://www.unternehmertum.de/files/7F0000010163CAE2FA890CAE73F55C32.pdf)

The incubation process of UnternehmerTUM consists of the following steps:

1. Recognise opportunities - UnternehmerTUM helps you to discover the potential of your idea or technology. With the provided services you can find out whether the idea you have in mind is an entrepreneurial chance and discover the commercial potential of the technology. Does the business idea meet a customer´s need? How big is the market, and who are the competitors?

2.  Develop concepts - from idea to business concept. UnternehmerTUM offers their support to develop business plans, build prototypes and assist with the funding of/for the business.

3. Set up business - Get started! UnternehmerTUM provides support with the founding of the company, the setting up of the team and the structure of the organisation. UnternehmerTUM helps to develop a strategy for successful market-entry.

4. Ensure growth - Put your start-up's finances on the right foundation. UnternehmerTUM helps to find a well-balanced funding mix for growth and to explore new markets.

Figure 2: Incubation process of UnternehmerTUM
(Source: https://www.unternehmertum.de/files/7F0000010163CAE2FA890CAE73F55C32.pdf)

https://www.unternehmertum.de/makerspace.xhtml?lang=en

https://www.tum.de/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/detail/article/32402/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVd5Cz7rwXc