Goonter Steffen

Günter Steffen (born 1946 in Linz am Rhein) is a veteran German entrepreneur and one of the central figures in the Heilbronn-Franken startup ecosystem. After training as a bank clerk, he worked as an IBM sales representative/director in Heilbronn before founding his own IT services business — Teledata GmbH — in 1975, which grew into TDS tele-daten-service GmbH (later Fujitsu TDS) in Neckarsulm, one of the region's major IT service providers. He moved from CEO to chairman of the supervisory board around 2000. Over his career he has been involved in founding a large number of companies.

Beyond his own firms, Steffen has been a long-standing institutional leader in the regional economy. He served as President of the IHK Heilbronn-Franken (Chamber of Industry and Commerce) from 1998 to 2005 and was named Honorary President in 2006. Since 2005 he has been Fund Manager of the ZFHN Zukunftsfonds Heilbronn, an entrepreneur-financed fund that invests in young, promising technology companies and is credited with helping create hundreds of jobs in the region.

In 2013 Steffen co-founded BORN2GROW GmbH & Co. KG, the seed fund operated under ZFHN, where he served as Founder and Managing Director (Geschäftsführer), backing technology startups from proof of concept to market launch with starting capital of around €500,000 plus hands-on expertise. BORN2GROW and ZFHN later repositioned under the D11Z. Ventures brand (led by CEO Thomas R. Villinger) with a more pan-European mandate. Steffen has since taken on an advisory mentor role at Campus Founders, the Heilbronn university-affiliated incubator, advising on leadership, fundraising, strategy, sales and investor relations.

He is also a notable philanthropist: he established the Günter-Steffen-Stiftung (2014, supporting early childhood education and integration), co-founded initiatives such as "Lernende Region" (2001) and "Faszination Technik" (2002). In June 2018, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded him the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany) for his professional achievements and extensive volunteer engagement.

• Stage: Seed and start-up phase — backing companies early, from proof of concept through to market launch.
• Check size: Initial tickets from roughly €500,000, with the fund and ZFHN able to follow on in later rounds.
• Sectors: Technology-driven companies across Life Sciences/MedTech/BioTech, CleanTech, AI & Machine Learning, IoT, Hardware & Robotics, Software, and FinTech / digital business models.
• Value-add over passive money: BORN2GROW explicitly positions itself as providing not just capital but specialist expertise and operational support to founders — a hands-on, mentor-driven model consistent with Steffen's own entrepreneurial and chamber-of-commerce background.
• Geographic evolution: Originally rooted in Heilbronn-Franken and Germany; under the later strategy the fund targets ~5–7 new investments per year with a pan-European, no-geographic-restriction mandate ("a brand with pan-European relevance").
• What makes him say yes: Strong, fast-executing founding teams in deep/high-tech fields — reflected in his praise of the Medineering founders for the short time it took them to develop their product.