Sebastian Knedlik

Sebastian Knedlik is a Senior Investment Manager at bm|t beteiligungsmanagement thüringen GmbH (bm-t), the Erfurt-based venture capital and private equity company that manages a family of investment funds on behalf of the Free State of Thuringia. He joined bm|t as an Investment Manager in 2008 and has since become one of the firm's senior deal leads.

Before moving into venture capital, Knedlik built a capital-markets career in Frankfurt. Following an apprenticeship, he worked in the Equity Capital Markets division of Deutsche Bank's Frankfurt head office until 2000, then joined the corporate finance unit of BHF-BANK in Frankfurt, where he worked on capital-market transactions. This background in ECM and corporate finance underpins his work structuring financings and equity rounds for early-stage companies.

He studied Business Administration at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management and at Sheffield Hallam University (UK), earning a degree in business administration.

At bm|t, Knedlik operates within a roughly 14-person team of investment managers that collectively oversees a portfolio of more than 60 companies and around €440 million across a dozen funds (including vehicles such as the Thüringer Startup Fonds, Wachstumsbeteiligungsfonds and Thüringer Zukunftsfonds). bm|t's track record includes the NASDAQ IPO of InflaRx and the sale of video-technology startup fayteq AG to Facebook. Knedlik's own confirmed lead deals concentrate on digital health and sports-tech robotics.

• Invests as an institutional, regionally-mandated fund manager: capital goes to companies that are based in Thuringia or will establish operations there, backing "promising business models" from founding through to IPO/MBO/MBI preparation.
• Stage: comfortable leading seed rounds (typically seven-figure) and following on through later growth financings.
• Sector interests evident from his deals and the firm's mandate: digital health / digital therapeutics, AI-enabled medical robotics, sports technology (wearables/hearables), Life Science, electronics/optics, IT and GreenTech.
• On why he says yes, in his own words about tediro: *"tediro addresses the highly interesting market of digital therapeutics and opens up considerable potential with the use of AI in therapy and diagnostics."*
• On backing a team, from the Coachwhisperer round: *"The Coachwhisperer team convinced the investors with its dynamism and its clever product"* (translated) — signaling he weighs founder drive and a differentiated product alongside market size.
• bm|t frequently co-invests alongside partners such as MBG Thüringen, the High-Tech Gründerfonds and private/strategic angels, so a bm|t-led round is often part of a syndicate rather than a solo bet.