Our Annual General Meeting was held off-site for the first time at our platinum sponsor, Bethmann Bank, on the banks of the Alster in Hamburg, where series founder Nikolas Bullwinkel gave a seminal keynote speech on his latest start-up „Circus SE“ at the subsequent impulse evening.

In November, we traditionally meet for the end-of-year event: the masterclass followed by a matching event. In 2024, we focussed on the trio of business angels, venture capitalists and founders. We discussed this with representatives of the three groups, gained exciting insights from the German Private Equity and Venture Capital Association in Berlin and learnt about the pitfalls in negotiations between angels and start-ups.

On 27 August 2024, the third BBA Matching Event of the year took place at the W8 Media Centre in Kiel, the former premises of Achterbahn-Verlag, which printed the WERNER comics. Business angels, people interested in networking and start-ups met in bright sunshine to present and discuss innovative ideas and exciting business concepts.

Our second matching event of the year at Gut Pronstorf took place in a unique atmosphere. This time, we had the honour of presenting six innovative founders who had come to us from all over Germany.

6 start-ups, 8 minutes of pitches. The goal: six-figure euro investments. On 13 February 2024, the Förde Sparkasse hosted the first matching event of the
Baltic Business Angels Schleswig-Holstein in 2024.

At the first Impulse Evening 2024 on the topic of „DanBAN as a benchmark for German angels networks“, we were hosting DanBan CEO Thomas Marschall and DanBan founder and chairman Jesper Jarlbæk, who gave a keynote speech on the conditions for success and successful angels network management.

Before that, we met for the Annual General Meeting and talked about 2023 and the plans for 2024 and also reelected Julian von Hassell to be chairman of the board and Screening Officer Claas Nieraad for another two years.

Corporate venture capitalists are strategic investment partners and often determine the direction of travel. This is why they are not so popular with many business angels. However, they also bring expertise to the table and often tend to take on smaller tickets for start-ups. BAs and CVCs can therefore usually complement each other well, reposition themselves and thus help the start-up to progress particularly well, especially at the beginning. How do corporates act in conjunction with business angels?
We spoke to various representatives and experts from the CVC sector about this.

This year’s masterclass focused on „Angel investments in turbulent times“. To this end, long-established business angel icons shared their experiences with us, we got to know a new platform for deal flow management and fund investment tools, learned about the European Digital Innovation Hub and how to successfully identify exceptional founders.

As early as 2017, the WTSH had initiated a network in which private investors in the state can exchange ideas and gain access to promising startups. Baltic Business Angels Schleswig-Holstein e.V. was then founded in June 2018 and the network has been growing steadily ever since. We celebrated our fifth birthday with great guests and a colorful audience at InnoPier in Kiel.

Does a fund make sense for us as an investment vehicle? How do other networks do it? At our year-end event, we learned about different approaches. We also dealt with the question of how big the crisis mood is for investments in startups and how to deal with problems in your own investments as a business angel.

The new Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Economics, Transport, Labor, Technology and Tourism Claus Ruhe Madsen visited our Impulse Evening in Kiel on September 29, 2022. According to the statutes, the minister is a „born board member“ of the association and in this capacity succeeds his minister predecessor Dr. Bernd Buchholz, who co-founded the network in 2018.

In the far north of Schleswig-Holstein our network met for the BBA year-end event. The newly opened Flensburg hotel „Das James“ was our venue.

Looking back on the year 2020 and planning for the next months at Baltic Business Angels Schleswig-Holstein e.V. – that was the topic of the annual general meeting. On April 21, this took place for the first time via video conference. Besides the usual agenda items for associations, the election of the Commercial Officer was on the agenda.