The HIGHEST Club gathered for its summer edition at Riese & Müller in Mühltal. Company co-founder Heiko Müller hosted the event, while two startups received TU Darmstadt’s SPIN OFF! label.
More than 60 applications for the new Company Builder, a seasoned entrepreneur warning against investors, and two new recipients of TU Darmstadt’s spin-off label: on Thursday evening, the HIGHEST Club met for its summer edition at Riese & Müller in Mühltal.
The event was hosted by Heiko Müller, who co-founded the company in 1993. Around 50 guests joined the evening. On stage, HIGHEST Managing Director Harald Holzer spoke with Inflabi co-founder Maximilian Klyk about his entrepreneurial journey. Two further teams pitched their startups: Aron Eiermann presented the protein search engine P2P Bio, while Christopher Helmke introduced the humanoid robot developed by Anyscrew GmbH / Pink Robotics. Both were awarded TU Darmstadt’s SPIN OFF! label at the end of the evening.
At 4:30 p.m., the first bicycles begin to gather outside the University and Media Centre on the Lichtwiese Campus. Half a dozen guests have arranged to cycle to Mühltal together. Among them is Maximilian Klyk, founder of Inflabi, who will later take a seat on stage himself.
After just under an hour, the group reaches the Riese & Müller site. Those who decided not to pedal arrive by car. By the end of the evening, around 50 guests have come together on the company campus.
The host opens the doors
Heiko Müller is the first to take the floor, speaking on the premises of the company he founded together with fellow student Markus Riese in 1993.
The two met while studying mechanical engineering at TU Darmstadt. Their first joint product was the Birdy, a full-suspension folding bike that won the Hessian Innovation Award in the same year the company was founded. Then, in 2012, came a decisive move: Riese & Müller switched its entire production to e-bikes. That clear focus helped establish the company as a premium manufacturer in the industry.
Focus is also the advice Müller shares with the audience. Building a company, he says, means concentrating on one thing instead of trying to do too much at once.
Above all, however, he recommends an approach that has become less common in the startup world: avoiding investors wherever possible. His preference is to take out a loan and grow through the company’s own resources rather than focusing on an early exit, as many venture capital investors encourage. Müller and Riese built their company without a single investor – an approach that worked well for them.
Mit dem Fahrrrad zum Erfinder – fuhren einige Teilnehmede vom Campus Lichtwiese aus. Foto: Cherilyn Hehl.
Der Erfinder: Heiko Müller, Gründer von Riese & Müller.
News from HIGHEST
HIGHEST Managing Director Harald Holzer uses his welcome remarks to provide a brief update. The State of Hesse aims to strengthen Darmstadt as a hub for deep-tech startups, while TU Darmstadt has revised its framework for spin-offs. Inventions and patents will in future be recognised as achievements in their own right, and university employees can take a leave of absence to start a company.
One figure is a particular source of pride for Holzer: more than 60 teams applied for the new round of the Company Builder.
The joint funding programme run by HIGHEST and FUTURY supports science-based deep-tech teams for six months, providing capital, mentoring and access to investors. The goal is to turn promising ideas into companies capable of attracting investment.
FUTURY is more than a conventional startup incubator. It is one of ten Startup Factories recognised by the German federal government and is backed by four universities, including TU Darmstadt. Its investment arm has already mobilised EUR 80 million in funding.
A conversation on stage
The evening’s main keynote takes the form of a conversation. On stage, Harald Holzer speaks with Inflabi co-founder Maximilian Klyk about his entrepreneurial journey so far.
Klyk and his team are developing an inflatable bicycle helmet that can be folded away for storage and inflated within seconds. Since founding the company in 2023, Inflabi has participated in several funding programmes: first the Hessen Ideen scholarship, followed by the German federal government’s EXIST funding programme and, most recently, the first round of the HIGHEST and FUTURY Company Builder.
Klyk sums up one of the most important lessons from this period in a single word: timing.
Looking back, he says, he would no longer go public with an unfinished product quite so early and would time several other steps differently as well. The helmet is currently undergoing certification, with market launch approaching.
Two pitches, one seal of quality
The stage then belongs to two more founders.
Aron Eiermann presents P2P Bio, which he founded together with biotechnologist Johannes Kabisch. Their axíōma platform searches billions of known proteins and helps researchers identify suitable enzymes in minutes rather than months.
Christopher Helmke follows with a pitch for P0, the humanoid robot developed by his startup Anyscrew GmbH under the Pink Robotics brand. The robot stands 1.75 metres tall, weighs 82 kilograms and has 32 movable joints.
His proposition is ambitious: humanoid robots will transform the German economy in much the same way as the automobile once did.
For both founders, the evening ends with TU Darmstadt’s SPIN OFF! label – an award for companies with a strong scientific foundation that have successfully completed the university’s selection process.
Close to the pulse of science
What makes a HIGHEST Club evening valuable is not limited to what happens on stage. Much of its impact comes afterwards, through new connections and conversations between founders and business leaders from across the region.
For customers, partners and investors, meeting a TU Darmstadt spin-off at a HIGHEST Club event can mean discovering a company before it becomes widely known.
That is the promise of the HIGHEST Club: early access to science-based spin-offs and a direct connection to Darmstadt’s startup ecosystem.
By Heike Jüngst