The contact point StartHub Hessen is the central port of call for the Hesse start-up community. The initiative from the Federal State of Hesse is part of Hessen Trade & Invest GmbH and aims to link up start-ups with higher education institutions, incuba- tors, accelerators, business hubs, companies and inve- stors. Free of charge and without obligation, it provides funding advice, analyses requirements, finds the right fun- ding program, and offers support with applications. www.starthub-hessen.de THE FOUNDING FATHERS Carlo Kölzer is the most successful start-up founder in FrankfurtRhineMain to date. He set up his FX tra- ding platform 360T in 2000, so at a time when no one was talking about fin- tech, and sold it to Deut- sche Börse in 2015 for 725 million Euros. He now aims to facilitate investments in art and real estate through tokens. Andreas Gahlert has twice achieved huge suc- cess as a start-up founder. In 2006 he sold his adverti- sing agency Neue Digitale for a large sum to the Ame- rican giant Razorfish. In 2015 he set up CoBi – Connected Bike, which he then also sold in 2017 for an “appropriate” sum to Bosch, but remains on board as Chief Digital Officer. ) 2 ( s s u f h ü K a i c i r t a P e k c i r F t u m l e H / . Z . A . F The high-tech device was invented by Jonathan Hesselbarth, who spent a large part of his childhood and youth on an airfield as his parents were passionate glider pilots; no surprise that he began building model aircraft at an early age. He was later inspired by the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, a vast tilt-rotor convertible aircraft with vertical take-off and landing capability. Surely it’s possible to do it more easily, Hesselbarth thought, and the idea for the Wingcopter was born. The mechanical engineering student teamed up with Tom Plüm- mer, who had built up an income stream for himself during his stu- dies with a drone start-up for filming. They were later joined by in- dustrial engineer Ansgar Kadura. Now, the three founders employ 135 people and have already developed the second generation Wing- copter, the W 198, with the number representing its wingspan. The new model is set to bring about the commercial break- through. It has eight rotors, is optimized according to aviation standards, and incorporates redundancy, meaning that when one unit fails, a second takes over. The Wingcopter has already passed a series of endurance tests from the South Seas to the Arctic; it is now patent-protected in all the important global markets. “We could ramp up production next year to 1,000 units,” says Thomas Dreiling. The company’s chances are looking good. Wingcopter recently an- nounced a strategic partnership with Air Methods, a leading Ameri- can air rescue service that wants to open up a new area of business with a new subsidiary, using drones to transport urgent medical items such as drugs, blood reserves, blood samples or organ dona- tions. This is where Wingcopter can play to its strengths because the delivery drones are faster than cars and cheaper than helicopters. Will Wingcopter be the next Biontech? The global success of the innovative Corona vaccine developer from Mainz has really spot- lighted the start-up scene in FrankfurtRhineMain. There is even a unicorn among them, i.e., a start-up that is worth more than one billion US Dollars at its so-called exit. Biotech start-up MYR from Bad Homburg was acquired by US pharmaceuticals giant Gilead for 1.15 billion Euros in 2020. Others are well established, such as mattress supplier Emma from Frankfurt. “The Sleep Company” was founded in 2015 and is now active in 26 countries with sales of over 400 million Euros. The Duisburg-based Haniel family, long-standing industrialists, acquired over 50 percent of the shares in 2020. Some start-ups are on the rise. Frankfurt-based fintech Clark, for example, is considered one of Germany’s fastest-growing digital companies. It offers its users the opportunity to manage, compare and im- prove their insurance policies digitally. In early 2021, Chinese tech group Tencent got involved.