Start-up: "This year was the most exhausting of my life"

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It takes a while to get an appointment with Lena Weirauch.

The head of ai-omatic solutions has a lot of work.

It is the first year of the software company that Weirauch founded with two friends in January 2020 - right in the middle of the pandemic.

“This year was the most exhausting of my life,” she says in her company premises in Altona.

Lena Weirauch (26), Felix Kraft (28) and Dario Ramming (33) are not only among those who founded a company in Hamburg in 2020, ai-omatic solutions also survived this extreme first year successfully.

"We will be able to close our first financial year with a small profit," says Weirauch.

She is responsible for the overall appearance of the company and the relationship with customers, Kraft is primarily responsible for the finances of ai-omatic solutions and Ramming for product development.

From January to September 141 software-based companies were founded in Hamburg, the information service Startupdetector reports.

There were 203 in 2019 as a whole, and 186 start-up companies were registered in Hamburg in 2018.

However, if you are looking for a start-up company from the technology industry that works on artificial intelligence, which was founded in 2020 by a woman and is led by her, Startupdetector only delivers one result for the Hanseatic city: ai-omatic solutions.

Female entrepreneurs are reduced to the areas of nutrition and fashion

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The boss is sitting in the conference room on her office floor on the Elbberg.

The tapering house looks like it was specially designed for the spirit of founders.

Star architect Hadi Teherani, who works in the building himself, designed it in the mid-1990s as a symbol of new beginnings in order to combine the old with the new economy on the disused port edge in Altona.

The new economy today is companies like ai-omatic, whose software is used for the maintenance of industrial plants, “predictive maintenance”: “The core of predictive maintenance is to predict when machines will fail.

That can be in production, in the operation of systems, ship engines or batteries, ”says Weirauch.

"The proven sensor technology alone is not enough."

So far, sensors have usually been used according to a fixed set of rules with clear limit values ​​- if a machine part reaches a certain maximum temperature, the part or the entire machine is switched off.

“We work on the principle of neural networks and can use the existing sensors in machines.

We have programmed special software for this and are constantly developing it, ”says Weirauch.

"A huge market is emerging right now."

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Why do few women start such companies?

“That partly reflects social reality.

MINT subjects - mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, technology - are generally considered male domains, ”says Andreas Köpke from Hamburg Invest, which belongs to the Hamburg economic authority and supports the start-up company.

“There is a lack of role models.

In many media, consumer-oriented topics are in focus, women start-ups are reduced to the areas of nutrition and fashion. "

For Lena Weirauch it is clear that her path leads to high technology.

Born in Oldenburg, she studied business psychology and worked at the ZAL Aviation Research Center in Finkenwerder.

She sets her bar high: "It was and is my dream to build a large technology company that is also respected in Silicon Valley."

"We got by with our savings"

She started with her two partners at ai-omatic solutions initially without outside help.

“We started programming our software a few months before the company was founded.

We founded the company at the beginning of the year without any loans or other financial aid.

We somehow got through with our savings. ”Since May, ai-omatic solutions has been sponsored by the Hamburg Investment and Development Bank as part of the InnoFounder program with 75,000 euros, which are paid out in monthly installments of 5,000 euros:“ That helps us very."

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As a location for new companies, the rich and economically strong Hamburg has a lot to offer.

But there are also shortcomings.

The Hamburg Chamber of Commerce registered a total of 8,674 start-ups of all types and legal forms for the first half of 2020.

This is a decrease of around 18 percent - mainly due to the pandemic - compared to the first half of 2019.

Especially with the knowledge-based companies, which are commonly referred to as start-up companies, Hamburg has to do more, says Niels Pirck, Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce: “There has been a need for action since the crisis.

In a nationwide comparison, Hamburg has no focus as a start-up location.

There is no clear profile.

In the Senate, we need a Chief Founders Officer who bundles all start-up activities and who develops a master plan for 'setting up a company'. "A better transfer of knowledge from universities to business" and suitable framework conditions for technology-oriented start-ups are also crucial entrepreneurial innovations ”.

Malte Heyne, General Manager of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, sees more potential, especially in the direct support of founders: “We have a lot of money in Hamburg to support start-up companies and a lot of medium-sized companies with their knowledge and experience to start a new one can be connected, ”he says.

“In order to become stronger here, we have to better network the various actors, also for the provision of risk capital.

We also want to play a more active role as the Chamber of Commerce. "

Lena Weirauch and her partners have worked their way through their first year, which is already challenging for new companies under normal circumstances: "We already have five customers in the industry, including a machine manufacturer and a large, classic industrial company," says Weirauch.

“And we have a list of ten other companies that want to use our technology.

They come from aircraft construction, shipping and the automotive industry. ”In addition to the founders, three other employees now work at ai-omatic solutions:“ Of course we want to continue growing.

For example, we don't have our own marketing yet. "

Even more than the general uncertainty in the economy and society, the conditions of everyday work put a strain on the founding year of ai-omatic solutions: “We should actually have to travel all over Germany to win more customers.

At the moment this is only possible to a very limited extent.

Of course, there are also no trade fairs, ”says Weirauch.

“We were able to win over all of our customers in this first year through our existing contacts.

But some have also found us. "It is much more difficult to establish trust in video conferences than in personal contact and on-site conversation:" But we have learned that too. "

This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.

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Source: Welt am Sonntag