European champions and founders: knowing where the line will break

Sprinting for forty hours every week, throwing javelins and discus, running hurdles, jumping far and high – for many that would be a full-time job.

Especially if you want to be among the best in the world in decathlon.

But the twenty-two-year-old Andreas Bechmann, who only became U-23 European champion last summer, doesn't seem to be busy: he puts the rest of the week, at least 80 hours, into his company Preventio.

Even if he wanted to, he couldn't train 24 hours a day, says the athlete, who competes for Eintracht Frankfurt.

So he has enough time for his start-up – which recently received a cash injection in the millions from investors.

The man from Frankfurt became the founder when he came to his apartment in the evening after sports training about two years ago.

His bathroom is almost knee-deep in water: a burst pipe.

The craftsmen are in the apartment for days to completely dry and sanitize it.

And Bechmann wonders if there isn't a way to prevent something like this.

“The best damage is that which never occurs in the first place”

Appropriately enough, Bechmann is a management student at the Accadis University of Applied Sciences in Bad Homburg at the time.

There he is developing a project with two fellow students, which will then become a business idea and the start-up Preventio in autumn 2021.

"The best damage is that which does not occur in the first place," says Bechmann.

Preventio therefore wants to predict damage before it occurs.

To do this, the company collects countless data, for example on the age and damage history of a building.

With the help of an algorithm and artificial intelligence, the data is evaluated and predictions are made about the risk of damage to a property.

Pipes and wires can then be repaired before they break.

His predictions are a "win-win-win" situation for landlords, tenants and insurers.

His company manages without its own sensor technology.

Attaching a sensor to every pipe in an apartment building would be time consuming and expensive.

Preventio works solely with the data that the start-up receives from property owners, insurers, weather services and other data providers.

Companies with which Preventio is already working include the world's leading pipe manufacturer Viega and Germany's largest housing company Vonovia.

But one is open to other partners from real estate-related sectors, says Bechmann.

Because Preventio works best the more data can be collected.

"Sporthilfe Start-up of the Year"

The fact that Bechmann is a competitive athlete helped the company a lot when looking for investors.

Many of the contacts came about because he met contacts after sporting events.

Last year Preventio was also named "Sporthilfe Start-up of the Year", the prize is endowed with 12,000 euros.

That causes pressure, says Bechmann.

But he knows that from sport.

"And I'm convinced that as a founder you have to learn to deal with it."

Bechmann says he knows he can't be an athlete all his life.

And as an athlete, you shouldn’t hope for millions of dollars either.

So he asked himself early on what would come after his sporting career.

The founding of Preventio is an opportunity to secure yourself for the future.

And like an athlete, he is always looking at new goals: Although water damage accounts for more than 50 percent of damage to buildings, there are other types of damage for which preventive detection measures can be developed, he says.

He can also imagine expanding to commercial real estate.

And there will also be international orientation, for example to America.

Not a 100 meter run, but a marathon

In order to achieve its growth plans, Preventio was recently able to raise 1.35 million euros.

The round of investors was led by Futury Capital, an investment fund for tech companies in which the state of Hesse has a stake.

The money will be used primarily for staff, says Bechmann.

In addition, the software platform must be built, because the company wants to go to the market with it at the end of this year.

“In the end, starting a business isn't a 100-meter run, it's a marathon.

It's about sticking with it in the long term," says Bechmann.

But the need in the market is there.

But before that happens, Bechmann wants to achieve a second goal: the next track and field championships are scheduled for August in Munich.

There, the Frankfurter wants to be European champion again.

Because sport has one thing ahead of entrepreneurship: “You can’t win a gold medal when founding a company.”