It was the first time he had been back to HNU in 22 years, reports Helmut Jeggle, who was studying business administration in his second year at the time. A lot has happened in these 22 years; not only have the HNU buildings been rebuilt. The HNU alumnus' success story also began: After graduating, he joined Hexal AG in Holzkirchen as a finance trainee. Jeggle, who is "Swabian at heart," as he says himself, saw many opportunities to develop himself in business administration. On his very first day, he met his future business partner and wife and Hexal founders Thomas and Andres Strüngmann. After two years, he was promoted to Head of Controlling at Hexal AG. When Hexal was sold to Novartis in 2005, Jeggle took off as Head of Business Planning & Analysis Germany at Sandoz. After a few years on the job, he followed up his HNU studies with an MBA at the Stuttgart Institute of Management and Technology, which he found very rewarding.
Jeggle: "Nobody knew we existed, yet BioNTech already had 400 employees."
Helmut Jeggle spent many years managing the assets of the Strüngmann- families in the ATHOS Family Office. He was responsible for managing their direct investments in companies. In 2008, BioNTech was founded. "That was our opportunity in a difficult market environment for start-ups," Jeggle says looking back. But the founding team of scientists and investors had a tough time - coinciding with the Lehman bankruptcy. Moreover, Uğur Şahin's vision of developing personalized cancer therapies seemed impossible to some at the time. Part of the strategy, therefore, was to stay "under the radar for several years" to work on the technologies and generate patents, Jeggle says. "Nobody knew we existed, but we already had 400 team members. We didn't even have a homepage until 2014," he adds. Things got really exciting in 2019, when BioNTech SE was set to go public. Many major and minor hurdles, which Jeggle told the Management Forum audience with the support of a few anecdotes, presented numerous challenges to the management and supervisory board, which at its core has remained unchanged since 2007: "Due to various external factors reflected in the capital market, it was a hell of a ride." In the end, success proved them right. And the advent of the Corona pandemic, which found its champion in the mRNA vaccines developed by BioNTech. "BioNTech can become the Apple of the healthcare industry. The team and the longstanding collaboration is our greatest asset," Jeggle concludes about BioNTech. "We believe that the democratization of innovative medicine is one of the future issues worldwide that we need to take care of."
As a tip for students, for starting their careers, Helmut Jeggle reveals, "Common sense goes a long way." He also recommends that young people be passionate about what they do, stay true to themselves, and don't get railroaded. Jeggle also had three book tips from the perspective of his many years as an early-stage investor: "Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers" by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, "The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future" by Sebastian Mallaby, and "From good to great" by Jim Collins.
About the Management Forum
Neu-Ulm University (HNU) regularly invites business leaders to the university to report on current, practical topics from the various fields of business management and to share their valuable wealth of experience at the HNU Management Forum.
