BEUMER Group is an intralogistics company, so Beam’s focus is naturally the same. It’s a company that fits neatly into the German scene: logistics is the country’s third largest economic sector, and there’s a lively startup ecosystem looking to disrupt it. It’s also the largest European region in which these kind of enterprise-supported startup schemes are run, so onboarding founders in theory shouldn’t be a hard sell.

The sticking point for Beam could be the 20% equity it requires from its startup founders, which isn’t competitive with the more typical 7-10% of its contemporaries. In a trillion euro European industry ripe for disruption, however, they may find sufficient startups happy to take on that compromise, with only time able to tell whether that will be the case.