Company: aima UG (limited liability)
Founders: Sascha Dengler, Niklas Kunz, Maximilian Meyer, André Meyer
Date of establishment: June 22, 2021
Industry and company: Health and sports

What drives you? What is your motto?
We want to make movement analysis as commonplace as going to the dentist.

What is your start-up about and what makes it special?
Our first product applies findings from AI research to help athletes move efficiently and healthily. Our current focus is on helping cyclists choose the right bike. The goal is to make complex technology easy to use and functional wherever the movement takes place.

What are your first successes?
We have already received very positive feedback on our idea at the TU Darmstadt Ideas Competition 2022 and the Startup Booster Program in Wiesbaden. But the best moment was when the first cyclists no longer had any complaints after implementing our suggestions for improvement.

What is your professional background?
We all came to aima through sport. We then combined our hobbies with engineering thinking: we wanted to understand and improve athletic movements from many different areas. When we received a lot of positive feedback and requests for a technical solution, our hobby project slowly turned into our startup.

What prompted you to start your own company?
After spending a long time working on the topic of AI and movement, we realized that a lot of the technology for recognizing and evaluating movements already existed. Specifically, there are models that enable early detection of joint diseases such as osteoarthritis. That's why we decided to start with a simple bicycle product, so we could gain experience and approach the larger topic of movement health.

Who advised you, who are your helpers and mentors?
The start-up consultancy HIGHEST at TU Darmstadt was our first point of contact for the basics of our start-up. After that, we repeatedly met supporters at various events who then helped us with specific questions, e.g., about contract design and much more.

How did you experience your first days as founders?
Actually, very little changed for us: we were happy that we had taken this step, but we wanted to maintain our creative way of working and thus also the fun of development. But of course, we also celebrated with our beta customers and supporters.

What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge was definitely turning a "good idea" into a product. Our collaboration with bicycle dealers in our region was crucial in this regard, as they allowed us to see whether the individual features of the product were actually being used.

How do you draw attention to your company? What is your best marketing idea?
Since we are initially targeting bike shops, appearances at trade fairs are the best channel for addressing our customers. However, we also use our product in conjunction with clubs, which allows us to build awareness and contacts in the respective regions.

How did you finance your start-up?
As a software company, we mainly invested time at the beginning. Financially, we initially used our own funds and supplemented these with funding programs and sales from our beta customers.

What dream would you still like to realize?
We want to develop a product for physical therapists that helps patients better understand and treat their symptoms.

Please complete the following sentence: If I had more time, I
would... collaborate more with universities.

What is your special tip: What would you recommend to founders?
Start with "half" solutions and get honest feedback early on. This is the only way to ensure that something meaningful develops.