Founder of the month: milli IC

We talked to Alexander from the milli IC team about their journey from the initial idea to market entry, hurdles, challenges and successes. Want to know more? Listen to the podcast episode on Spotify or Apple Podcast.

milli IC develops high-performance radio-frequency circuits in the field of millimeter wave technology. Through our proximity to current research, we want to stand above all for transferring the latest and most innovative solutions into commercial products. This is done either in-house or as a development service provider for third parties.

Ersufi from the founding team had been toying with the idea of founding his own spin-off for a long time. In addition, a design method for high-frequency power amplifiers that was suitable for patenting and commercialisation was developed at the KIT around 2022. In 2023, industrial demand from VEGA Grieshaber KG arose in discussions with Prof. Ulusoy. At first, the processes ran in parallel and independently of each other and were brought together by Prof. Ulusoy. The combination finally provided the impetus for the foundation at the end of 2023.

The founding team emerged from the academic environment of the KIT. Esref Türkmen pursued his industrial doctorate at the KIT. This is how he came into contact with the other founders of the KIT. Prof. Ahmet Cagri Ulusoy, professor at the Institute for High-Frequency Technology and Electronics, and Alexander Haag, former research associate at the KIT. It was important to us not to be a purely academic spin-off, which is why Esref’s many years of industry experience were a great addition to the KIT team. VEGA Grieshaber KG, a global leader in innovative level and pressure measurement technology, came on board as an industrial co-partner and supporter. Even before the founding process, there were personal contacts between KIT and VEGA and the company’s need for chip design was known. So the collaboration was the logical consequence.

On the one hand, we saw a bureaucratic aspect that we engineers had not dealt with much in our previous technology-oriented careers. On the other hand, there are financial hurdles. Since we started with a private investor, acquiring an initial investment was a challenge for us, but it was relatively easy to solve. In addition, we were able to fall back on private support for some of the bureaucratic aspects. In the long term, however, chip design requires very high investments, which are difficult to justify in a start-up.

Founders should be able to do many different things and think on their feet. We have found that it is important to be very good at one thing, usually the technical area of the start-up, but still be able to handle all the other tasks that arise. For us, staying power and a little bite are relevant. Not everything will always go smoothly right away. But don’t forget to have some fun too.

In general, we can say that personal contacts and recommendations are often door openers and greatly accelerate processes. Here, for example, we benefit from the contacts of Prof. Ulusoy and VEGA. It is particularly helpful to be able to draw on the wealth of experience, active support and mentoring of experts, in our case Prof. Ulusoy.

When setting up a limited liability company (GmbH), we recommend discussing the articles of association and seeking tax advice and clarifying any open questions at an early stage, and planning with generous capital buffers.

We would say that we are very satisfied internally. Of course, there are external factors that we would like to improve, but often we have no control over them. Overall, in retrospect, we would plan even more generously.