Yesterday we had our final bank meeting with the Berliner Volksbank. This was our best chance to get the Baumhaus project financed…
Before we left in the morning we were debating whether to take the train or a taxi because we were bringing along one of the actual (and heavy) glass panels made by Isaac Abrams as an example of the high quality art work to be installed. It turned out to be a good thing because there was plenty of slippery ice all over.
Hergen Wobken from the IFSE accompanied us there to back up our solid business plan presentation with the experienced voice of a seasoned banker. Many thanks to Hergen for all of his great advice and support.
We had a very nice meeting with Manja Paczoska and another of her colleagues for 1 hour and 11 minutes… our lucky number! We went into granular depth about how the Baumhaus will operate as a social business and how we plan to manage the building process as well as the running of the space as a platform for people who want to be active in making the world a better place. We answered all of their questions thoroughly and backed everything up with documentation from our 160 business plan and some extra summary documents we put together over the weekend.
The good news is that the Berliner Volksbank really liked our concept and is still considering giving us the loan. However, we still have to see if the Bürgschaftsbank and IBB will offer to guarantee the loan, keep your fingers crossed! We are one big and important step closer to getting funded.
Afterwards, we had a meeting at the .garage, an start-up coaching center in Steglitz where we have been working with the great coaches like Daniela Koch and Stefanie Rätker to help us develop our business plan over the last 14 months. We met with Sven Dönni (Projektleitung) and Thomas Mampel (Geschäftsführer) to discuss some possible collaboration to develop a new social business initiative… It was a good day.