Last updated on March 9, 2021
After a year, the entrepreneurial restart of Mobilcom founder Gerhard Schmid is over. His startup Baas Business is insolvent. As the business magazine Capital reports , the 67-year-old recently had to file for bankruptcy. Schmid ends his plans to build a kind of app store for the blockchain.
Schmid tried again as an entrepreneur in autumn 2018. For this he relied on the hype about blockchain technology. According to a presentation, he wanted to collect 78 million euros for his company by 2023. However, the plan soon stalled. Several former employees report that the company should no longer have paid members of the small development team in spring 2019. One has obtained a judgment against the startup in the Hamburg district court.
In October it was clear that it would not be possible to start a business. Schmid said that he hadn’t managed to get follow-up financing. The insolvency administrator is now looking for buyers for the partially completed technology.
Mobilcom-Debitel was founded in 1991 by Gerhard Schmid and started as a mobile phone service provider based in Schleswig. Schmid was one of the German billionaires during the Internet speculation bubble from 1999 to 2000. His company Mobilcom bought a UMTS license in the summer of 2000 for 8.5 billion euros. After private bankruptcy in 2003, Schmid worked for his wife Sybille Schmid-Sindram’s Bonus Strom.
Schmid was sentenced in January 2009 by the Kiel Regional Court to a suspended sentence of one year and nine months. The prosecution had argued that in 2002 Schmid put money aside in three cases to save it from access by creditors. The Landesbank Sachsen had previously canceled a loan of EUR 100 million for Schmid.
