Tilman Sauter

Co-Founder bei Fior

Ruhr Region

About

Happy to have received the "Unternehmer der Zukunft" Award 2025 as well as the "TOP 500 most innovative German SME" Award 2025 (stern magazine 14/2025) as part of our startup, the fior familie gmbh. What makes our approach different: we started with a bold vision for fior familie gmbh - to build a global player in the flooring industry through 2 distinct opportunities digitalization and sustainability. To reduce the risk of a typical startup we created 2 different brands within our company. 1) fiorsports (https://fiorsports.com/): B2B sports and fitness flooring products in which we use existing technologies to incrementally improve our offerings vs. the competition. The aim: with small innovations create immediate sales. The result: From 2020 on we had sales growing continuously (70% in 2024) over the past years. We are the first company to offer recycled fitness turf products as well as we offer recycled rubber tiles. Additionally we hold patents in the integration of lighting into fitness floors. 2) fiorhome (https://fiorhome.de/): a zonal heating concept to significantly reduce room heating energy demand. A bold startup goal with high innovative and high risk potential. Here we have focussed on intense innovation becoming one of the most innovative German SME in 2025. We are the first company to offer such a heat zone while combining smart home AI radar technologies to identify zones within a room.

Experience

  • Co-Founder at fior familie GmbH
    Sep 2020 - Present · 5 yrs 11 mos

    fiorhome: Mit unserer Zonenheizung reduzieren wir die Energie für Raumheizung um bis zu 90%. fiorsports: Durch personalisierte Sportböden jeden Ort und Raum einzigartig machen.

  • Project Manager | Strategic Innovation at Evonik
    May 2015 - May 2023 · 8 yrs 1 mo

    Strategic Innovation: http://www.creavis.de/

  • Founder at The Pixelpaper (Startup)
    Nov 2014 - Mar 2015 · 5 mos

    Homepage: http://www.thepixelpaper.de Interview with t3n: https://youtu.be/goKIMGnoUAY Pixelpaper became a finalist project at the CeBIT 2015 RWE energy pitch: - a prototype was built - a patent was filed - a brand was registered

  • Co-Founder at Smarterials Technology GmbH
    Nov 2014 - Mar 2015 · 5 mos

    Business plan development and EXIST funding preparation.

  • Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Zentrum für Material- und Küstenforschung ()
    • PHD Student
      Oct 2010 - Oct 2014 · 4 yrs 1 mo

      2013-2014 team leader for the topic micro- and nanoprocessing with international PhD students (2) and interns (5)

    • Scientific Assistant
      May 2010 - Sep 2010 · 5 mos

      Extrusion of multilayers and blends