Letter of Intent for the EXIST application: structure, tips & the value of individual LOIs

An LOI is a non-binding statement of intent between two parties that documents the key points of a potential collaboration before a main contract is concluded. For the EXIST application: at least three LOIs from potential customers or partners show that genuine interest exists and your idea is market-ready. This is relevant for B2B business models. For B2C you need other proof of market need – surveys, pre-registration numbers, or willingness-to-pay data.

Reviewers look for tangible evidence. LOIs prove concrete intentions from the business world and reduce the perceived risk of your project. Without LOIs, even the best idea reads as theoretical and less convincing — the EXIST Ideenpapier guidelines require at least three named customer conversations. An LOI also demonstrates that you can approach people, hold conversations with target customers, and get a signature – soft skills that matter throughout the founding journey.

A standard LOI contains: parties (your startup and the partner company), purpose and subject (brief description of the project or service), confidentiality (a note that all details are handled confidentially), review process (timeline for technical and legal review), legal effect (clarification that no binding commitment arises), and signatures (location, date, signatures from both sides).

To make your LOIs maximally convincing they should not all look identical. Each letter of intent should carry its own header design with the partner company's logo, colours, and contact details; an adapted footer with specific contacts and references to their website; and slightly different body text with different examples or phrasing so it reads as though the company itself authored it. Individual LOIs signal genuine, tailored partnerships rather than mass mailings. When you send the template, let partners know they can copy it into their own letterhead.

1. Too generic: 'We look forward to a cooperation' with no specifics. 2. Missing deadlines: no clear statement of when the review should be complete. 3. No confidentiality clause: especially problematic for sensitive technologies. 4. Uniform layout: every LOI looks the same. 5. Signature missing or illegible: creates credibility problems with the reviewer.

One credible LOI already strengthens an application; three to five from named, ideally well-known companies is the practical target for B2B. Quality beats quantity: a specific, signed letter on a real letterhead from a recognisable buyer outweighs ten generic ones. For B2C, individual end users rarely sign LOIs - target multipliers instead (distributors, retailers, associations, institutional buyers), and back the rest with surveys, pre-registrations, or willingness-to-pay data. The five mistakes in a rejected EXIST application almost always include thin or missing market evidence.

These get confused constantly, and using the wrong one scares partners off. This is no legal advice - confirm specifics with a lawyer - but the working distinction is simple.

A practical tip that saves weeks: title the document 'Interessensbekundung', not 'Letter of Intent'. Formal legal-sounding language often triggers the partner's legal department, and a review there can stall a simple letter for weeks. A soft LOI - friendly, one page, explicitly non-binding - sails through. Resist the urge to add binding clauses (exclusivity, fixed pricing) to look serious: a 'hard' LOI scares corporates off and EXIST doesn't need it. Keep the non-binding clause front and centre.

Keep it to one page on the partner's letterhead. A workable skeleton: a heading 'Interessensbekundung', then 'Hiermit bekunden wir, die [Partnerunternehmen GmbH], unser grundsätzliches Interesse an der Lösung von [Startup] zur [kurze Problembeschreibung].' Add two sentences on the concrete value ('Die Lösung würde uns helfen, [Nutzen] zu erreichen.'), one explicit non-binding sentence ('Diese Absichtserklärung ist unverbindlich und begründet keine Rechtsansprüche.'), and close with 'Ort, Datum' plus a signature line with name and Funktion. That's the whole document - short, specific, signed.

Don't ask the partner to write it - write it for them. Send a short, friendly email with the pre-filled one-pager attached as an editable file, explain in one line that it's a non-binding statement of interest for a research grant, and ask them to drop it on their letterhead and sign. Make it a five-minute favour, not a homework assignment. Start early: securing signatures can take weeks, and with large corporates often months, so begin LOI outreach as soon as you start the application - not the week before the deadline.