Venture Building In A Protected Space: Tips From Establishing BASF’s Chemovator

What does the journey look like of creating a new incubation program under the protection and the boundaries of an established entity? We talked to Markus Bold and Bjoern Heinz, Managing Director and Deputy Managing Director of the Chemovator, the business incubator of BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer. Tune in for the full story on driving intrapreneurship, on the important role of external entrepreneurs on the journey, and to find out which ventures they currently have in their portfolio.

Chapters

• 7:11 The forming principles of Chemovator
• 9:01 Why we should include experienced entrepreneurs in an incubator program
• 12:57 An internal incubator's role to nurture unconventional business opportunities
• 16:40 Starting from scratch - building a startup internally
• 19:47 Having the right people on board to make it all work
• 21:40 Successful new venture examples from the Chemovator portfolio
• 27:17 From corporate to startup: Changing mindsets and training people

Transcript

Markus: (00:02)

Now we arrived at an investor mindset. And what is top of your mind investor is people. When I go back two years, I decided on a product, which is completely wrong because, what we learned in a couple of cases is great people will discover very quickly that the product they have is not the right one serving, to the relevant needs of their customers. They will learn this very quickly and they have the capability to change the direction on the spot if needed.

Christine: (00:33)

Welcome to the Lost in Transformation podcast series dedicated to the complex world of Digital Transformation. We feature guests from large corporations, start-ups, consultancies and more, to shed light on the success factors around Innovation, Transformation, and adjacent topics. 
We share first-hand insights and inspiration from experts for all the intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs, and anyone curious about Digital Transformation.

Christine: (01:02)

Markus Bold and Bjoern Heinz are the Managing Director and Deputy MD of the Chemovator, the incubation and intrapreneurship program of BASF, the world’s largest chemical producer. Both share the story of bringing the Chemovator to life from scratch, talk about the important role of external entrepreneurs on the journey, and provide us insights into their portfolio. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Christine: (01:29)

Hi Markus, hi Bjoern. I'm really excited to have you both here on our podcast on Lost in Transformation and thanks so much for joining. And you are both parts of the Chemovator, which is the incubation and intrepreneurship program of BASF. Markus, you as the Managing Director and Bjoern, and you as the Deputy Managing Director.
And today we wanna know more about the learnings and the challenges you experienced with the Chemovator. How it works in general. Also to get some insights into your portfolio.
To start off I am happy to learn more about both of you and your backgrounds in general. Basically, the journies that let you to where you are today. Perhaps Markus you can start.

Markus: (02:09)

Yeah, I am happy to do so. My name is Markus Bold means, and I used to be a chemist back in the days, 20 years in BSF. So, I am a corporate veteran, you could say, being in many roles, means I was a research chemist, I was in controlling, I was in marketing, I was in asset management, I was in corporate M&A, I was in corporate strategy. And two years ago, actually for me personally, the Chemovator story began, but before I dive into this, I just want to give Bjoern a chance, just to say a couple of words about himself, so Bjoern ...

Bjoern: (02:44)

Yeah, thanks. Also, a big pleasure to be part of this podcast. Thanks for having us. My name is Bjoern Heinz. Background, also natural scientist originally. So chemists slash physicists, physicists trained originally. And, I joined BASF in R&D functions before I breached into management consulting. I went into different roles in the R&D community, into the venture capital group where I spent five years in Silicon Valley and basically did the trade of corporate venture capital. And, was there kind of already involved in the project, which later led to Chemovator. So also basically then from start, mid-2018, I joined Chemovator, as part of the core team. 

Markus: (03:26)

Then I just take over, just to initiate the journey to talk about from that perspective, what Chemovator is and where we come from. As mentioned, BASF is in the chemical range. Just to give a little bit of background, is more than 160 years old. So truly an industry dinosaur, and being a dinosaur has actually a big benefit for a large corporation as you have proven along the path that you have been extremely successful as a corporate. And what was the trade secret, a secret sauce for BASF, surviving all the waves? Through the last 160 years, it had been the leading chemical flagship and it still actually is today to a large degree.

Markus: (04:17)

However, when you're going for that is more or less what you learn, certain tools and certain elements you already got used to, and more or less, you learned by heart and more or less, which is part of your DNA. And what was that DNA, about the BASF, simply is one that built everything around chemistry. More or less, if you have an existing chemical product, or you'd just improve it, you're the one who owns the chemical processes, that's your beating heart of your operations. And, if you face a new challenge, you simply build new stuff, which is great chemistry off his own. And actually, that was the secret sauce, the secret recipe for a long long period of time. But, since my start, 20 years back, when I started to BASF, actually things started to shift, customer behavior changed, ecosystems changed.

Markus: (05:07)

And on top of that, there were all of the commercial changes, the airplane of digitalization took off, in that challenging to a certain [...] establishment, all the industry. So many things shifting and moving in the same period of time. And, how did a dinosaur as BASF as a well-oiled machine, being the King of chemistry erected that? The one was, and that's a natural reaction, if you're really great at something you try to just to even push harder. It means the do more of the same approach was the natural first reaction, roughly 20 years back. And actually, personally, I was part of that. Did it work? No, 10 years later, BASF tried a different approach means, okay, if it's not working by ourselves, just pushing for more, let's ask our customers what they truly need, and those needs we translate into chemistry.

Markus: (06:06)

Did this work? I would say so so.  A couple of successes, but not too many. And then, actually went beyond, as Bjoern described, the attorney in the recognition on a BASF board-level started in 2017 if my recollection is right. There was an in-channel consideration we need another tool. We need a place where we can experiment, where we can test, whether we can do the unthinkable, the topics, which do not fit in what we have trained and what we have learned. And actually, there was the origin where the board of directors, at end of the 2017, based on the pre-work, has opted to install us, which means Chemovator GmbH. And here is actually one learning. I just want to pull out of our journey, now looking to get us back on it, where all merchants happened, as we are a dedicated legal entity.

Markus: (06:55)

So we are a recognizable clear organizational structure where we run our operations. And just to give you a size of the transaction, when you look at Bjoern, myself in the podcast [...], but we have seen that forming that dedicated, protected shell to do what we do, and what we describe in a minute, is detrimental to protect that and really to live the principal often protected space. So that element of having protection, getting protection, and actually protecting our newbie seeds has been an in the key model. And I would say even, and prerequisite even to be where we are today. And that actually leads me to our forming principles. I would say it means more than when we started, means actually we started with an empty sheet of paper, or not many sheets of paper beyond a few basic considerations, what we are up to and, what we are supposed to do.

Markus: (07:57)

So one principle already mentioned is, we live in a protected space, and actually, that is a hard, hard fight going through the organization to defend it, protected space, to protect our ventures. The second element is that we actually move our intrapreneurs out of the mothership. So we really take people out and give them authority and the ownership to run their own thing. The next element, which is one of our forming principles is, that we support, or we build our services to help our ventures to nurture. So if that is legal services that are taken care of HR, finding the right folks providing in place to live or to work. Or in IT, that all more or less is something we built. But more or less, Bjoern potentially will say, to make it more to the audience. I think we should talk a little bit more about what was the key ingredient, our intrapreneurs and residents and that involved, and potentially as you were in a part of the project early on, just to share a couple of concentrations, what led to that concept?

Bjoern: (09:01)

Yes, happy to do so. I think, when we kind of back in 2017, drew the sketch of what would later become Chemovator, it was already clear, that we want to bring entrepreneurship to this whole mixture and really cultivate entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial decision making in this whole game. And I think for us, it was pretty clear that no doubt that we have plenty of people within BASF organization, which are able to take entrepreneurial decisions, but very, very few of them have really lived the startup life and have kind of built ventures from scratch, and also taking the own risk and maybe even succeeded or failed in doing so. So it was for us important that we get kind of an external component into the mix, which represents true entrepreneurship. And, it was important to incorporate the entrepreneurs in residence, how we call them.

Bjoern: (09:55)

So it's a group of people, at this point in time we have nine of them, who have distinguished track records in being founders, serial founders, investors, having exited companies, having failed companies. And, I think these types of learnings and to really take them into our program. And then to take these individuals into our program, as part of, let's say a jury, as part of mentors, mentorship, and as part of steering committees, guiding our ventures through this whole process and also helping us, Marcus, myself, and the whole team with really reflecting on what is out there, what is possible, how do others approach this - really to open the view of this whole intrepreneurship and entrepreneurship endeavor. I think this has been an important part of our journey so far.

Markus: (10:47)

Potentially, just to inject one additional person's perspective from me is, I'm the Managing Director of the Chemovator. And, more or less, in a natural corporate world, it would be the venture teams looking to me to, "you" tell me what is right or wrong. And based on my experience and background, never having founded a company myself. Actually Chemovator it's the first one I signed and I found it. So it was my first experience ever then it succeeds or not, history will tell. But which background do I have to tell my intrapreneurs what to do and what not to do? And that is an in deep feeling, we think is the right approach to force ourselves, including me, including our organization to have that structural, continuous exchange with experienced founders and potentially that's beyond to protect the spaces. Second must ingredient in, after two and a half years of that learning experience I can share and just cherish the moments I have with those folks, having gone through that journey themselves. So I consider that truly a key ingredient. 

Christine: (11:59)

Thank you so much for introducing and basically guiding us behind the principles of Chemovator and also how you gain experience from those experts out there and how you basically educate yourselves as well, because as you said, this is something completely new and history will tell, how the journey goes. And that's also what makes it exciting. 
So you also said that basically, the changes in the environment and in circumstances were also a certain point in time that for BASF was like a catalyst for change. And it's fascinating to hear about the beginning of the story now. You mentioned over two years ago, could you guide us perhaps through the journey from the beginning, what were maybe some first approaches to the problems that you were encountering?

Markus: (12:50)

Yeah. I guess Bjoern, as you were part of the after preparing team, I think you're the best suited for starting off with the journey, aren't you?

Bjoern: (12:57)

Yes, thanks for that. So, as Marcus was pointing out, I think there was the realization in senior management within BASF that we need a new instrument, that we need a new approach, and a new tool to kind of deal with unconventional business opportunities and to deal with, also to a certain degree, with assets we already have, which may not be of strategic fit, but we can build something around this. And, the initial project team back then started in the venture capital group. It was headed by the head of the venture capital group. And that also brought me into the project then. And I think a couple of realizations we had along the journey of really crafting the sketch for Chemovator is, you need to build an internal incubator, which fits your organization.

Bjoern: (13:43)

And, we did plenty of interviews. We asked around, we asked in the oil and gas industry, in the coatings industry, in a services industry, like what set up did they choose, what were the components in the setup? What worked for them? What didn't? There were initiatives, which never actually saw the light of day because for various reasons. They tried something and it never took off. And in the end, I think for us, it was an important point that Chemovator needs to have, let's say some, some rough edges. We need to be and position ourselves in the organization, such that we are sufficiently distinct from what is already there. And to create really this new space and this new approach. And if you look at, for example, our marketing and our brand and how we appear on the internet and in media, et cetera, you see this difference towards the BASF brand.

Bjoern: (14:33)

But at the same time, I think it's important, what's a realization, which then came as the project kind of matured. You need to be sufficiently different, but you don't need to be so far, although you shouldn't be so far out that people don't understand anymore what you're doing and it shouldn't be too alien, because, in the end, we are intrepreneurship program. This means we need the talent and the people and the ideas from within BASF first and foremost, to drive our process and to come and step out and say, I have an idea. I wanted to try it out. And I think, therefore, we need to find this fine balance between, this is really different, this is something else. But at the same time, we appeal to someone in BASF and kind of help them understand how we can support them in bringing their idea and their business to life. I think there was one of the things with helped us craft, a little bit of the instruments we use now, at Chemovator.

Markus: (15:29)

Potentially, I can pick it back on that. I was part of the game, later on, means the board of directors made this decision along the lines, that Bjoern has described. And I was in contact afterward with somebody I knew, which is now my boss. And, he asked me if I would take up the task. I mean, I was not part of the game. And, personally, to myself then, would I be willing to do so? Yeah, I would, under two conditions, one is I will do this for an extended period of time in order to do the mistakes myself, to do the corrections myself, and actually do to build on those learnings, because I'm a deep believer in, that personal learnings do have a very strong impact on what you do, what you impact, on which kind of decisions you make.

Markus: (16:14)

And the second element, personally for me was, if that is being detached organization, for an organization that applies for my staff, for me as well. So that is, more or less, as one of our good friends would say, you need to eat your own dog [...] sorry, for a language. And, I'm actually still thankful to the organization. We started truly with an empty sheet of paper. So I was not told which ERP system to use. I was not told which purchase policy I should follow. I was not told how my HR recruiting measures should look like. A couple of fundamentals have been defined. What are the expectations there by the mothership, for example? We are dealing with from delegation model, we have removed the staff out of the mothership, we as BASF, but it's in a form of delegation to us.

Markus: (17:10)

So there was a pre-agreed, no discussion. Where the money came from was pre-agreed, which means who is paying the bill and what are the mechanisms? Then it was pre-agreed, but how we built our backbone and how we run our operation, that was truly up to us. What is the scope of interest we look for, were we predetermined? No. Did we learn who we ask? What their expectations? Oh, yeah. Many expectations, but not a uniform one. Did we get structure how we should structure, guide, and lead our venture teams? Absolutely not. We build ourselves by simply the learning approach, what we have described. Did we learn how to structure our exit? Hell no. And actually, it's still learning, how that totally works. So we truly, and, I see this one of the rare occasions, in my personal career, I have a chance simply starting something from scratch, and that potentially applies to everybody who built a startup firm out there internally.

Markus: (18:09)

I think you need to be naive to a certain degree to start such an undertaking. And going back for, personally, I wasn't naive. Underestimating things to certain people that you just mentioned to a large degree. I was lucky enough, and then my personal journey, to listen to for months like this, what we're doing today, when we a little bit more advanced and listened to many other experiences, folks, I did this, what Bjoern has described for the project phase. I did it for myself too. And I reached out to many folks being experienced in a field listening to them, talking to them, getting their experiences, actually to extract what fits us. And that's potentially another big lesson learned. Is there a blueprint out there that everybody says, there's corporate incubation. Those guys do that way.

Markus: (18:57)

I just steal it, I do it the same way, it won't work, because your starting point, your organization, your culture, your needs, your business, what your own organization wants is different. And we all were aware of that topic, that we appreciate and cherish that different fields of perceptions and simply be accepted as, as given. And, personally, I applied it as Let's make it work that more or less we can operate and we get the license to continue our journey. So that was successful. And I don't want to mention how many phone calls and visits I paid when I personally actually took over in April 2018, where I had many, many calls with many, many folks, but potentially for me personally, the next learning our field is when we staff our team.

Markus: (19:48)

And today we are five. So with five employees, we run our complete franchise, fund,  infrastructure. So we take care of our events. We do our IT, we do our HR, we do our controlling, do our finance. We do our consulting with and taking care of our network with the entrepreneurs and residents, what Bjoern has mentioned. We support our ventures. We look for new ventures in orchestrating or do flow, and so on and so on. And we just add those number of lists down to five employees. That is, if you use two highly orchestrated, very detailed, organized corporate environments, that is nuts to a certain degree [...], from day to day and what to do, how to go through that, to find the right folks with the right level of backgrounds.

Markus: (20:36)

It means from an internal, external, to have the right people on board to make it work. And even when you listen to us, means Bjoern has a completely different background I have. When I would pull out the other three, it means more than you would recognize once they have complete differences and backgrounds too. And that is rightfully so, I mean, seeding ground means more or less to start our operation. Potentially, Bjoern, to make it crisp for the listeners and watchers clearer, why not just pushing out a little bit of the portfolio, what has evolved over the last two and a half years in our operation?

Christine: (21:14)

Yeah, I think that would be great to make it a bit more tangible, but already thanks so much, for sharing basically the beginning of the journey. And it's great to see basically you said he started from a blank sheet of paper and it's learning along the way and also learning from people with different backgrounds. I think that is super interesting. And, I'm curious to learn more about concrete examples of your work out of your portfolio. I think that'd be super interesting.

Bjoern: (21:40)

Happy to share a bit. So basically, just to very briefly, elaborate on our process, we have a pitched format, which just basically represents the entry point into Chemovator. The teams pitched in front of a jury and I think in this regard, it's also worth mentioning that the jury is by the majority, staffed with external entrepreneurs. So, they can also clearly outward us, and it's not exclusively in the hands of BASF slash Chemovator who gets accepted. So we really place a lot of trust and really also the selection itself, into really experienced entrepreneurs' hands plus our own, let's say thinking and perception of what kind of opportunity are we looking at? I think over our history, we had probably 50 teams pitch at Chemovator.

Bjoern: (22:28)

We have accepted 16 in total, and out of this 16 we have on the way a terminated 5. So I think also naturally part of the process that you, if you take on high-risk projects, not everything can work and neither should it. So 5 ventures were terminated along the way. And if you look at the portfolio which we have now 11 teams, some literally just started a couple of days ago. Some are basically maturing towards an exit out of Chemovator and some actively fundraising with external partners or planning their spin in back to BASF. What does the portfolio look like? Maybe a brief snapshot? We have a mixture I would say of probably 3 different types of ventures. So one, I would say is a venturous dealing with hardware or tangible assets and services.

Bjoern: (23:17)

There's another class which is mixed offerings of, let's say software and hardware. And there are a couple of pure-play ventures, based on software offerings. And, what was actually one of the surprises I had if we looked at also, and that basically also reflects the deal flow we had, we have only 3 ventures, I would say really exclusively active in the material space, which I would say for a chemical company, at least for me, was a little bit surprising. We have, I think it's 3, which has mixed offerings, and 5, which are purely on the software slash digital side. Can I mention a few examples if you like? We do have one venture, it's actually the first venture we ever had, which was for me always something which I thought would be a prototypical Chemovator venture is, a team called Facilitate.

Bjoern: (24:05)

And they set on an invention, which was made in one of the research departments within BASF. It's a Polymail technology. And they found that this could really have a strong value in the pharmaceutical industry. And this is an industry where BASF does not typically traditionally have a lot of exposure to or a lot of reach into the market there. And this is why the team mentor Veronique, said, I think there's an opportunity here. And that was basically at the moment when Chemovator was established and she pitched, she got accepted. And she developed this solution basically now, with her team together into really something which is not being actively sold into the market. So that's, I would say an example for a hardware play.

Bjoern: (24:50)

Mixed offering, I would say one venture maybe to make it more tangible is a team called Replik. They started earlier this year and they are building a marketplace basically for 3d printing spare parts now. So if you look at the 3d printing market, of course, a lot of venture activity there. And if you look at OEMs and how they sell their spare parts, there's still a lot of inventory and so involved. So, basically what they are trying to do is create a platform to enable really a trusted OEM certified spare parts business in the 3d printing market. So, software and the platform play a big role there, but at the same time, you need to print parts that are of the highest quality. Maybe the last example I can give you from the block of the pure-play software teams we have.

Bjoern: (25:39)

That's, I would say an interesting remark to make also, with regards to a BASF background, that's the team called Rikobu, and that basically is an acronym for regulatory compliance spot. So what they're using is they use natural language processing and artificial intelligence algorithms to train the software, to sift through a lot of legal documents and regulations to make it easy for people in the chemical industry, which is heavily regulated, of course, to know which documents, which procedures to follow, how do I need to do this? Where do I find this? Have regulations changed, et cetera, which is an immense bureaucratic burden. If you operate chemical plants if you need to build chemical plants, et cetera. And, this is one of the ventures where I think it's really interesting to note that such an idea comes deep deep from within the organization, which really understands the issues and the needs we have around such topics. And we should create a solution that helps ourselves, but could also be scalable across the industry. So basically brief snapshot across our portfolio, naming a couple of examples of the companies we have right there.

Christine: (26:49)

Super interesting. And also super inspiring to hear about all these successful venture examples that really address solutions that help the industry. I'm also curious to hear about anything in building up the Chemovator that perhaps didn't work out the way you imagined. This sounds like a super successful story over the years. But could you share any mistakes you made along the way that you learned from, anything that didn't work out the way you expected?

Markus: (27:17)

Potentially I kick it off and then Bjoern, you can jump in because that is one of the things which is going deep to our heart. I wanna sneak in for a second in the brains and minds of our employees. They come from the ecosystem BASF, they come from the large corporate, and the ones listening today, more or less might have the same experience. What is the role model and what is the success factor in the large corporate? You're doing what you're told to do. I think that's the experience many, many of us have in the same period of time. You don't make decisions, decisions are being made for you.

Markus: (27:58)

And then we have the same folks who have the motivation to do something of their own, and they want to follow their dream. They want to do their own thing. They want to go for new frontiers to develop their baby and things to market. And they come to us, they pitch to us out of their strong self-motivation, but their complete raising in an organization has been along the boundaries as I just described. And, when you're a small venture in the early days, and you're a party of 2 to a maximum of 4, you need to do everything. So you need to do everything from operations, IT, your product, your marketing, your sales, your financials, it's your thing. Nobody tells you what to do and there is a high level in a couple of cases of culture clashes, where those traditional convictions out of corporate structures do not work in our camp.

Markus: (29:07)

And if certain people are not willing to question themselves on their quest is actually then leading to saying, we need to either change staff or even goes to the substance of the venture itself. We need to stop it. So, we had those incidents that simply are the people that we work with, were not the right ones. And actually, to add a second mistake, and then Bjoern, you can jump in at a new perspective. When I started charging ventures early on, I personally did not have an investor mindset. Now we arrived at an investor mindset. And what is top of your mind investor is people. When I go back two years, I decided on a product, which is completely wrong because what we learned in a couple of cases is great people will discover very quickly that most of the product they have is not the right one serving the relevant needs of their customers.

Markus: (30:06)

They will learn this very quickly and they have the capability to change the direction on the spot if needed. So out of a middle-class with even crappy ideas and creativity, we'll make something out of this. In a mediocre or low-performing team, not having the right mindset, will put the best idea on this planet in vain. And I learned it the hard way in view practice. And that was one of the things is more or less I needed to learn. But I think I personally have reached now a level to put that question first, but Bjoern, if you're now a jumped in your perspective.

Bjoern: (30:43)

I think the whole thinking, and also with our key stakeholders is that Chemovator is an experiment. And that we're operating based on assumptions like every startup basically is. And in this regard, we did also questioned the way we do things and the way we approached things. Maybe I will give you two examples of concrete learnings, a little bit of the operational side. One was, there was initially the assumption that if you have on the one hand side, a jury of experienced entrepreneurs and, on the other hand, a bunch of teams and they really going for their idea and saying, I want to do this.

Bjoern: (31:24)

But coming out of a corporate context that they can deliver a startup-like pitch, and they in most cases can not. And it's not their fault. It's just, you're not trained to do so in the corporate environment and the corporate context you're trained to make, as Marcus was referring to how a decision's been taking in a corporate. And you are trained to make, let's say proposals and assemble arguments and basically prepare decisions. And it's totally fine. But in the context of startups, as we all know, I mean, it is, what is actually the problem you're solving? Is there any value in solving this problem? What is your product? Who's going to pay for the solution? et cetera. So like answering these types of questions first, that required training, and this is why we said we need to establish something to improve basically also the quality of the pitches. And this is why we started also in the startup scene, the well-known format of a startup boot camp, which I think we have almost done a dozen times now. Experienced cultures from out there, who trained BASF people with an idea about our methodology, about what it means to pitch, what does a convincing pitch mean, about to just get started, just build a homepage, go pick up the phone, ask people about your solution and what they think of it.

Bjoern: (32:39)

So, really to establish this, let's do it, mentality a little bit with startup methodology. I think there was an important thing we needed to add in the beginning to prepare good pitches and to have people prepare good pitches. Maybe one more learning I can share again from the operational side. In the beginning, we thought, how do we steer the teams? How do we guide them? And the initial assumption was we placed one of our entrepreneurs with such a team as a mentor or culture, if you wish, to help them through this journey. And I think what we learned is, to think more along the lines of alignment of interest, how do you align different interests, which you have, you have the interests of the venture, which wants to pull off their thing.

Bjoern: (33:23)

You have interests in chemical data, which provides framework and structure, but also has some, let's say requests on how things should be. And I mean, we provide a lot of freedom, but we're still not a space without rules. So there's that, and then there may be a sponsor internally who pays actually for the venture. They may also have an interest. So this is why we basically switched from that one entrepreneur coach, a team model to really establishing a board-like structure, which is again, a typical instrument, which you have in the startup world. So to establish a venture board, which comprises of, let's say, representatives of the different kinds of stakeholders to steer the teams. And I think that works much better than what we had in the beginning. And it helps us really manage our portfolio much better than we thought we could in the beginning.

Christine: (34:09)

Great. I think that's like a really nice elaboration also on the learnings that you only learned along the way. I think what you mentioned just now, you know, to have a great team with the right mindset, also focusing on the problem you're solving. I think these are great takeaways. And, now if we don't look back, but actually look at the future of the Chemovator, is there anything you're looking forward to? Or anything that's next for you that you can or want to share with us already?

Markus: (34:38)

What I'm looking forward to is what I would call truly success is when the first investor [...] comes, determined [...] valuation of a venture which is the part of the company is putting in money and believing in the future of that franchise. That's what personally my definition of success would be. For a spinning path, my definition of success is BASF takes it, puts it in a portfolio and it grows its top line, as part of BASF portfolio. That is the second thing [...], it survives and it even grows. Those are means we are driven by what is the value we put to use in our franchises. So that is right now the hard learning vehicle.

Bjoern: (35:27)

I think Marcus is what you said in the last sentences, eventually as a corporate incubator, we need to drive value for our sponsor, that is the BASF. And, I think everyone knows the J curve of a startup, that initially you invest money, you have negative cash flows, and then you hope for it to take off later. Of course in the phase where we are, we've put money at risk.  And so far we are too young to really say there is enough value to be created, to justify the whole effort, but we think there is down the road in the long run, and that's what we need to prove.

Bjoern: (35:58)

And there can be value, can be manifest, I would say, on the different dimensions. Marcus was pointing to equity value. It could be additional revenue for BASF. There could be other means, but I think we really need to drive to demonstrate that value. And maybe one more thing. That's another assumption for me, I think, which we need to prove down the road is, this matter of corporate incubation or for the company building out of a corporate, is probably to some degrees, a little more complicated, than you would do if you were a Greenfield startup, because there are no other entities who are really dependent on. Marcus was pointed to a couple of the complications, which you may or may not have given compare to a Greenfield startup company. So what do we throw in the other side of the balance to basically counter that?

Bjoern: (36:42)

And I think there is something, but we need to prove the value of it. And for me, this is the fact that what I was trying to elaborate on the record, for example, that we can build it ventures out of a deep understanding of the industry, understanding the problems and issues the industry have, and really maybe training, getting access to data or other proprietary assets, which will provide an unfair advantage to a startup, which is out there. Or if a company leaves BASF or Chemovator as a spin-out with a big customer, like BASF, as one of its big accounts. I know from the corporate venture times that, it is extremely difficult for a startup to really get a big corporate as a customer. So, all those are points, I think, which we can help with, reducing the risk in the end for the ventures we have. And, it can be countable in some of the complications we have. And I think this is for me an important assumption, which we should prove down the road.

Christine: (37:42)

Great. I think these are super interesting outlooks. I also like the notion of you mentioned driving, to demonstrate the value. I think that's really important. And, Bjoern, Markus, thank you so much for taking us along Chemovator's journey and to let us know how it came to life and everything you've learned along the road. It's been a real pleasure and I hope our listeners also can take away some helpful tips. Thank you both again.

Marcus: (38:07)

You're very much welcome. Thank you much for having us. Thanks for the time. 

Christine: (38:11)

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