Venture Clienting at BSH Startup Kitchen with Mathias Weber

0:00It's actually crazy when you think about it. You basically can help everybody on the organization. You're connected to all relevant stakeholders. Legal purchasing, it even works council. It's an insane knowledge you have. When I talk to startups, they say, oh wow, it's amazing you exist. This moment they realize and they know I'm the go to guy and I guide them through the whole organizational processes, especially when I talk to startups from the United States. Venture clienting is not there yet.

0:26They would love that this methodology also is in the stage, right? Or would exist in the States. Welcome to another episode, this time with one of my longest lasting relationships in the venture client space. Mathias Weber I think I got to know 8 or 9 years ago when we started working together at the BSH Startup Kitchen, which by now he is heading. Mathias is an awesome guy that I think also on a human level. A lot can be learned from, especially also when it comes to human nature and culture and the understanding that innovation is not first technology, but it's human first.

1:03Very much looking forward to this. Mathias, great to have you. Thanks for having me. Let's start in easy. You meet someone in the elevator and they ask, hey, what do you do? I would say I'm kind of the Tinder for corporates and startups. So I make the matches between two parties, who look for each other, but they don't know each other. Not yet. And, yeah, I just help them to find and to date. Do you do that for many different corporations or are you currently working somewhere where you're doing that? Yeah, I do it for BSH Home Appliances Group.

1:39So it's part of Bosch. You probably know, located in Munich in Germany, and we do it for eight years now, and I personally do it for three and a half years. But indeed, the two of us, we know each other. What now? Since seven, eight plus years, you've been part of the early gang defining and developing venture clienting. Yes, was just a lucky shot, I think, to be there in the beginning of venture clienting when venture became not only a name, but a method approach for corporates. Yeah. Was just lucky to be there.

2:13And since then I was lucky enough to see different positions within venture clienting. Yeah, I look forward to getting much deeper there. But let's start at the beginning. Who are you, where you're from? How did you end up where you're at right now? That's a good question. So I'm Mathias, I'm 34 years old. I'm from Munich, but a couple of years, I was gone from Munich, so I studied in Regensburg. So it's still in Bavaria, so I couldn't leave Bavaria behind me. Right. So I also did my master's then there in entrepreneurship, but yeah. And this in the end of the Masters, I ended up with venture clienting. And then I moved back to Munich.

2:58Give me a bit more detail on, okay, how did you end up in venture clients? It was with Capgemini, if I'm correct. Right. The first step or was there something before. In the end of my master's actually had no clue what to do? Starting my career with. Right. So I was looking for a master thesis topic, and I actually was because within this master program, we participated in a TechBase. So it's a entrepreneurship startup ecosystem, tech based thing in Regensburg.

3:28We participated to build our own startup. It was about something about fashion. So totally different for me personally. But it was interesting. And it was right before Corona hit the world and there I was looking for some other methods to collect money, right, for our startup. And this was the time when I came across venture clienting as so. And I found out there are other ways, not only getting a loan or calling some VCs. So I learned about venture clienting. Yeah. Who would have thought that you can also just make revenue and get money like that? Get some clients.

4:08Right. Yeah. Even. Our startup idea was for B2C and venture clienting. Obviously it's for B2B, but still, this idea. Right. In the beginning was just an idea. I found it fascinating. It just made click and so much sense. Right. And then I found out about 27pilots, right. Who was one of the early ones in the game. I also learned about this startup kitchen back then and maybe a little shout out to Ion Hauer, former venture partner of Startup Kitchen.

4:43An investor in GlassDollar. Exactly. So I just wrote an email saying, hey, I'm interested in this topic. I would love to write my master's thesis. And this was actually the starting point. So you wrote your master thesis within the startup kitchen, which was really one of the early ones that at least referred to themselves as venture client unit. Right. There was hub:raum and Telefónica, Wayra, some. There were definitely a few innovation hubs that were earlier. But I feel with a really dedicated process, the understanding of you start with the problem, the dedicated fast track procurement process, supporting projects end to end. But I would now say venture clienting encompasses the BSH Startup Kitchen was among the first and since we also are working with them since a long time, I can say probably one of the best learning grounds. Yeah, definitely.

5:42So. And I didn't know that by then. Right. So I just reached out to the kitchen because I thought it was interesting to first of all write my thesis with a corporate. Back then It was interesting because I wrote about a topic which drives me still today. So it was business impact measurement. As we all know, it's not trivial to get to this number. So the financial business impact coming out of the startup collaborations we do all day long and back then. So the task was to define a framework, a methodology KPIs, how to measure it, actually a differentiating between product and process innovations. Why is that so important to measure the impact.

6:29To me now it's obvious. Right. But in the end of the day, you got a show or got a proof what you do and what's the benefit out there? Because also we as BSH, we have done other corporate venturing approaches, tools, methodologies. There was an accelerator incubators. Exactly. So there are other tools, and I think all of them have maybe a good reason to be there or to be there in the past. Depending always what your goal is, what you want to reach. Right. But there was this point, I think back then, people ask themselves, okay, what's the most efficient way to actually deliver this impact?

7:15Right. To me, to be really fast with as less as possible risk involved. And to be innovative as possible. And I think with this venture clienting process, it's basically it's just a process. But it's much more we know that. But so you can just repeat innovation in a very efficient way with less risk. Yeah. I would say to add on that, in the past, and I would still say to this day, innovation teams are the first ones to be cut. When the economic situation gets tight, why are they so at risk of being cut? Because in the past they've not been able to quantify in any shape or form what impact they're actually creating.

8:09And so whenever you look at really just the checks and balances and pure data, if you don't have that data available, you're at the mercy of the people taking these decisions. For me, that's really where it came from. This need to. Yeah, to be able to quantify the impact that is being created, to illustrate to the organization up and down, that it is important for this organization to exist. What a large lever really there is that could be pulled.

8:43And I think also very important to understand that we don't drive projects ourselves. Right. So we don't have an own innovation agenda. So we basically support business units with their innovation needs challenges. Right. And so they have their own agenda priorities roadmaps. And so we are kind of basically an in-house service consulting unit supporting our colleagues. For me personally, it's not about us and me. Right. I always let the other ones shine when we have a successful projects because then everybody realizes, okay, there's really a value of it.

9:22And I think this is also important. I think, to this day there, you mentioned 27pilots before, obviously, there's GlassDollar, there's still Capgemini. There are also some other service providers. And I think why that proposition still exists to this day is because to get the initial momentum, to have the operation running, it's very difficult to do that with just internal resources. Where are you going to get the people from? How are you going to train them versus if you can lease someone like you that has already experienced the BSH Startup kitchen and then helps me to set up these processes, then think I shortcut probably about 1 or 2 years. And maybe you don't have to make the same mistakes like we did, right? Or I would say maybe all of the units do, because you can kind of find out what's your setup in the organization. I would say you just cannot copy and paste

10:19the same setup. Yes. The process is quite maybe similar I would say, but still it's a different process and different stakeholders maybe. But I think there's a lot to learn from other units. What worked? What didn't work, what kind of people you need in the organization? I think start setting up a unit. You still have to prove yourself in one or latest two years. So it's important to have the right projects from early on to show management. Hey, this process works and we actually can prove there's great impact.

10:55Yeah, I feel that in general. Right. It's a venture client thing when you talk about it, I think back to the outset just seems so abstract, right? You're talking about a process that can enable almost every area of the organization, right? It could be we optimize this production process. It could be we integrate this sensor in a product of ours. It could be we improve how we filter new candidates and hiring processes. So it really only becomes concrete once you actually look at the projects.

11:33But it is important otherwise to take that meta level, because otherwise no one works on that process. That makes it easier than to improve all of those areas in the business. It's actually crazy when you think about it, because you basically can help everybody on the organization and some process who nobody else knows because you're connected to all relevant stakeholders legal purchasing it even works council. Nobody knows all of them by heart and the processes by heart.

12:02Yeah. In the same time, you just are connected to all other business departments locally, but also globally. It's just an insane knowledge you have in the organization. This is maybe the hub venture collecting knowledge, the process of your organization. But then you get to know so many stakeholders business units, and you can even connect all of them. Also helping them if they don't know what the organization knows. Right. Is it a in German there's Spinne im Netz?

12:38I'm not sure if it translates to just spider in the web, but yeah, you're the central node connecting it all. And also the external world, right? Every founder, every business developer, every engineer that is working on something relevant for BSH. You also are supposed to know them. Of course you can't know everybody. So when I think of the first reaction when I talk to startups, they say, oh wow, it's amazing you exist, right? Because they know this moment. They realize and they know.

13:10Okay. I'm the go to guy and I guide them through the whole organizational processes. Especially when I talk to startups from United States. Venture clienting is not there yet. And they say, oh, they would love that. This methodology also is in the States, right? Or would exist in the States. When we started GlassDollar, we had a bunch of interviews with founders, before we even understood that we wanted to concentrate on venture client things, so specifically the matchmaking of them with large corporations.

13:44And yeah, we're just having very exploratory interviews where we then ask them, what do you think of innovation teams? It was the most bipolar answers you could ever imagine. There were some that were saying, they're the biggest noobs and biggest losers ever. If they're wearing white sneakers and they will talk to you for ages, but in the end, nothing happens. Waste of time. And then there were the others that said, oh my God, these guys so helpful.

14:11They helped me take the right route within these corporations. Without them as a champion, I would have never landed this client. I feel by now, over the last 5 or 10 years, the innovation teams have professionalized and by now their impact measuring impacts as a huge example. Right. It's not valuable just to make an introduction or talk to them. It's valuable only if real learnings can be generated, and in the best case, working solutions are integrated into our supply chain.

14:47And I wanted to do the project myself. So I wanted to talk to the startups actually, and I wanted to help the business units myself and to see what comes out of the projects. So it was just perfect timing again, that back then there was this opening within the kitchen, I joined as a venture manager. And since then I'm back with the team and I'm so happy because, yeah, it's one of the, I would say, still quite most mature units where I still can learn a lot every day because every project is different. Right? So you always work with different stakeholders on different pain points, and trying to figure out how to solve it the best way. I also have to say BSH Startup Kitchen for GlassDollar in itself also has been monumental. Was, we've learned so much through our collaboration.

15:49I think by now it's five years or so. And especially now because the majority of units are rather immature. They're still in maybe the validate setup phase. There are a few that are thinking about how do we scale this. Right. How do we, we now know we have a great offering for our colleagues, but we don't understand. We don't know yet. How can we make sure that everybody knows about it? And when everybody knows about it, that there is actually the capacity to support all of those requests? I think it's important.

16:25And when I talk to other units, I almost always realize it's a different how you define scaling. So for me, scaling in venture clienting is totally different than maybe to other units. And I would say for me it's not doing more necessarily. But in the end, scaling also means from the beginning, supporting. So filtering the right requests, bringing them all the way through the process to POC and hopefully finally to scaling, because then these are the solutions which matter the most. Right. So and I think there's no maybe right or wrong, but I personally believe scaling is more about doing the right projects, not necessarily more. I feel it's both depend on each other. How are we going to be able to select better projects. If you know from the beginning which requests or leads doesn't matter how you define it, which come in, have the highest possibility or for conversion. Right. And there are some tricks how you can assess this.

17:38This comes with experience of course is the budget for POC. But also is this request so strategically relevant for the organization? And is there already a solution owner defined right from the beginning? Because most of the times when a business unit reaches out to us and we 95%, I would say we do the pull mechanism. So we push also interesting startups. But most of the times we pull. Right. So stakeholders reaching out proactively to us there's the problem owner and they are interested in finding the solution and they are interested. This POC flies and is successful and then they're happy.

18:20When this solution gets adopted. You only know what the good opportunities are if you have out of what you are aware of, you don't have the unknown unknowns. And so they're ultimately scale means you have the awareness of all the challenges that the organization faces right now. Because if we take VC, for example, right. For them it's the same as well, right? It's 1 or 2 outliers that in the end return the fund. But if the VC knew before which ones those were, they wouldn't invest in the other eight. I think the biggest difference is if you have, I don't know, let's say 10 million funds, you can maybe invest of a handful startups then even and with venture clients, the average cost for POC is around 30 K.

19:16So in with this amount of money, you can do so many POCs, right, with existing solutions. And then if this flies, you just can continue to use to adopt the solution. So with much less capital and risk you can try out more and more startup solutions. So the probability of having success is much higher than I would say VC. Still, don't get me wrong. VC still makes sense. And with Robert Bosch Venture Capital we also have with a Bosch and VC arm and we also do invest. But I personally like to think of venture clienting maybe beforehand of venture capital. So maybe as a due diligence.

20:06Right. Working with the startup, really getting to know the people working at the startup. Can they actually, when you talk to so many startups, you get a feeling for startups, right. Is everything can they actually deliver what they claim and promise on the website? This is one thing. The other thing is working with the startup. Right? And when our experts because we in the unit, we are not experts, right? We are more generalists. But when our experts in the business units work with the startups, they really can. They know what they are talking about.

20:46So they really can evaluate, validate the solution. And when these experts say, hey, this is so amazing solution and great innovative solution, then maybe it also makes sense to invest, right? The success rate of venture client projects is higher than that of VC's, right? In VCs we talk about what 10, 20% are the really successful outliers. And I think of more established venture client teams is 40 to 50% implementation rate. After a POC. We have around 40% adoption rate and 20% scaling rate.

21:25I always say maybe it's not innovative or innovation anymore. If you have 40% scaling rate, right? It's still innovation. What we do and we differentiate between adoption and scaling. That's also maybe important to understand. I want to switch gears a bit, and talk about a topic that you've been writing about a bunch recently. You've been framing innovation is translation. Can you elaborate a bit on that? What do you mean when you say that? I think there are two parts to it.

21:57So I think one part is when I talk about translating is corporate language to startup language. Maybe you might think it's why it's so important to translate between two worlds. But I would say still it's very different worlds, different mindsets, different ways of thinking, different approach. It's just two very different worlds, how you can actually work. Right? And different cultures in different organizations, more processes, less processes. And just to translate both worlds and say, hey, this is quite normal for.

22:34So I would say start up, hey, this is quite normal for corporate. So don't worry, I will manage. And to the other way to my internal colleagues I will say, hey that's okay. When a startup tells you that, we know this for other projects and they are still successful. So just giving also this feeling from experience that this is a normal behavior or normal way of working and just maybe to take out the fear a bit, what people might have in this process because everybody is under pressure. They want to deliver, they have some KPIs to reach some goals.

23:13And this is maybe the translating part between these two worlds. Right. And then I think what I also realized doing this job for a couple of years is translating internally between business units because it's also very important to keep in mind that different business units have maybe different targets or goals to reach. And it's not maybe so much about translating but aligning, getting everybody on the same page, trying to help everybody to understand the other perspective in the end for the company's goal. Right. So in the end that the company is successful.

23:59This is everything what counts for me personally that I'm happy, I'm satisfied. If BSH as a whole is successful. I know you also are a mediator or you've done a mediation. How much is a translation and how much is it also therapy? I wouldn't go that far, to be honest. It's more, yeah, it's just more trying to bring everybody on the same page, always making sure, hey, we have the same goal here. And how can we work together in the best way?

24:35I like that you're really taking out the drama. Because I feel in the past, or in some dynamics, it sometimes feels it's one blaming the other. May it be the innovation team, blaming business units or blaming startups or startups. Blaming innovation teams? In the end, it's we're looking for constellations that create value. Yeah. I have been in some projects in the past where some, even some emotions where they're right. And emotions are in a corporate environment. My God.

25:08What? And actually, this is not a bad thing because this just tells you one thing that they're really fighting for the project. But in the end, maybe it doesn't bring value because everybody's just frustrated, and gets out of the meeting or the call, and the project doesn't move. Right? I don't know, it's just my nature that I always like to talk to people, understand the perspective, to understand the perspective, and also give the other person the feeling, hey, I understand you, but please listen also to my role. And then just work it out from there.

25:46And what we are, what always helped me is that there's always this person. Right. And then the role. And it's never against the person. It's always because they fulfill a certain role within the corporate or the startup. And then it just helps me personally to realize, okay, this is just the job. They just do the good job. And I always do my job and then trying to solve it. I also think actually that emotions are, it's a good sign that they're there because indeed, as you say, that means that people care.

26:26And I feel too much now. Has work become something that we oppose to life? That for most of the week we look forward to the weekend. So I think no matter if someone is angry or frustrated or it at least shows that there's still that level of human connection to what they're doing, which actually I think, yeah, it's also something a cultural element that venture clienting and working together with younger, more agile companies actually brings, that all of a sudden I can also feel young and in a context again, where things are possible, where I can wake up tomorrow and feel, oh, maybe they've already made that change.

27:16I'm excited about that. Yeah. So we just, it's interesting because we just do LinkedIn campaign with venture clients we worked with together in the past. So we call it BSH Voices. And there we always ask the question, what actually did you learn from startups and what do you think startups bring with value to the organization short term and long term. And it's really interesting. And it's always basically the same that this we can do mindset the agility right, how they work. And it's just when you talk to these internal colleagues, they always have a smile on their face. And also, I love what you're doing there of the BSH Voices because now it's what, 15 plus years ago for me that I discovered the word startup and built my first one, which obviously was a consumer startup because most of them were that back then. And most people that start out are building something for consumer. I feel if now, still now I look at the narratives and stories that are

28:36being told within the startup ecosystem. It's very much around the founder and the investor. It's almost, okay, the typical story is there's someone that has a great idea and is able to execute. Then comes an investor, gives a bunch of money in, and then it's a success. What I feel we're completely omitting from this story is actually that between the idea and money being invested, which also, of course, happens in multiple tranches and doesn't even necessarily need to happen for a company to be successful or those customers, those voices you, many other people that are continuously working on with creating long lasting, sustainable deals for new companies that are being founded. And so to make a long story short.

29:29We're doing this format and in general also, I feel a mission with GlassDollar also is very much to celebrate the early customers of the startup ecosystem because without them, that wouldn't exist. Think about it. Every VC wants their return on their investment, right? So otherwise they wouldn't invest in the first place. And what does the startup need? As you just said, they need clients and not just any client. So imagine Bosch is your first client. We sometimes write reference letters to the startups when they have a next round for raising money.

30:08It's really important to show for other investors say okay, they actually have a very satisfied big corporate client. And then it's just easier for them to gain more clients. And this in the end helps the VC again to get the return. So without us, there's no return. It's like you said at the beginning that it was you realized later that getting clients maybe is also a way to finance a startup. For me that's crazy. Of course I understand with consumer versus B2B.

30:43But from my perspective, really my recommendation to 99% of entrepreneurs is find a path that lets you bootstrap, find a path that lets you finance your journey with revenue as much as possible. Because typically also the first products that you develop are not going to be the ones that you ultimately truly end up scaling. Often it's in our case as well, okay, you start out with a service. While delivering that service, you learn about what the customer really needs and then start to create more systematic, more scalable products if the market and customer allows. But I also have to say, back then in university, you're always told that finding investor is so important to have this money.

31:30To have this. Yeah. To free money to invest, to build your product. And yes, it makes sense but. So we were not told that. Oh, maybe the first 2 or 3 clients, we don't need an investor. Of course. It's the chicken egg problem. So you need kind of the money to build. I think there are two reasons for that reason. Number one is it's true, in the past it was immensely more expensive to develop a technology product.

31:58But now writing code is cheaper than ever. Sensors, chips, all of that has gone down so much in cost. So I think that's less true, that you need a lot of money up front to be building something. And I think, secondly, who are the people that determine the narratives in the startup Ecosystem. Well, the people that benefit the most from it and that have the most time to influence those narratives. Every founder is busy building their company and is maybe partially seeing themselves as part of the startup ecosystem, but to a larger part, they are part of the market that they're operating in. May that be logistics or whatever, fintech, whatever else. So I think it's also because VCs, if they're not looking at deals they're working on, build, getting more deals in and building that startup ecosystem, which is their pool they can ingest their capital into.

32:58That I think those are the two main reasons that lead to this and also lead, are a bit I feel even counter to how in the past, what was German entrepreneurship was, Familienunternehmen, very organic growth and development, very long lasting relationships with customers and team. Very opposite actually, to this venture kind of path. And I don't think one is better than the other. But I think, yeah, because it's so sexy and because the narratives are there so much, that bias definitely gets introduced. And I think what we can productively do is indeed be BSH Voices and creating platforms to celebrate the early customers.

33:44Back then, when I did my master thesis, I looked up at the BCG study, and there was number one rated by startups. What they're looking for was money, right? But just last year for University Talk, I looked up again the same numbers and now it's clients. So this was the number one rated. So maybe still they need money right. To grow faster to beat the competition. I get all of this and it still might make sense but maybe not only right.

34:16So having clients also helps you to get traction in the market and to validate your solution. It's first hand feedback from the industry to actually realize what does my product need to even scale more. Do you have a favorite POC in now your many years of a couple? It's always unfair, I would say to pick your most favorite child, but yes, I do have maybe one. Yeah. So it was in purchasing. So I would say it's a perfect venture client case for me.

34:57So actually not very innovative, but a huge major step when we look from our internal processes. So it was a challenge we had for years a very manually done process. Because due to EU regulations, we needed to collect all materials and product data from our suppliers and suppliers of our suppliers. And you can imagine when you reach out to all of the suppliers you maybe don't have the contact information of the people and the response rates are not so high.

35:40It's really difficult to have all the information. And then we look for startups. And I just love this case because there have been startups exactly offering this exactly. Having a solution where you can customize your questionnaire as a corporate, reflecting all the EU regulations you need to have or the information you need to have to fulfill these regulations. You send us this questionnaire to your suppliers. They fill it in. You just can access it via this platform, download it, fill it in in your internal Databases. And because this is not core BSH, it's just a perfect venture clienting process because obviously there's a challenges where I say, okay, maybe there's even a startup, but we do have this expertise, this knowledge in-house. So why should we partner. But there's so many case like this that just makes sense to partner with a solution which is already there, which has been proven with other corporates. And since then it's just a very successful project.

36:46Their relationship has turned out to be very cool. Great, cool people to work with. And also they grow the startup with us. Right. How did you calculate the impact of that? First of all, it's the time saving. So cost savings because you don't have to do this manual investment now all the time. And then on the second layer, this was a huge layer. And the second layer was the quality of the responses. So we were able to actually, now because since this regulation came closer and closer, you need to be able to fulfill all this information, right, or this regulation. This is one layer we even didn't calculate, but this quality of the information which came back. This is also one layer.

37:34We were talking before about scaling or that scaling doesn't necessarily just mean more projects but better projects. If you kind of look ahead or initially now say, okay, in the, there's the hype cycle, but generally also in your assessment of the maturity of what venture client now is and where it could be. Yeah. Where do you think we will be in ten years? And maybe you can also make that concrete at the example of the BSH Startup Kitchen.

38:08I strongly believe venture clienting will be there for sure. In some way. Maybe in a very similar way. It's here right now. First of all, I think it will be more connected with different corporate venturing vehicles. What I said in the beginning, venture clienting and then venture capital and M&A, maybe this is one part. The other part is I still believe it's very relevant to have this internal capacity this consulting part, just to support the units. But with all the AI coming into place. There are so many pieces of the venture clienting funnel which you can automate and make it so much easier and faster and more efficient. I don't see fully the idea of decentralized everything, because this sounds interesting topic to discuss, but we just introduced an ambassador network last year within our startup kitchen.

39:14So globally to be more connected, regional to our offices in the regions globally, from India to United States and China, for example, just to name a few, and to generate more leads and to scale the solutions. So this is the main reason behind it. I don't see where a business unit, a stakeholder having his 100% job doing his or her thing and then also aligning with legal and IT and purchasing on a POC, of course you can standardize your templates and stuff, but there's always new regulations coming in, new requirements internally from the processes. And since we collect all of it in one place, this is where we can support. I am 100% convinced as well that it's not either or.

40:10That if you're 100% centralized, you don't have access to the needs. On the other hand, if there is no one that's there centrally, no one takes care of the process of reporting on impact, of creating these platforms of BSH Voices that you mentioned before. I think both of them are very necessary. And it's a question of, and what balance will they actually exist because will a venture client team still exist in the past? What is a digitization team?

40:46What is the sustainability team? What is it? Those are strategic fields that are supposed to be advanced, where you have a central team that advances that agenda. Do you think in ten years it will be an established corporate function that every corporation has? Doesn't necessarily mean that it's called venture client, or that it is even at that level. Maybe it's also just innovation procurement within procurement, for example. But do you think that what we're doing here actually is establishing a corporate function? Yes for sure.

41:20So as I said or as you said, it's not necessarily called venture clienting but maybe innovation partnering, innovation purchasing. And we see it now. It doesn't have to be always a startup. And there's not even one definition of a startup. It also can be a scale up or a company who's in the market for, I don't know, ten years. For us, it's most important that it's the best fitting solution. So in the end, maybe, yeah, it just makes sense that in the future I think companies, corporates, at a certain size, it just makes sense to have this corporate function in-house. Combined with the software for scouting and project management.

42:09What role does in your mind? AI software in general play to advance venture clients to its next level of maturity. It already has a huge impact on our process. So is it maybe the scouting, right? You can use so many as all the LLMs to make it more efficient, to make it more concrete for the assessment. AI comes into place right for the benchmarking and for concrete sizing. Also the need the challenge in the first place from the stakeholder because not always easy to or sometimes it's helpful for the stakeholders that we help them to criticize their pain point from yeah guiding our venture managers throughout our process we have built our own GPT and to tell the venture manager, okay, what's the next step in the process? Okay. There's personal data involved.

43:05So now you need this template and you need to align with this stakeholder internally. Defining POC agreements. All the KPIs success criterias, calculating business cases, creating content for marketing purposes internally, externally. There's so much. I would like to close out with looking at venture clients as a career. Yeah. How are you thinking about it as a career to both advance towards more senior management positions as well as a skill in itself that or an expertise within which you could theoretically always go deeper.

43:48It's interesting. Because being with the position for years, I have seen a couple of colleagues coming and going. And it's just interesting to see this jumping board, let's call it the BSH Startup Kitchen. And for these colleagues internally and externally, because internally, it's just you have so much attention on your position and you get to know so many different business unit stakeholders. So you're very visible, let's say, within the organization. So it's quite good for your career to make a next move.

44:21Right. Not only the visibility but also all the skills you need for this role. So this project management skills this drive you need to have to really kick through the projects because there has been no project which was just done like this. If there's one headwind and you would say, okay, let's not do it, then we would do no POC, right? So this one part, the other part, externally, when you come from venture clienting, there are many ways, right? You can go again to a provider.

44:57So on the service side, you could go to other company, build a venture client unit from scratch. You can go to the start up side. You can go to the VC side. I have seen basically everything and also other industries I think, which haven't maybe heard about venture clienting by now. It's also maybe interesting to look. Which ones. Energy pharma or the public sector space. So maybe there has not been so much the pressure to innovate so efficiently in the past. But maybe it will be there in a couple of years as well.

45:38The pressure to innovate is an important point, actually. I think that's why telecoms, for example, was very early because there were WhatsApp, Skype, etc. they were attacked early in a way or they were feeling attacked. I don't think that anybody created WhatsApp because they didn't like any of the telecoms companies. I think venture client ultimately has not invented anything new, right? It is describing the professionalization of the qualification, identification and ultimate adoption of new partners and solutions.

46:16Every software developer does venture clients on a daily basis, looking for different modules and components. They can just place in there. So I think also what we're kind of seeing is that the industries that have been very late and have been very process oriented, have developed now this methodology that allows the ones that have innately done it from the start to actually do it a bit better rather than in this just, yeah, almost random, but okay, random process.

46:51Because in the end, everybody was benevolent and motivated to do it. I feel that's really also an element or something that where we're seeing of, Okay. Germany. Why does this originate from Germany? When so many other countries feel there's so much more advanced when it comes to innovation, adopting and being open and celebrating new technologies? But I think it's exactly that. It's a the need at one point has been so strong. And the culture so much of a form of, okay, we do things well and understand what we're doing and where we're doing it, that ultimately it has been the birthplace for the full definition of the methodology, but not the place where that type of work and or that type of collaboration was invented.

47:44Of course. Maybe. One part that because I think we Germans, we love processes, right. But also these processes just make it now a repeatable. And it's just a great offering for providers to build this service, but also for internally to have a nice offering to support colleagues. And I wouldn't say other countries or corporates, they don't do it, but maybe they don't do it so efficiently or they even don't know they have this capabilities in-house, right? Maybe not bundled either. Yeah, completely.

48:23We launched the report. What now? Beginning of the year, where by now we found, or collected 500,000 real reference, public reference, customer relationships between startups and corporations. And the majority of them, those venture clienting teams were not aware of they are actually working with. In the end, you only hear this one short success story and you don't ask, okay, how long has it done or did you need for it to get there? Right? Nobody asks these kind of questions. If you have a successful proof point in project. Right. But maybe it's a very, on this way.

49:02It was a very painful experience for the whole organization. Right. And nobody would maybe care too much in the end. But maybe just with the processes we have in place, you just get all this distraction and maybe pain out of the process and still have the same success you can show. Plus and there comes again, of course, what you mentioned before. You also then help in the coordination of adopting and scaling the working solutions better. Right. Because if everybody just does their own thing, nobody is aware of ah, look, in Turkey, we've already figured this out.

49:42Let's also use that in Italy. Exactly. It's something we don't report so much yet, but when we receive a new request, first of all, we look internally within BSH and Bosch, if there's an existing solution and there are cases where we find exactly that solution in a different place, and then we just connect these colleagues. So it kind of takes one lead out of our table. But in the end, it's great success because we have been able to connect people and just scaling an existing solution.

50:21It's also one part of our job. And one part of what you can deliver to the organization. Mathias, this was so fun. I have many more points, but also now we're already in quite deep. Maybe in my Munich visit, we just do another conversation in person, next to each other. Not exactly. This was great. Thank you so much, Mathias, for taking the time and sharing so many of your insights. Yeah, this was fun. Thanks for the invitation.

50:50And thanks for having me, Fabian.