A Personal New Year Message

by Markus Bold

Markus Bold is the Head of Chemovator. In this New Year message, he shares his thoughts on the founding months of Chemovator and gives an outline for the future.

Dear friends of Chemovator,

For the beginning of 2019, I would like to take a step back and look on the past journey with Chemovator from a distance .

For me personally, Chemovator started in 2018.
A dedicated project team was already up and running at full speed. In March, I became the Head of Chemovator. What really attracted me were two things: Chemovator starts from scratch and I am a part of it. Secondly, BASF is really taking a serious step for innovation management by putting a business incubator into a separate legal entity. My major personal task was to find and to ignite a crew. It took some months until the Chemovator Core Team embarked on our future journey. Since mid of September, all crew members are on board, running down all barriers to setup our operations.
The second group of people making a great difference, are our Entrepreneurs in Residence, our continuous source of external stimulus and challenge. Truly a unique bunch of people. Different in experience, areas of expertise, age, mindset – but united in the thought to invest their skillset into Chemovator, bringing this bird into the air.

Piece by piece Chemovator evolved. Since back then, no day was like the other.
Effective end of July, we moved into our new building in Mannheim. A place I enjoy working, meeting unique and interesting people and watching, how the place will slowly be filled with more and more Venture Teams. We have been able to build key elements to bring the legal entity to life. The business model has been defined, our systems have been designed and setup. We have professionalized over the last months and we have learned from all pitfalls associated with it.

At last, I would like to touch upon the people we work for: Our Venture Teams.
Currently, we have accepted five teams in Chemovator. However, we have seen many pitches and we argued on the economic potential of these ideas.
Dear colleages from FaCELLitate, Teraktis, in Be-Grow, BOXLAB and Sustragil, many thanks for being courageous and stepping up with your proposal - to see you being successful is our motivation to come to work every day.

Please also accept my thanks to our Chemovator community, supporters, friends and colleagues. Thank you for your engagement and inspiration! Without you, it would not be possible to spread the word and turn Chemovator into the protected space for BASF to turn bold ideas around chemistry into businesses.

2019 is going to be an exciting year for Chemovator. I am excited for the path ahead of us and I am looking forward to continuing the adventure with Chemovator together with you!

Thanks to all of you.

Truly yours,

Markus Bold