Roessler leaves BSH’s corporate VC unit

Lars Roessler, founder of BSH Startup Kitchen, the corporate venture arm of Europe’s largest home appliances manufacturer BSH, has left the company to join TTE Strategy, the Hamburg-headquartered consultancy, as principal.

Roessler founded BSH Startup Kitchen in 2018 and focused the activities around venture clienting, where the corporation does not make equity investments in startups but becomes their customer at an early stage. The arrangement can often help startups test if their solutions can solve real business problems, while giving the corporation a preview of new technologies. Roessler believed that the venture clienting model provided better strategic returns for companies than venture investment.

As the economic climate for startups has grown more difficult in the past three years, GCV has seen a number of corporations shift to running venture clienting operations in tandem with investment. In our latest GCV Keystone survey we found that some 47% of corporate venture units include venture clienting as one of their innovation tools.

During Roessler’ tenure the BSH Startup Kitchen ran more than 130 projects with startups, around 20% of which went on to build bigger commercial relationships with the home appliance company. He leaves behind an experienced team of six which will continue to run innovation projects of BSH.

Roessler said in a LinkedIn post that he was drawn to TTE Strategy’s track record of making real change happen at companies. The consultancy, whose clients include Volkswagen and chemicals company CHT Group, also has offices in Munich and Zug, Switzerland.

“In my new role, I’ll continue to focus on innovation venturing and growth strategies – now embedded in broader transformation journeys,” he said.