Top 50 Rising Stars 2022 (in alphabetical order by CVC unit): Jennifer Diedrichs and Theo Schulte, investment managers, EnBW New Ventures
Jennifer Diedrichs and Theo Schulte are investment managers at EnBW New Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of Germany-listed energy utility EnBW.
Crispin Leick, managing director of EnBW New Ventures, said of Diedrichs: “As an investment manager, she is continuing to manage our investment into no-code digital customer platform Babelforce as well as our additive manufacturing portfolio company 3Yourmind.
“An additional achievement in the last months was her lead on our effort to become the first German [venture capital group] to qualify for the Diversity VC standard to support a more inclusive VC community.”
The unit hired Diedrichs in 2018 as an associate and she took up her current role in September 2020. Before that, she had been a project consultant for E.On Inhouse Consulting, a consulting subsidiary of energy group E.On, for two years.
Regarding Schulte, Leick said: “Theo joined EnBW New Ventures in October 2017 as analyst and has been promoted twice since then, first to associate and in September 2020 to an investment manager.
“Theo is leading our foray into the digital mobility sector and is already managing two of our portfolio companies in that field: smart road maintenance provider Vialytics and car parking system developer Cleverciti.”
He sits on the boards of Vialytics and Cleverciti as a non-executive member while also serving as a board observer at solar system rental service solar power leasing service DZ-4 and cloud infrastructure management software provider Gridscale.
Prior to joining EnBW Ventures, Schulte had taken part in startup accelerator programme operator SpinLab’s HHL Accelerator scheme as an entrepreneur for six months from May 2017, after a brief stint the previous year as a business analyst at VC firm Kompass Digital Ventures.
