Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2016: Konrad Augustin

Konrad Augustin, head of the US part of the Eon Strategic Co-Investments (SCI) group, the corporate venture capital (CVC) unit of the Germany-based energy firm, wants to make fewer investments.

By this, he does not men to do less work, but to “focus on becoming kingmakers” for those companies Eon and the industry invests in.

He added: “CVCs have unparalleled market know-how and have the best relationships with some of the biggest players in their industries. If this know-how can be used more efficiently, CVC money is the best thing that can happen to an entrepreneur.”

Eon takes the sharing of know-how seriously. He wants to set up a commercial collaboration with all of its portfolio companies.

Augustin said: “Keeping this number of collaborations at a high level is a great achievement. At present, it is nearly 95%.”

However, he has yet to follow the first part of his advice. The SCI portfolio has increased to 16 investments from four in the first two-and-a-half years since he joined from Germany-based chemicals company BASF’s corporate venturing unit. At BASF, he spent nearly six years as an investment manager following a two-year stint as auditor at the company, “which helps tremendously on due diligence”.

As of November 2015, Augustin sits on four portfolio company boards as director or observer. These are AutoGrid Systems, Sungevity, QBotix and Enervee.

This deal activity and general contribution, though, has been appreciated. Susana Quintana-Plaza, senior vice-president of technology and innovation at Eon, said: “Konrad has been invaluable in the build-up of the strategic co-investment activities at Eon.

“He was instrumental in the fast growth of our portfolio and team through his extensive experience and network in the VC community.”

Last summer, Quintana-Plaza promoted Augustin to set up SCI’s US office in San Francisco, within the Bay region of California. This returned Augustin to the US, where he had studied general management and marketing at the University of Connecticut School of Business. A native German, he completed his MBA in Berlin.

She said: “Having him in the Bay area building up the Eon VC footprint is helping tremendously in finding the best companies in the energy and customer solution space.”

It is a role Augustin is relishing: “It was a new kind of challenge to come to the US with just a notebook and build something from scratch.”

He said: “My ambition is to help Eon in its transformation from a utility to a customer-centric solution provider, riding the wave of changing energy markets and solving the energy challenges in a sustainable way, by continuing to facilitate innovation and connections with startups.

“CVC is one of the main inflection points in which cutting-edge technology and startup entrepreneurship interlock with corporate innovation and the reinvention of established companies and businesses.

“Large corporations need external impulses to keep getting better and stay on their toes. If they do not, the market will rule them obsolete sooner or later.

“Startups, on the other hand, have a view of their own and sometimes deny or ignore the negative bias for innovation in corporations and markets.

“Working in CVC has been – and still is – after more than eight years, a very rewarding space in which a single person can make a ton of difference for both small and large companies, creating new jobs and securing old ones.”