As managing director, Crispin Leick set up Innogy Venture Capital inside Germany-based energy company RWE four years ago, subsequently spinning it out. The firm, which looks to drive disruptive solutions for energy transformation, secured another investor, alongside RWE’s Innogy unit, in Conetwork Erneuerbare Energien, an investment company of one of the last private banks in Germany Bankhaus Lampe Group specialising in renewable energy, in November 2012.
Leick said in the past year two portfolio companies – torrefaction company Topell and water disinfection company CeramHyd – had reported breakthroughs of their respective technologies and the unit had achieved two trade sales. Leick said the markets in which RWE was operating were changing rapidly, which made corporate venturing activity highly important. He said: “Utilities are thinking: ‘How do I ensure I still exist?’ This is not because they want to be nice. This is sheer survival. When we started, people were saying energy is different from telecoms. Today all these managers would say it is changing fast. In Germany, renewables are changing the face of all markets.”
Leick has now spent eight years working for RWE, including his time at Innogy Venture Capital. He joined RWE from Repower, a company he became part of when it was a 200 to 250-person operation. He planned its flotation. He said: “I was lucky to be part of that. I helped drive the company to be the European leader.” He added his work there included helping seal the first wind turbine delivery contract in the UK.
Leick has also worked for US-based energy giant Enron. He said: “I worked three years for Enron, which was looking at the time for people with an engineering background. I met very interesting people there, and ex-Enron managers are now everywhere in the energy business. There I witnessed how a 40,000-people entity can come down in eight weeks. Enron had supported my MBA so I stayed until the last day closing down the books. A key lesson for me was always to listen to the customers, never to think that you are smarter than they are, and to manage liquidity very conservatively.”
He added: “I studied at the technical university of Karlsruhe, an elite university in Germany. Why did I go there? Because chemical engineering was invented there. The same was true of my MBA. I did not go to Germany or Switzerland. I went to Chicago. I wanted to learn from the guys who invented it.”
What is the future of your sector?
Leick said: “The energy market is in transformation, European utilities are threatened massively, Eon and RWE posted net losses last quarter. The leveraged integrated utility business model will not survive, and decentralised and innovative customer centric solutions will be the future, new co-operation and new partnerships will emerge between utilities, IT and telecoms giants, but also start-ups are marking their footprints. This is a massive opportunity for entrepreneurs.”