Dirk Nachtigal (pictured), managing director and founder of BASF Venture Capital, Germany-based chemicals company BASF’s corporate venturing unit, since 2001, left last month to become a venture capital consultant.
In November, BASF hired Markus Solibieda, formerly a partner at private equity firm Mandarin Capital Partners, as managing director at BASF Venture Capital to work initially alongside Nachtigal, a member of the GCV Powerlist in 2016.
Nachtigal had built up one of Germany’s most active corporate venturing units and one former colleague said last summer, when asked about a succession plan, that “over the last 24 months we were extremely successful not only in making new investments, but also in returning money to our parent (two-times profitable exits to third parties)”.
Nachtigal and Solibieda were unavailable for comment. Nachtigal had been chief financial officer and managing director of the €175m ($200m) unit since its formation in September 2001.
During the past decade he has expanded the corporate venturing team to 14 in offices across the US, China, Japan and Germany. Most of the team rotate into and out of BASF’s business units and has populated many of the country’s best corporate venturing units, with Bernhard Mohr now head of Evonik Venture Capital, Konrad Augustin at Eon’s US-based ventures team, and Sven Harmsen joining Merck’s venture unit.
Mohr, now managing director of Evonik Venture Capital, said: “Dirk founded and directed the team of BASF Venture Capital for more than 15 years educating a large number of venture professionals and building up an impressive portfolio of investments. I am excited to see in which way Dirk will continue so serve the Venture Capital Industry”
BASF has collaborated with more than 350 startups since 2001, investing in more than 30 of them. It usually provides between €1m and €5m ($1.05m to $5.3m) in funding.
Corporate venturing and open innovation play a critical role in BASF’s research and development activities, and its business units and research department are intimately involved in vetting potential investments.
“Their role is to describe why, from a strategic point of view, we should work with this company and how,” Nachtigal said in an interview in 2015.
Nachtigal has worked for the BASF Group since 1987. He was previously head of finance, accounting and control at BASF Schwarzheide. He studied economics at Göttingen and Hamburg universities.