Marc Thom (Henkel Ventures): Why resilience is a muscle for growth

0:00So resilience is a muscle. Resilience is not survival. It's not that we need to be a soldier and, you know, something like this. Resilience is to make out of a challenge a business. And sustainability, this is my deep belief, can be a big business for everyone. Could be for corporates, could be for every person on the world. Because we just need to see it as what it is. It is an opportunity to generate growth. A lot of uncertainty is coming into our world. uncertainty is something which is not feeling pretty well, but uncertainty is something where we can develop growth from. So Europe is more competitive than we all think and this is something where I'm very optimistic.

0:38So because it is about us to drive the change and it is about us to start thinking about a long-term vision and then go home and think about we should be optimistic. Let's found a company, let's become entrepreneurs, let's go into something what can we really build up to trigger this world because we have more than you

0:56Marc Thom:all think we are live and five we are live we are live three two one

1:14We can all learn so much from startups and it's the thing because there are more optimistic than most of the people in the news in the press and everywhere and I would like to invite you to a journey for the next five minutes or seven minutes I need to do seven minutes he's now nodding his head seven I will now start so and there's something about tomorrow and I think there's no better place to talk about sustainability impact and optimism than this stage because if I enter this you can feel the energy young people every morning standing up trying to change things it's super because it's needed because our world if you turn on the television the news is a mess we We have strange governments, we have wars, pandemics, climate change.

1:55You would get really frustrated. So you know my wife is a psychotherapist, she makes a lot of money because all the people are depressed every day. But I'm very optimistic and I would like to invite you as well to become optimistic and let's see why. Because, and let's start with very bad things, okay? So black swans, I'm now 50 years old, but in my childhood I was fortunate to have only a few times a black swan. Black swans are accidents or things happening which are not foreseen and change the way the world goes. I think I had Chernobyl in 1986. It was horrible for me and my friends to not go out and play football, but it was nothing in comparison to the last years, and there was a Yugoslavia war or something like this.

2:39But today, and to be always honest, look back the last five years, there was one black swan after another. A lot of uncertainty is coming into our world. Uncertainty is something which is not feeling pretty well, but uncertainty is something where we can develop growth from So our company Henkel is turning 150 years this year So many many black swans I think this company has for sure has seen but the last five years have been really special but every time when there are challenges there are Opportunities and you just need to think them so and this is why venture capitalists are usually much more optimistic than the rest of the world because we can talk every day with young founders who find ideas how to make this world a better place.

3:24Let's see how they see the things. Our world is very complex. I think every company needs another company today. If the supply chains break down, nothing is working. So let's tackle this thing about sustainability. We all know all price goes up. If Donald Trump thinks he should bomb Iran, then nothing is happening. All price go up, all the supply chains break down, a lot of things happening which are not good. And there's one solution. The solution could be, oh, let's get independent from this dependency, this complexity, which would also be something around resources. Pocket in your head, coming back in a few seconds.

3:59So resilience is a muscle. Resilience is not survival. It's not that we need to be a soldier and something like this. Resilience is to make out of a challenge a business. And sustainability, this is my deep belief, can be a big business for everyone. Could be for corporates, could be for every person on the world, because we just need to see it as what it is. It is an opportunity to generate growth. And this is something I think we all should be aware of. And material science sounds boring in the first step, but it's really cool stuff that you get goosebumps if you understand what material science can do.

4:35Just imagine every product in this world would get 20 % less carbon dioxide because the formulations and the products are changing. Wow, this would make a huge impact. I think that's the first thing. The other thing is material science think about could really change a lot of things in Biotech could change things in solar and everywhere. So material science is very important The good thing is Europe has a lot of great scientists in material space And they have also a lot of prominent very good universities with a lot of knowledge and experts Then we have AI So now consider, you have AI. AI could read 200 million books in a few days, and you have all the knowledge in the world.

5:16You have corporates and you have universities. You have motivated young people who every day stand up and think about how can we change formulations to change sustainability. And by using AI, you can change formulations, and you need to feed it with data. Data from the past and data which is artificial, or you can add from others. So it doesn't work alone. And this is exactly where Europe is very well positioned because we in Europe we have and it's a good thing Don't forget about if you turn on television even if the guy makes you frustrated and you want to call my wife Don't do this think about the chances what you are having because this is exactly we have Democracy we have free speech we have and we have business and we have corporates which are existing more than hundred years We have fantastic people every day standing up.

6:04We have venture capital over there. You have many hundred millions You can ask the guys for money if you have a great startup who needs money Michael is a fantastic person is fantastic investments So Europe is more competitive than we all think and this is something where I'm very optimistic So because it is about us to drive the change and it is about us to start thinking about a long-term vision So what is it? What are startups doing every day? They stand up, looking into the trends in the world, then they think about, okay, there is a new technology. How is this technology changing this industry?

6:37And what are the chances which are in? It's very simple. Buy yourself a bottle of red wine, meet some people you know, sit down at the evening and discuss, for example, demographic change. So demographic change is something, even with 1 ,000 hours psychotherapy with my wife, it will not go away. Okay, so you will find out that demographic change people get older get more So we don't have enough nurses not enough nursery homes. What does it mean? Startup founders would now think about okay Maybe we need robots to take care for it that the people can stay longer in their households and can not you know Don't need to move out and have a better life then they built a business model around that story start collecting money from my Four people before and the five people after me and then you know the business is there And if you do this we have a big muscle and this muscle is something which makes me very very optimistic If we think about what lies ahead in the in the in the future and even if the black swans they will not go away Uncertainty will be staying and will be there for a long time But our muscles can grow corporates have shown to you how these muscles can be trained and this muscles and resilience It's not survival.

7:52It is turning challenges into opportunities So if I would have one wish go out of this day today and made tomorrow or maybe best you go out Sunday A lot of drunken moments and happy meetings after you and then go home and think about we should be optimistic Let's found a company. Let's become entrepreneurs Let's go into something what can be really built up to trigger this world because we have more than you all think And this is what we need to take