Gerhard Cromme isn't easily upset.
The former top manager has 50 years of German industry under his belt.
For half a century he determined the fortunes of Siemens, Thyssenkrupp, Allianz and other large corporations, and survived numerous crises, power struggles and affairs.
Bettina Weiguny
Freelance author in the business section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.
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The 79-year-old now advises young technology companies and is a sponsor, advisor and investor at the same time.
At the moment it is mainly used to calm the nerves.
“The boys get nervous quickly when something goes wrong.
It helps to have someone at your side who has seen it all before.” And Cromme has experienced a lot: failed mega-mergers, oil crises and week-long demonstrations by angry workers in front of his private house because of the closure of the Rheinhausen steelworks.
Now it is also shaking up its new territory – the start-up industry.
German companies had just celebrated gigantic financing rounds when even big names such as the food supplier Gorillas, the payment service provider Klarna and the e-scooter rental company Tier were reporting large-scale layoffs.
Stock market prices plummet.
Money is getting tight.
And many are wondering nervously: Is that the disenchantment?
Will everything close here soon?
"No," Cromme now speaks up.
The silver ager among the youngsters (“These could all be my grandchildren here”) urges calm.
“The values were exaggeratedly high, so a course correction was clearly needed.
But what we are seeing now is also completely exaggerated.” Many start-ups have lost two-thirds of their market value or even more.
Nevertheless, Cromme is convinced: "It will come back."
The turbulence also affects his own portfolio.
A particularly big minus is in front of Auto1.
The used car platform got off to a flying start on the stock exchange last year, but the stock market price has lost a full 90 percent since it peaked shortly thereafter.
Cromme is an investor and the head of the supervisory board here.
"The course does not reflect the value of the company," he says.
"They have a solid business and are developing better than the market." In any case, he would always come back to the start-up.
He doesn't let anything get to the first celebrated, then scolded founder: "Hakan Koç is a financial genius.
He collected over a billion euros from investors, that was a great achievement.” Some shareholders may see things differently at the moment.
"It's like a fountain of youth for me"
Cromme continues to expand his small start-up empire.
He has shares in almost a dozen companies, and where he gives money, he insists on a mandate: in addition to Auto1, he sits on various advisory boards across the industry – commercial real estate, the energy sector, venture capital, flight software and logistics.
Among them there are also one or two unicorns, i.e. companies with a valuation in the billions or those that are about to (or at least were until recently).
Cromme only invests if he knows the people involved (“I also had to learn the hard way in the beginning.”).
And if the start-up does something that he thinks makes sense.
He says he would never have gotten into grocery delivery services.
Recently he has focused on environmental and technology start-ups.
He has just joined Theion.
The Berlin company advertises with a kind of "miracle battery".
He doesn't know whether the technology really works and will catch on.
But if so, "that would be fantastic".
Because the sulfur batteries supposedly have a three times longer running time with a third less weight and a third of the investment costs.
"I find the idea so fascinating that it's worth investing in," says the new head of the advisory board.
The same applies to his most recent investment in London at Highview Power: “They build storage systems that, to put it simply, freeze the electricity so that it can then be fed into the grid later.
We need such time buffers for renewable energies.”
The former Mr. Stahl also relies on regenerative energies today.
He's not thinking about retirement.
"I'm 79, I could just play the piano, go to the mountains and write a book about the Stauffers.
Maybe I’ll do that too someday.” But first he wants to get to know new ideas, pull the strings, network people – like in the fireside chats with founders and students at the ESMT business school in Berlin, which he co-founded: “It’s like a fountain of youth for me. "