Over the past four quarters, almost one of every four corporate investors seems to be new, even in lockdown.
Most of the corporate investors participating in minority stake deals in the tumultuous second quarter of 2020 were investors that had done at least one deal before (76%). So nearly one out of every four (24%) corporates was disclosing their first minority stake deal last quarter. The proportion of these “first-timers” appears to have stayed at around 20%-25% over the past year.
In previous years, the proportion of first-time corporate investors was consistently lower than 20%. However, it is hard to estimate how many are actual newcomers to the corporate venturing playground, as some of them may have done other minority stake deals in startups but not publicised them.
Corporate venturing appears to have become an innovation tool to be employed by more corporations around the globe, rather than by a few global leaders, even in a pandemic.
While some of these newcomers may be occasional investors in startups or, conversely, more frequent than the data suggest, this is very unlikely to be accidental when industry incumbents are increasingly fearful of disruption.
