Global Corporate Venturing has been running our GCV Academy in an effort to provide best practices for the industry in a programme led by corporate venturing advisory veteran Andrew Gaule, and we have set the latest dates for the Academy. The programme is scintillating due to the high level of speakers we are privileged to host, and from these videos you can hear some of the types of insights speakers give during the course.
Claudia Fan Munce, head of IBM Ventures Capital, said in this video the key to do well in corporate venturing is to “define your value proposition and measurements.”
David Mayhew, of GE Ventures, said: “The set-up of the organisation with a focus on portfolio managment and risk management is key. It is very difficult to get strategic alignment and financial returns if you don’t have the right base and are answering the right questions from the start.”
Matt McElhatten, of Chevron Technology Ventures, said: “It is difficult to stay the course over 15 years but if you can have consistency in your team and in your mission you can have a long-lived corporate venture group.” McElhatten, who is education chairperson at trade body NVCA, added: “There is a need to create CVC specific content, and the GCV Academy is filling this niche exactly.”
Girish Nadkarni, head of ABB Technology Ventures, said: “Corporate venturing is a deceptively simple thing. It appears very easy initially but there are many traps and pitfalls for the uninitiated.”
Jonathan Tudor, of Castrol InnoVentures, gives advice on how to get the most value out of a strategic relationship: “Give the time for an investment to bed down, keep socialising and talking about what that company is doing within the organisation, and be clear about who you think is going to be able to help that company. Then start to engage them and talk about the speed at which that company is evolving.”
Tony Askew, head of Reed Elsevier Ventures, said: “The first thing is about aligning interest. Alignment is the key differentiator between successful companies and most unsuccessful companies. As a corporate investor you can be met with suspicion as to where you stand. Flushing that out with both your corporate structure, your structure of how you invest and how you invest against terms, whether you have special interest terms or not.”
Paul Morris, formerly of Dow Venture Capital and of UKTI, talks about how corporates can work better with venture capital firms.
Mark Muth, of accountancy firm PwC, said: “Corporate venture capitalists should think about what value they are bringing to an investment and whether or how they should get compensated for that, whether they get extra options or a lower valuation.
Neil Foster, a partner of law firm Baker Botts, said: “Most of our clients that are corporate venture capitalists will take a board seat. From a liability point of view, does that create liability for an individual director? The answer is, ‘Yes, but…’ Yes you do have liability when you are sitting on a board, you have the obligation to act in the best interests of that company, not your employer, not the large corporate that has put you on that board, not the big corporate. You are, however, allowed to take into account the interests of your appointer. Are there lower liabilities in being an observer? No, not necessarily.”
See more on the Academy here. The next London academy is an Investment and VC Partnering Masters on June 1, the day before our Symposium. The next London academies are then an Intellectual Assets and Partnering Masters on June 25, a two day programme on June 30 and July 1, as well as a Board Roles for CVC programme on July 2. We are then hosting a July 8 and 9 two day programme in Silicon Valley.
