Davorin Kuchan, as director of corporate venturing and innovation at US-based chipmaker Texas Instruments, led a comprehensive strategy review of its corporate venturing activities. Following this comprehensive review, Kuchan is attempting to stir debate about how best corporate venturing units can work with the wider venture industry. Kuchan said: “There is a growing opportunity for emergence of multi-tenant corporate venture funds like Capbridge [set up by Brad McManus, who previously headed Panasonic’s corporate venturing operations].
Such funds would be oriented around a vertical topic like Autotech or Consumer Tech, and would provided non-competitive corporate limited partners [LPs – investors] with focused venture investment strategy. Entrepreneurs and VC [venture capital] syndicates would get traditional VC fund behaviour and speed. Corporates would extract both financial and strategic value from entrepreneurs focused on their area of interest as well as strategic discussion among fellow corporate LPs.”
Kuchan has worked at TI for nearly 12 years. Before this, he worked at US-based software company Telogy Networks, which was acquired by TI for $435m in 1999. He previously worked at technology companies Neuron Data and Centerline Software. Kuchan speaks Croatian, French and English, and gained an MBA from Berkeley, and studied computer information systems and business administration at Menlo College. He is also a pilot and winemaker.
What is the future of your sector
Kuchan said: “I can envision closer collaboration among semiconductor companies around innovation relevant to core technologies or process technologies. Currently, lack of VC interest has slowed down entrepreneurial efforts in core semiconductor tech. Also, I can see closer collaboration with universities, where there is an opportunity to adopt material science and core tech research and apply corporate resources to incubate new companies. Global University Venturing [Global Corporate Venturing’s sister title] has an opportunity to bridge idea and licensing gap and bring university research closer to implementation, funding and adoption by corporates.”
