GCV Powerlist 2016: Reese Schroeder, Motorola Solutions

Following a visit to the Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit in Sonoma, California, Reese Schroeder, managing director of Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, asked himself a rhetorical question: “What makes a corporate venture group successful?”

His answer in a guest comment published by US trade body the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and GCV was: “First, commitment from senior management is a must. Second, you must have an experienced team. While it is good to bring outside perspectives into the team, the core leadership must be people that have a history and experience with the company, and are trusted by the business people with whom they work.

“Third, you must prove yourself as a valuable member of the CVC and VC communities. They have developed the critically important two Rs – reputation and relationships. Fourth, you have to stay the course. All these firms have continued to remain active even in the face of changing economic conditions. Finally, all these organisations have demonstrated a track record of success, both strategic and financial.”

Judged on these criteria, Schroeder has built a successful franchise.

Paul Steinberg, chief technology officer at Motorola Solutions, whose team includes the ventures group, said: “Motorola Solutions Venture Capital is an integral part of how we accelerate innovation for public safety and commercial customers. In 2015 alone, we added six new investments to our portfolio, including drone maker CyPhy Works and eye interaction pioneer Eyefluence, and we welcomed new investment directors in Silicon Valley and Israel to our team.

“Reese Schroeder’s leadership of the ventures group has brought us access to strategic technologies and capabilities. Access, acceleration and perspective are the three reasons that we engage in corporate venture capital, and I am proud that our work has brought value to Motorola Solutions, our customers and the broader industry.”

Regarding an experienced team with long-term commitment, with more than a dozen years in corporate venturing and a working lifetime at one firm, Motorola, since 1989 there are few people in the industry better able to navigate the balance between internal and external stakeholders than Schroeder.

In a 2012 interview, he said: “In 1999, when the venture group was formed, I was one of the first people who started to work with them. I attended their first investment board meeting and worked with them in setting up the process. I was doing a lot of minority investing. It was natural for that group to seek me out and find a way we could work together. I did not think about working for the group, but how I could help them and how they could help us. Our group has been very stable. We have a ton of experience here, which is our secret sauce as we know how to connect companies to the right places in the business.”

Schroeder said one of the things of which he was most proud was orchestrating the split of Motorola Solutions Venture Capital from Motorola Mobility’s unit, when the two companies that made up Motorola were split in two.

He studied law at John Marshall Law School and political science at North Central College, Illinois. He is also a vital part of the venture community, leading the communications strategy for the NVCA in corporate venturing and proactively supporting his local Chicago entrepreneurial community.

Schroeder said: “2015 was a great year for Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. We added six new investments to our portfolio – CyPhy Works, Eyefluence, BlueLine Grid, Nubo, Boundless Spatial and Orion Labs. We also had three very successful exits – Mobileye, an IPO, Cleversafe, acquired by IBM and Recon Instruments, acquired by Intel.

“Gopal Rajaraman was named as one of the CVC industry’s rising stars [by GCV]. We also hired two investment directors – one for Silicon Valley and one for Israel. We are well-positioned to have an excellent 2016 and expect to make six to eight new investments this year. We will continue to find and invest in best-in-class startups for the public safety business, as well as other key customers for Motorola Solutions.”

In his keynote discussion with Steinberg at last year’s GCV Symposium, Schroeder said: “We are going a step beyond just bringing something in to solve a problem. We are using a cluster of investments sequenced together that can add up to a larger-value product. We have created broader themes and are stringing together investments to advance these themes.”

One of these themes appear to be showing how to build a successful corporate venturing unit over a lifetime of hard work.