Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2016: Scott Shapiro

All rising stars face the question of where they are headed next. Corporate venturing alumni can be found in most corporate and financial roles, including the role of chief financial officer. This role is the long-term ambition of Scott Shapiro, senior director for corporate development and strategy at the US-based Sinclair Broadcast Group and its Sinclair Digital Ventures subsidiary.

He said: “I love working for Sinclair. In the near term, I would like to keep helping the company build for the future because there are limitless avenues to explore.”

Although has a broad remit, covering M&A, internal organic growth projects and strategic investments set up through Sinclair Digital Ventures, which was set up in 2014, he has one chief mission.

He said: “Our mission is to help evolve our company into a next generation media platform from a traditional broadcaster. We have a very large canvas to paint and our specific goals are very broad. This is the challenge I enjoy the most – making order out of chaos.”

As a former tax specialist at KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, followed by a stint working as an equity research analyst at investment bank Morgan Stanley and his own firm, taking on the challenge of creating order from chaos make sense.

Creating order out of corporate venturing comes in the shape of cultivating the portfolio by using his parent company’s assets.

Shapiro, who completed an MBA at the University of Virginia – Darden Graduate School of Business Administration after receiving his degree in history from the University of Rochester, said: “Our VC activities are relatively new so have only had one exit thus far. It was a small success relative to the size of our company.

“Our greatest successes have come from leveraging our footprint to provide commercial opportunities for our portfolio companies – this gives them some legs to stand on, not just from an operating perspective, but from a next raise perspective.

“I am particularly proud of ScoreStream, which uses technology to mine social media for high school sports scores. We have been promoting it heavily on our air waves. The leap in distribution from last year to this year has been great to watch.

“The biggest challenge has probably been coordinating commercial elements of our deal – we are a strategic investor – through the various tracts of our company, digital, news, broadcast and so on.

“We have a lot of value to add, but it can be hard getting everyone synchronised to execute. That’s been a critical function of our group.”