Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2016: Stefan Kuentz

It is sometimes hard to find true relaxation when you find your job “addictive”, but a glass of wine while looking at Lake Maggiore would be a way many would choose.

One of those who would is Stefan Kuentz, investment director at Swisscom Ventures, whose family home’s terrace overviews the lake on the border of Switzerland and Italy.

Kuentz said he found the job “addictive” after being attracted to corporate venturing by “the combination of running a VC business with a clearly separated lean governance and the ability to leverage the strength and resources of the corporation to help prosper our investees with the goal to provide strategic value to Swisscom”.

He has been highly successful in the role.

Dominique Mégret, head of Swisscom Ventures, said: “Since Stefan joined Swisscom Ventures four years ago, he has been a key contributor to nine investments in the cloud, telecom-related software and internet of things spaces, both in the US and Europe, some of which led to successful exits, for example, Amplidata sold to Western Digital.

“He was particularly good at leveraging his extensive Silicon Valley network – he was in charge of Swisscom’s US outpost between 2007 and 2010 – to establish partnerships between US companies and Swisscom in Switzerland.

“He was also instrumental in starting Swisscom Ventures Early Stage Fund thanks to his close relationship with our top management.”

Kuentz said the early-stage fund had made 15 deals in the two years to November and he had also helped develop the Swisscom Startup Challenge, a corporate accelerator programme that each year takes the top five Swiss startups for a business development trip to Silicon Valley.

Before the Swisscom Ventures and US roles, Kuentz said he was responsible for Swisscom’s new solution business for the enterprise market, resulting in establishing business verticals that contributed more than $50m in annual revenue after four years. Before Swisscom, he was with IBM for almost a decade until the end of 2002.

This corporate experience has helped him understand and find ways round the “internal organisational ‘anti-bodies’ that are constantly trying to push out startup innovations by replacing them with big vendor promises”.

Kuentz said what would help in this challenge would be for the industry to “foster stronger relationships and collaboration among corporate venture capital units with the same interests, for example, by using a common platform to exchange deals, actively seek for co-investments, pool resources in scouting or even to create common investment funds”.

And maybe that glass of wine will help, too.