Can the TechNexus hybrid approach get startups and corporations collaborating?

Large corporations have tried to tap into startup innovation through venture investing for decades. According to GCV data, as of 2025, there are over 3,000 companies actively investing in startups globally, and nearly every Fortune 500 boardroom has, at some point, declared that partnering with entrepreneurs is essential to staying competitive.

But the results remain uneven despite the deals that are finalised, pilots that are launched and press releases that are issued. This is because sustained collaboration between startups and corporates remains rare.

“Entrepreneurs and large corporations don’t speak the same language. They’re not even the same animal,” believes Terry Howerton, cofounder and CEO of corporate-startup venture collaboration platform TechNexus Venture Collaborative.

TechNexus has spent the past decade building a model aimed at bridging that gap. They call it a “venture collaborative” – a hybrid structure combining venture investment, corporate strategy and venture building to create what it describes as functioning innovation ecosystems around large companies.

The premise is simple – capital alone does not create collaboration. Someone has to actively engineer the relationship.

As cofounder and general partner Fred Hoch states, “Deploying venture capital is step one, but that only aligns interest. The real work is helping these organisations to cut through the noise and learn how to do business with each other.”

An accidental incubator

The origins of the venture collaborative model lie in Chicago’s technology ecosystem of the early 2000s. Howerton and Hoch were serial entrepreneurs who realised the city lacked the dense networks that were characteristic of Silicon Valley.

“We thought we should be doing more to help other entrepreneurs around us. It wasn’t all selfless – as entrepreneurs ourselves, we needed a more supportive community as well,” says Howerton. “And the best way to do that was to build one.”