Intel Capital is the poster child for a resilient corporate venturing team. 

Having founded the multi-lateral and monetary system at Bretton Woods in 1944, the US added effective control of the payments system from the 1970s through credit and cash machines around the world allied to bank transfers and the deepest capital and advisory markets. Americans are keen for this to remain.

For those fascinated by charts of coronavirus expansion at various infection rates over the past few months, here is a more positive one.

It has been quite some time since the venture market has seen regular usage of down-rounds, cram-downs, pay-to-plays and similar down-market financing structures, but it is likely that the road ahead will be paved from time to time with these more complicated deal structures as compared to the straight forward structures and terms of the long up-market of the last decade.

We live in a world of seemingly the very large and the very small.

The value of Intel’s acquisition of Israel-based urban mobility app developer Moovit for a $900m enterprise value lies almost as much as what it says about the ecosystem developed there over the past 30 years since Russian immigration after the fall of the Soviet Union.

We have seen some big deals so far this year in the financial services sector, with Visa acquiring Plaid and Mastercard joining AvidXchange, but while payments remains localised in many cases the opportunities to join up the global commerce world beckons.

The ideas put forward by academics Clayton Christensen and Henry Chesbrough around 20 years ago for open and disruptive innovation have taken root across all corporations.

The current average population increase is estimated at 81 million people per year – a figure fortunately at this stage unlikely to be dented much by the covid-19 disease – and all require feeding.

As the world begins planning for a post-pandemic recovery, the United Nations is calling on people and governments to “build back better” by creating more sustainable, resilient and inclusive societies.