GCV Powerlist 2016: Javier Placer, Telefonica

Javier Placer took over corporate venturing and open innovation strategy at Spain-based telecoms group Telefónica in 2013, two years after joining the company.
The group is looking for significant overlap between its TelefónicaOpen Future innovation initiative, which runs its incubator spaces of crowdworkings, they accelerator program, Wayra, its VC funds program, Amerigo, which backs venture firms, and its late-stage investment program Telefónica Ventures.

Placer has been heading up all four initiatives with striking progress being made. At the end of last year, Open Future had invested about €350m ($400m) in more than 600 startups and accelerated 850 business projects with more than 85 public and private partners.

Placer said: “These data support the strategy of Telefónica and encourage us to get the same both in the rest of Europe and Latin America, as in Asia and Africa through our partners, thus maximising the value of the current network of open innovation.”

Ana Segurado, director of Telefónica Open Future and Placer’s right-hand leader, added: “In the last two years and a half we have become a fundamental tool for Telefónica in its strategy, becoming a privileged observatory to detect, capture and incorporate the technological revolution with the aim of putting the service of both the company and its customers with the ultimate aim of gradually introduce these innovations in society.”

Telefónica’s success is perhaps understandable given he was previously head of his own consulting mergers and acquisitions and asset management business before Telefónica as part of a 20-plus-year career in investment banking.

Placer began his career in the BBV bank in 1991, which he joined after working at Beta Capital and Salomon Brothers. He holds a MBA from New York University.

Launched in 2011 in Latin America and Spain, Wayra also has a presence in the UK, Germany and Ireland. It was “becoming one of the largest technology accelerators on earth”, Mariano Amartino, global director at Wayra, said in his GCV Rising Stars 2016 profile.

Amartino added: “Besides the financial aspect of Wayra, please keep in mind that we invest in the early stage and we have only been operating for four years. I think the greatest success is the ecosystem creation in countries in which there was no ecosystem at all, or countries where the idea of a corporate venture was to have deep pockets and get into later-stage companies. These were ecosystems in which corporates were only eyeing acquisitions.”