Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2017: Christina Karapataki

Passionate about getting new technology out of the lab and into high-value commercial applications, Christina Karapataki has had the opportunity to realise her dream of having an impact on the innovation community over the past four years as a venture principal at Schlumberger Corporate Venturing.

In the past year, she has also been heavily involved with the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) team, and had the opportunity to manage M&A transactions where oil services company Schlumberger acquired venture-backed companies.

Karapataki said: “This gave me an additional perspective into the venture world and how best to position startups for exit through acquisition.

“I was responsible for the first financial exit of the group in 2015 and I oversaw a second exit from our portfolio in 2016 when Miox Corporation was acquired by Johnson Matthey. Since joining Schlumberger I have completed 10-plus venture financings (direct and follow-on investment) with $8m-plus capital deployed.”

She said she had led investments in Nantero and Onapsis, and co-led investments in 908 Devices and Naturafrac, while also is a board director of Wirescan and board observer for 908 Devices and Parsable.

In addition, Karapataki has responsibility for almost half of the existing portfolio companies all of which are at various levels of engagements, ranging from simply monitoring technical activities to participating on the board as a director, she added.

However, this complexity has expanded after Schlumberger acquired Cameron, an equipment manufacturer for the oil and gas industry, last year. Karapataki said this acquisition “significantly increased the scope of the venture group.

“We were also asked as a group to investigate investment opportunities in two new fields, enterprise software and environmentally friendly technologies.”

Last month, Schlumberger invested in UK-based high-altitude wind power generation technology Kite Power Systems, as part of a consortium with other strategic investors, Eon and Shell Technology Ventures.

Prior to joining Schlumberger and after her master’s in energy technology and policy from MIT, Karapataki did a five-month internship with Venrock, a financial VC group formed out of the wealth of the original oil magnate Rockefeller’s family money.

Of her move to corporate venturing, she said: “I was very interested to work with startups and more importantly see new novel technology move out of the lab and into high value commercial applications.

“I knew that CVC would give me the opportunity to be part of that process. I also really enjoy the opportunity to work with great entrepreneurs and help them grow their business. At corporate VC I think we have the added advantage of looking in a lot more detail in the technical capabilities of the startups and work with the internal business units to really understand what potential impact a particular technology can have to the industry.”

In parallel, she is an adviser for the US trade body National Venture Capital Association (NVCA’s) corporate venture group “where we work to increase exposure of the corporate venture capital activities and actively promote collaboration between financial and corporate VC groups,” such as it joint event, SHIFT, with Global Corporate Venturing in New York City in October.

And for the industry, Karapataki said: “It is fairly well established that corporate VC groups can be a valuable strategic partner for a startup, however CVCs need to put further effort so that they can also be recognised as a valuable financial investor.

“CVC groups need to pay at least equal attention to both strategic and financial returns in order to better align themselves with the goals of the startup.”

Outside of the CVC world, Karapataki loves nothing more than exploring the world, or going sailing whenever she visits her home country of Cyprus.