Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2017: David Schulte

David Schulte, managing director at McKesson Ventures, the $250m corporate venturing unit of the US-based healthcare provider, has three deals under his belt in his new firm after leaving peer Kaiser Permanente Ventures in September 2015.

Tom Rodgers, senior vice-president and managing director at McKesson Ventures, said: “Dave was on your list last years and remains a very suitable candidate as he completed a few new deals this year – Landmark, Komodo, Shyft – and he is the clear heir apparent to me.”

In August, Shyft Analytics, a US-based provider of cloud analytics software for the life sciences industry, raised $12.5m in series B funding yesterday from investors including corporates McKesson Corporation and Medidata Solutions. Komodo Health raised an undisclosed stealth round also including IA Ventures and Felicis, while Landmark is a New England-based owner, operator and management services provider for older people.

Rodgers and Schulte have also been building up the rest of the team with Aaron Fink also regarded as a good candidate after his promotion to principal in 2015.

Schulte has more than 18 years of experience as an investor and investment banker at JP Morgan – under the defunct name of Hambrecht & Quist – UBS and Piper Jaffray.

Before McKesson Ventures, Schulte spent 12 years helping to build and grow Kaiser Permanente Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the hospitals group. In his tenure there, he led an investment team whose IT and digital health investments included Omada Health, Proteus Digital Health, Health Catalyst, Kit Check, Validic, Ingenious Med and MetricStream.

As well as the successes, though, Schulte has had to deal with challenges in venturing. He wants to apply these insights to McKesson. Schulte said for his GCV Rising Stars 2016 award: “At KP Ventures, like many corporate VCs, the greatest challenge was navigating organisational politics and delivering on the promise of corporate venture. It is difficult to consistently provide tangible benefit to portfolio companies.”

To make this a stronger industry, Schulte said all CVCs could think about holding themselves accountable for providing tangible value to their portfolio companies. He thinks CVCs should align their own incentives with the success of their portfolio companies and provide more efficient and transparent decision-making. He also said CVCs would benefit from adopting National Venture Capital Association standard term sheets and eliminating right of first refusal terms from their deals.

As a former Minneapolis state soccer and basketball player, Schulte’s biggest concern last year was “dreading my young children’s first ‘legitimate’ victory” in their back-garden games.