Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2017: Vitaly Golomb

It is perhaps little surprise Vitaly Golomb, investments and partnerships “evangelist” at HP Tech Ventures, described himself as “a drummer with not nearly enough time to play”

Golomb joined computer and printer maker HP in March, two months before its split from server and enterprise software developer Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The split allowed HP to form its own corporate venture capital unit, HP Tech Ventures, as the existing team and portfolio, Hewlett Packard Ventures, went with Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the demerger.

Between May and December, Golomb said he had met more than 300 companies all over the US, Europe, and Asia, although no deals had been struck publicly by December, and the list of events he was attending in the next quarter included:

•  December 26 – Up in Hanoi.

•  January 5-8 – CES in Las Vegas.

•  January 25-26 – Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit in Sonoma.

•  February 2 – Startup World Cup in Sunnyvale.

•  February 27-March 2 – Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Reflecting his fast-paced life, Golomb, a member of the supervisory board at trade body the Ukrainian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (UVCA), said: “I have been an entrepreneur my entire career starting from 13 years old.

“Prior to being recruited to help HP build the CVC program, I was working on putting together my own seed fund focused on providing outstanding technical talent in central and eastern Europe and south-east Asia a bridge to Silicon Valley.

“In that effort I also put on Startup AddVenture conferences in seven countries and spoke in over 30 others. Prior to that, I founded and ran a series of three companies [Keen Systems, acquired by Aleyant Systems, Sputnik Integrated and All Digital Printing and Graphics].”

Although he was planning on going forward with his own fund, he being “offered a unique opportunity to help build the CVC for Silicon Valley’s original startup [Hewlett-Packard, founded in a garage in Palo Alto] from scratch was not something I could pass up”.

However, HP is no longer a startup and Golomb said: “This is my first time in a large company in my entire career. Though we are a bit insulated, we still inherit lots of bureaucracy and politics which I am honestly not so used to. It is a new muscle that I have to strengthen to get things done.”

And the battles with bureaucracy have yet to slow him down as he has submitted his first book manuscript – Accelerated Startup: the New Business School – to an editor and that “certainly feels like an accomplishment”.

He added: “I also get a lot of satisfaction from mentoring and playing coach to entrepreneurs. It is probably inevitable that I will start my own fund in the future.”

Still, for now, he is working on HP Tech Ventures “and still figuring out our process but making progress both on direct investments and fund of funds programs.

“I believe most CVC practitioners are going through the same struggles and challenges. It would serve us well to share information on dealing with the internal mechanics unique to the CVC craft. This will help us all get better and faster as an industry and to be more competitive with the institutional side.”

And, alongside drumming, he has retained his passion for motorsports and currently sits on the advisory board of Rimac Automobili, “a Croatian company that makes the world’s fastest car, which happens to be all electric”.

Undoubtedly, Golomb would drive it in the fast lane.