“Corporate venturing is a marathon, not a sprint.” That phrase, often repeated by those on the Global Corporate Venturing Emerging Leaders list, risks sounding like a cliché. Yet for this cohort, it reads like a job description.
Each year, GCV selects 50 corporate venturing professionals who are making notable progress in their careers. These mid-career investors and platform leaders have usually learned – often the hard way – that patience is the defining virtue of the trade. Typically more than five years into their CVC journeys, they understand that results and credibility accrue slowly.
For some, endurance is expressed through long relationships with startups. Selina Troesch of Intuit Ventures recently celebrated investing in a company she had first encountered years earlier – too early, at the time, for Intuit to act. Rather than walk away, she stayed close to the founders, building conviction internally until strategy and timing aligned. Such stories are common among Emerging Leaders: success often depends less on prescience than perseverance.
Stamina is also required in introducing new technologies into large companies. “Early resistance is normal,” says Ronja Stoffregen, director of corporate venturing at Rehau New Ventures. “What matters is persistence and delivery. Small wins compound and results gradually create the space to do more ambitious work.”
Experience, too, is cumulative. Some Emerging Leaders are veterans of several corporate venture units. Daiki Yamashita, general manager of corporate venture at Sekisui America Corporation, is on his third CVC role. Corporate investing has become a discipline in its own right – one that rewards long-term immersion.
Routes into CVC are diverse. Paulo Dutra of NextEra Energy served as a cyber investigations special agent in the US Air Force. Former founders, such as Rajiv Menon at Cisco Lab bring hard-earned empathy for entrepreneurs. Others, such as Geetha Dholakia of TDK Ventures, draw on deep technical training from careers in research. These, too, are long-distance advantages.
In distance running, the elite are not those who start fastest, but those who pace themselves and finish strong. Corporate venturing is no different. The Emerging Leaders’ advantage lies not in speed, but in the quiet discipline of staying the course.
Global Corporate Venturing has selected people to feature as the Emerging Leaders since 2016. The process involves researching more than 20,000 industry professionals across more than 3,000 corporations actively investing in startups. We solicit nominations from the heads of corporate venturing units who are active in the GCV ecosystem and from service providers and startups working with corporate investors.
The selection of Emerging Leaders is made independently by the GCV editorial team and is not subject to any outside influence. Inclusion on the list is not paid for, nor is there any obligation for awardees to purchase any GCV products or services in connection with this award.
Emerging Leaders are broadly those who have more than five years’ experience in the corporate venturing industry. They are typically not yet in the very top rank of the corporate venturing hierarchy as heads of CVC units, but are showing evidence of exceptional leadership, whether in terms of deals, exits, value to the ecosystem, internal liaison, sector expertise or other activities. In some cases, they may be the heads of new CVC units, which are demonstrating a promising start.
We look at a mix of qualitative and quantitative data when compiling the list.
On the quantitative side, we look at the number of deals nominees have been involved in over the past year, as well as the number of board roles they hold and the number of portfolio companies they liaise with. Recognising the growing trend for CVC teams to focus on portfolio management, we make room in our search criteria for nominees who might not be active dealmakers, but who are deeply involved with portfolio companies.
We look at these in relation to the length of time nominees have been in the industry and also balance it against the size of the fund and its typical pace of investment. We recognise that some CVC units will execute many small deals, while others may focus on a few larger ones, so pure numbers – while giving us a useful starting point – do not always tell the entire story.
The qualitative element is based on input from those putting forward the nominations. A manager’s input for why someone was an Emerging Leader in their team carried great weight – particularly when accompanied by specific details of how that person has gone far beyond expectations in their role. We have many cases in which a nominee with a relatively low count on deal numbers and board roles is revealed to be a lynchpin of the unit, in terms of business development, sector expertise or financial skill.
Endorsements from portfolio companies are also part of our considerations, particularly in cases where we have multiple startups contact us on behalf of a particular person.
We also look at nominees’ activity in the corporate venturing ecosystem. People who are active as speakers and as members of networks stand out for us for inclusion in the list.
We also look for people who have shown leadership skill by founding or building new elements in their CVC teams – such as heading up a team in a new geography or market segment.
Emerging Leaders awardees come from a variety of backgrounds, reflecting the multiple skillsets needed for the role. Corporate investors can come from inside the corporation, from an external investment and finance background, or they may have previously been entrepreneurs, researchers or academics. The number of Emerging Leaders awardees with PhDs or patents to their name is always impressive.
The variety of backgrounds means the skills and strengths of nominees vary widely and it can be a complex task to evaluate one professional against another. The GCV editorial team does its best each year to make a fair judgement, but acknowledges that any list may be imperfect.
Undoubtedly, there are many amazing corporate investors who have not been included in this year’s list. In the interests of making room for new names, we have left off some who have been listed before, despite them still being excellent and richly deserving of inclusion. We have tried to steer away from multiple nominations from the same company to make sure our list of 50 could be as wide as possible across sectors and geographies.
If you would like to be considered for the 2027 Emerging Leaders list or to nominate someone, please get in touch with Oishani Mitra at omitra@globalventuring.com.
We look forward to starting our new search for our next Emerging Leaders.
GCV provides the global corporate venturing community and their ecosystem partners with the information, insights and access needed to drive impactful open innovation. Across our three services - News & Analysis, Community & Events, and the GCV Institute - we create a network-rich environment for global innovation and capital to meet and thrive. At the heart of our community sits the GCV Leadership Society, providing privileged access to all our services and resources.
