There is still concern that those in corporate venturing are not adequately compensated. Three quarters of respondents to the latest J Thelander Consulting said their title and compensation structure failed to appropriately reward them. Jody Thelander is pictured.

A survey on compensation in corporate venturing has revealed that strategic performance is climbing in importance, suggesting corporate venturing teams are being rewarded more for their individual performance.

In 2015 more than half of companies reported individual and CVC team performance to be equally important factors to corporate performance. In previous years, corporate performance dominated compensation.

Compensation specialist firm J Thelander Consulting, led by Jody Thelander (pictured), is making available its 2015 survey, which pooled data from more than 150 CVC executives representing 110 programs at Global 2000 corporations.  The survey was In partnership with the Corporate Venture & Innovation Initiative (CVI²), a consortium of advisory service firms including Global Corporate Venturing. The survey was also supported by trade associations NVCA, EVCA, IBF Conferences and Corporate Innovator’s Huddle.

There is still concern in the industry that those in corporate venturing are not adequately compensated. Three quarters of respondents said their title and compensation structure failed to accurately and appropriately reward them as a CVC professional.

The leaders of corporate venturing units are nearing $500k in total.  Leaders on average earn $315,856 a year plus $160,552 in cash bonuses.

The survey also found an average of 50% of the core CVC team are externally sourced.

Fewer than a quarter of corporations look to external benchmarks to determine comparables for CVC compensation, while 46% rely on existing internal corporate and HR benchmarks.

Three quarters of respondents say individual bonus structures include some level of strategic impact metric to capture value-add to the parent corporation.

Only 4% of respondents included payment of carried interest, while 7% reported a program to calculate or ‘shadow’ or ‘phantom’ carry as a component of compensation to their CVC executives. 

CVI² Charter Members are Bell Mason Group, DLA Piper, Silicon Valley Bank, Global Corporate Venturing, J Thelander Consulting, Deloitte and Doblin, a unit of Deloitte.

More details on corporate venturing executive compensation are available for purchase from J Thelander Consulting.