What is the relationship between corporate venturing investments and the degree to which the portfolio companies pursue international activities?
Past research studies on the drivers of internationalisation of new ventures have shed light on the importance of the international experience of the top management team, the founder or alliance partners.
However, limited research studies specifically examined the value added by venture investors – corporate venturers and independent venture capitalists (VCs) – on the internationalisation intensity of portfolio companies, and their results appear
inconclusive or to have found a negative relationship. Importantly, these research studies did not explicitly analyse different sources of capital – for example, corporate and independent venture capital – despite indications that corporate investors may provide additional value in an international context, leveraging their market knowledge, global presence and resources.
Against this background, Joseph LiPuma, an associate professor at Emlyon Business School, conducted a number of fascinating studies in an attempt to understand the effects of corporate venturing on the international growth and intensity of technology ventures.
In a report published by the US Small Business Administration (SBA), the researcher studied 268 new technology-based ventures in the US and found that ventures receiving corporate venture capital were “larger, older, better funded, and further along in their development than ventures that have only received investments from independent VC firms. Controlling for these differences, a positive and significant relationship exists between the receipt of corporate venture capital and a higher percentage of revenues earned from foreign markets”.
The research results suggest “that entrepreneurs following internationalising strategies [should] consider corporate sources of funding and that independent venture capital providers [should] consider corporate syndicatepartners for their portfolio companies interested in foreign market entry”.
More specifically, this “informs entrepreneurs as to types of equity capital to obtain given goals of internationalisation. While venture capital is rare as a percentage of all new venture start ups, those firms that obtain VC money receive multiple offers, and therefore should make selections based on strategic objectives. Ventures following an internationalisation strategy may seek to obtain resources that specifically support that strategy.
“Venture capitalists consider the human capital of the entrepreneurial team in funding decisions, but their decision for an investment will ultimately lead to changes in the human capital of the portfolio company through their direct involvement. A prior understanding of the respective human and social capital the entrepreneur and the venture capital firm each bring to the relationship may change the costs of the funding. Further, identifying which aspects of venture capital lead to high international intensity and how those factors vary from domestic settings may change the way entrepreneurs select venture capital providers, the expectations they have of their relationship with them, and the way they attempt to utilise them.”
Finally there are implications for policymakers too. “If corporate venture capital investments at earlier stages of these ventures are associated with higher rates of international intensity, policymakers may create investment incentives for multinationals that integrate that factor.” This may have significant implications in emerging economies seeking to develop nascent industries.
Singapore is a good example of an advanced economy that serves Asia’s growth markets. Government incentive programmes – incubation, market access, financing and match-funding – are in place to attract foreign technology start ups to the Singapore hub, where the nation is building a regional capability and capacity in a few specific selected industry sectors. Government agencies provide guidance and facilitate introductions to some of the 10,000-plus multinational corporates in the nation. If these young technology companies move their Asian business expansion to Singapore, they not only access a world-class ecosystem, but also lower the risks for entrepreneurs and their venture investors.
The graph and tables below show a summary of determinants that may enhance or slow the internationalisation scale and scope of new technology ventures based in the US, broken down by corporate venturing and new ventures – privately-owned companies with venture investments between 1997-2003. Roughly half had international sales in that period.
The specific results for selection and effects show some surprises in that several of the assumed enhancers turned out to be of no significance or even led to slower growth on the internationalisation trajectory. For the first time it also becomes evident how new ventures differ on the basis of whether they accept corporate venturing investment or avoid it. Finally, there are some solid metrics highlighting the differences of new technology ventures that internationalise their sales efforts compared with companies focusing only on the US domestic market.
A word of caution – since the entire sample of these new ventures is head-quartered in the US, a number of the findings cannot directly be translated to other geographies for several reasons. They include the large pool of venture capital availability – about two-thirds of the global total dollars invested is in US – the large pool of corporate venturing programmes and teams in the US – about 70% of global corporate venture investments occur in the US – the existence of a strong and mutually beneficial network between VCs and corporate venturers, the readiness of large cor-porations to engage with, collaborate with and invest in these new technology ventures, the large domestic market that absorbs most new developments early and on a large scale, as well as an overall mature ecosystem.
It is fair to assume that only the largest nations – the US, China and likely also India in the coming years – with significant disposable income can create large, billion-dollar market cap companies with a pure domestic market exposure. In other words, new technology ventures in smaller and mid-sized nations have to focus on building global companies often from day one in order to survive – so-called born global.
The same is likely to be true also for various industry sectors, where many non-US tech-ventures will try to access the US market as the readiness and absorption capacity is unsurpassed elsewhere. For example, foreign healthcare companies in biotech, medical and pharma are often desperate to access the US market, while their US counterparts often prefer to stay local, as foreign markets are smaller, more fragmented and often require significant time and resources to obtain approvals.
References
LiPuma J (2007) Corporate venture capital and the international intensity of portfolio companies. Small Business Research Summary, SBA Office of Advocacy, No 306.
LiPuma J (2012) Internationalisation and the IPO performance of new ventures. Journal of Business Research 65(7): 914-21
Boris Battistini is a senior research fellow at ETH Zurich and a project leader of the Corporate Venturing Research Initiative with Bain & Co (e-mail: bbattistini@ethz.ch)
Martin Haemmig is an adjunct professor at Cetim at UniBW Munich and Leiden University (email: martinhaemmig@cetim.org)