Our symposium at the beginning of June provided a great insight into what is happening in corporate venturing as it turns into a fundamental part of corporate strategy. As you can see from the pictures in this month’s issue, the corporate venturing industry’s leaders were out in force, with more than 450 attendees representing companies with more than $4 trillion in annual revenues over the two days of the event. We will be revisiting some of the great content in depth in next month’s issue, and much of the content can be found online here.
It was inspiring to watch Intel Capital’s Arvind Sodhani share the first day’s closing session with our advisory board chairman Claudia Fan Munce, head of IBM Venture Capital. Sodhani picked out drones, internet of things and China as three of the most exciting investment themes Intel Capital. We were delighted to give Sodhani a lifetime achievement award.
We were honoured to welcome Sir George Buckley, former chief executive of industrial conglomerate 3M, who discussed how he saw the evolution of innovation and who shed some light on his thinking when putting in place 3M’s corporate venturing unit.
There was a sense the symposium may also have helped the fight for greater gender equality, with our session on transforming the standing of women in venture and tech among the best received. Tracy Isacke, of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a regular columnist in this magazine, interviewed Arm’s Eileen Tanghal and Upward’s Lisa Lambert. Lambert quipped that what women needed was a “good old girl’s network”, and it was later revealed that Lambert would be heading a $125m diversity fund for Intel Capital.
There were innumerable topics under discussion – digital health, advanced materials, agricultural technology, fin-tech, globalisation, retail venturing and university technology transfer among them. Digital health was perhaps a star topic of the two days, with participation from DRX Capital, the new fund run by Qualcomm Ventures and Novartis, as well as Merck Global Health Innovation Fund.
These units were among the big winners in our awards, with Merck GHIF our unit of the year and DRX Capital both new unit of the year and fund of the year.
We were delighted to welcome Cern’s Markus Nordberg, and John Wood, secretary general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, to discuss their bold Attract plan to commercialise the technology coming out of a wide group of European research centres. I will be visiting Cern in July to discuss this plan in more depth, but the scale of ambition of the project is heartening for the European technology ecosystem.
There was much enthusiasm from delegates listening to Hermann Hauser, co-founder of venture firm Amadeus Capital Partners, who is perhaps the only entrepreneur and investor to have played a fundamental role in the creation of five companies valued at more than $1bn.
Global Corporate Venturing editor-in-chief James Mawson kicked off the conference with a powerhouse speech on the symposium’s theme – the tipping point of corporate venturing. I also enjoyed moderating a session on the same topic with Siemens Venture Capital head Ralf Schnell, GM Ventures head Jon Lauckner, Conoco Phillips Technology Ventures head George Coyle, and Nokia Growth Partners managing partner Bo Ilsoe. There was a degree of worry among the panellists about the proliferation of “unicorns” – companies with a valuation greater than $1bn. It remains uncertain whether enough of these high-growth businesses, can exit successfully at levels that compare to their strong valuations. Yet the panel made a strong case that their companies and much of the corporate venturing industry is committed to investing through the cycle.
It was interesting to interview Carsten Bether, chief executive of smart energy business KiwiGrid, and Frank Starrmann, chief financial officer of Innogy Venture Capital, a corporate venturing unit of a division of German utility RWE, on the corporate relationship with the entrepreneur. Bether and Starrmann were candid on the difficulties involved in getting the most out of the relationship between a large utility like RWE and a fast-moving startup such as KiwiGrid. It was evident both sides had learned a lot from the partnership, and two years in it was clear KiwiGrid had prospered, despite not yet securing RWE as a customer.
It was also great to have more than 60 startups come into the conference to energise the final afternoon with their entrepreneurial passion. We worked with our platinum sponsor SVB to assemble these talents to meet the investment decision-makers at large corporations.
It was an inspiring week indicating that corporate venturing is developing in its sophistication. The event made it clear it is a special time to be working in and around the corporate interaction with startups. If the pace of change and investment continues at the current rate, next year’s conference looks set to be truly spectacular.