George Ugras has left his position as head of US-listed computing technology provider IBM’s corporate venturing unit, IBM Ventures, this month and is looking to set up a new venture capital fund.
Wendy Lung, a Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars 2018 winner last month, is understood to be acting head of IBM Ventures according to a source, but declined to comment.
Ugras, who was unavailable for comment, had replaced Claudia Fan Munce as head of IBM Ventures after she announced her retirement from IBM during the Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit in January 2016.
For Ugras’s GCV Powerlist 2017 award, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said: “IBM Ventures is essential to how we engage entrepreneurs and developers who are building innovative applications and technologies for cognitive solutions and cloud platforms. I am delighted to have George leading our efforts to amplify this essential component of IBM’s strategy.”
At GCV’s Synergize conference in New York City in October 2017, Ugras had described his approach to corporate venturing, stating: “When considering investing in a startup we ask the question: what can we do working with this company that would be different if we made an investment? If the answer is ‘not much’ we do not invest.”
Ugras said at the 2017 Symposium that internally, he used the phrase “the golden thread” (admitting he did not coin it) to find an engagement for a team that is single-threaded and where you can easily see a path to success. If you keep it broad, you will fail.
After starting at IBM, Ugras described its mission as: “Aiming to be one of the leaders in the new approach to corporate venturing. IBM Ventures is the application programming interface for IBM for the startup community.
“Our goal is to impact every aspect of our business – how we deliver products and services to our clients, ensuring innovation that now is being distributed across so many great startups is accessed by us and by our clients.”
A source close to the company said IBM Ventures’ mission had changed since then, possibly in response to declining revenues at its parent company, and the unit had been spread across multiple business units rather than operating as a central function.
Ugras’s career in the venture capital arena started at Apax Partners in New York, where he invested in early-stage technology companies. He subsequently moved to Silicon Valley and was a partner at Adams Capital Management, where he funded and helped to launch and run a number of companies in the enterprise sector.
In 2014, Ugras launched CyteGen, a neurodegenerative disease treatment developer funded by Thiel’s Breakout Labs. He has also been an adviser to a number of incubators, startups, corporate and financial venture funds.