Serial entrepreneur Tom Lounibos (pictured) has been promoted to global managing director of Accenture Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of the eponymous US-based management consultancy.
Lounibos joined Accenture Ventures in April 2019 as an entrepreneur in residence, pledging to develop Accenture Ventures as “an investment and collaboration platform that bridges the gap between the global software startup community and the Global2000 who seek competitive advantage from emerging technologies”.
Lounibos joins Michael Redding, who has been managing director of Accenture Ventures since 2015 and grown a global portfolio of strategic partnerships and equity investments in emerging technology companies.
Lounibos told Global Corporate Venturing: “Having been an entrepreneur for 40 years, I am excited to bring my relationships with startups and the venture community to Accenture Ventures. Accenture Ventures has historically been focused on growth-stage companies and while we will continue to play there, I am looking forward shifting more to the left to engage entrepreneurs earlier in their innovation lifecycle, in seed and A rounds.
“I think there is tremendous opportunity to continue to bring Accenture’s global scale and business experience to bear, working closely with startup founders on their ideas, helping them understand the market, and bringing new solutions and concepts to market together with our enterprise clients.”
Accenture has also hired Jake Kaldenbaugh to run its strategic minority investing (corporate venture capital) program.
Kaldenbaugh joined Accenture Ventures last month having set up cloud consulting firm CloudStrategies in April 2019 to advise on growth market opportunities.
The launch came after Kaldenbaugh had left emerging growth investment bank GrowthPoint Technology Partners the previous month. He had previously worked in a series of corporate development roles.
Photo of Tom Lounibos courtesy of LinkedIn.
