“Welcome to the era of being the cool kid,” Darcy Frisch, partner at Hearst Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the US-based media group, said in her closing remarks as co-chairwoman of the GCV Synergize conference in New York City last month.
It seemed a suitable high point to end the event that, in partnership with the National Venture Capital Association, a US trade body for investors, saw Frisch and co-chair David Horowitz, chief executive of Touchdown Ventures, bring a series of case studies and greater understanding between corporate venturers as syndicate partners alongside VCs and as limited partners in their funds.
Being the cool kid is a far cry from the industry’s perception when Frisch and Horowitz started out as CVCs nearly 20 years ago. For much of the past 20 years and before the dotcom boom and bust, CVCs were pejoratively seen as “dumb money”, overpaying at the top of the economic cycle and selling out for pennies on the dollar in the downturn, and trying to foist unfair terms on mediocre entrepreneurs while being unable to help or bring the corporation along to support portfolio companies.
That this has changed among the industry reflects the enormous strides in professionalism, ability to find, manage and exit good deals with entrepreneurs and the tireless work to help the corporate parents benefit from the insights and collaboration open innovation can bring.
But, as any teen film knows, being cool can be double-edged. Only the paranoid survive in business, as the former CEO of chip maker Intel said. Cool can be shorthand for not trying hard enough and still expecting the returns to follow.
Fortunately, the experience levels among the cadre of CVCs that have taken the whole innovation capital industry to record heights remains strong. Global Corporate Venturing’s advisory board in the Leadership Society under chairman Wendell Brooks, senior vice-president of Intel and president of Intel Capital, has focused on how the industry is better together, improving the diversity of the people who work in CVCs and portfolio companies and greater professionalism through benchmarking and analysis of data and trends.
In this light, please help us complete the annual survey* of the industry, in association with venture capital trade bodies NVCA (US), JVCA (Japan), AIFI (Italy), CVCA (Canada), ARCAP (Argentina) and ABVCAP (Brazil) and others.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GCVSurvey2020
The advisory board’s diversity and inclusion subcommittee has prepared its report on how to encourage a wider range of demographics into portfolio companies. The women in venture lunch, sponsored by law firm Fenwick & West and Silicon Valley Bank, just before the Synergize conference, had an excellent discussion on how more female CVCs can join and add to portfolio company boards.
The industry’s greatest strength, however, remains its broadly collaborative spirit. Sure, CVCs all want to source and win the best deals and fight hard to offer the best terms to the entrepreneurs. But there is recognition entrepreneurs are often served best by having more than one CVC in a syndicate where complementary added-value services to the help the startup chief executive deliver on his or her vision by providing the capital, customers, product development, hiring and, eventually an exit route.
Focusing on finding strong and successful startups create the opportunity for insights and value back to the corporate parent in strategic or financial results or both.
When done this way, it really can help make the world a better place and be cool for all the right reasons.
*Other languages available here:
Portuguese
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Spanish
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GCVEncuestaAnual2020
