The past year has seen a relative explosion of corporate venturing among services firms as the impact of technological change offers opportunities to adapt business models and find and work with companies more easily.
The most active corporate venturing units in the sector, such as customer relationship manager Salesforce and advertising agency WPP, have taken minority or majority stakes in more than a dozen companies. Salesforce has pushed WPP into second place as Global Corporate Venturing’s most influential unit of a services sector-focused parent.
While WPP has maintained its focus on dealmaking to increase its reach round the world and find innovative technologies that can support its core business, Salesforce’s use of corporate venturing and integration into the entrepreneurial ecosystem has helped transform the business (see profile).
Salesforce initially used its developers’ fund managed by two venture capital firms to help open its sales management platform to outside groups and then has rapidly expanded the range of services it offers corporations through a series of bolt-on acquisitions after often-close working partnerships with the entrepreneurs.
However, the pace of start-up activity is such that even Salesforce at just over a decade old and with explosive revenue growth is regarded as an incumbent to be disrupted.
Last month, communications company Twitter’s cofounder, Biz Stone, helped fund the $1m round for an Ireland- based company, Intercom, run by Eoghan McCabe.
McCabe told news provider Irish Times that Intercom would "disrupt" the business of Salesofrce. He added: "Salesforce is a great way to manage relationships with customers if the relationship is in person or over the phone and you have a long sales cycle. Web businesses are not like that – they don’t sell in the same way."
The services sector has been one of the most active for senior executives at companies to act as angel investors into companies that are ancillary to the main business but which might disrupt potential or actual competitors and can require careful handling to avoid affecting the corporate venturing unit at the firm.
Lawyers and accountants have long had to manage potential conflicts between taking equity in lieu of cash for their services but a host of service providers in other fields, such as marketing, advertising, media, value-added services to phone users and others have started or been developing their corporate venturing units (see most influential table).
The trade off is seen as building longer-term links with clients and with the potential for sizeable profits if the right deals are struck.
Foley & Lardner, a US-based law firm, launched a $4m corporate venturing fund using its partners’ money to invest in or with its clients. Gabor Garai, chair of Foley’s private equity and venture capital practice of more than 200 attorneys, at the fund’s launch last year said: "Establishing a venture fund was the next logical step in support of our clients dealingwith sophisticated financing issues.
"By having a vested interest in our clients’ businesses, we are further demonstrating our commitment to their success by literally putting our money where our mouths are."
To handle conflicts, Foley Ventures will invest in a portfolio company if it is projected to have adequate cash flow after the investment for at least one year. For start-up or emerging companies, the fund will also only invest if the group receives a simultaneous investment from a professionally- managed venture fund.
Start-ups with angel investors alongside would receive $50,000 while those with VC syndicate members would get $100,000. Both sets of deals could receive another followon round of money, Foley said.
Few profits will in future match those reaped by advertising conglomerate Interpublic, which bought 0.4% of social network Facebook for $5m and a promise its clients would spend $10m in display advertising on the website.
Last year, Interpublic sold half its stake for $133m and is awaiting an expected flotation of Facebook that could start its registration process as early as this month (see case study).
And as the number of corporate venturing units grows and starts to return towards the dot.com peak, dealmaking in the sector has started to throw up potential corporate venturing unit mergers.
In August, WPP Digital, the digital arm of WPP, agreed to acquire Rockfish Interactive, a US-based digital marketing agency founded in 2006 and which had only recently announced the launch of its Rockfish Brand Ventures fund.
But given the rapid pace of change in the sector, there are likely to be more corporate venturing funds launched to take their place.