Executives from the corporate venturing units of TDK, General Motors and Stanley Black & Decker have revealed what initiatives they are engaging in to build up the strategic investment arms of their companies.
Matthew Tsien, executive vice president at GM Ventures, corporate venture capital (CVC) unit of carmaker General Motors, and Dina Routhier, president at Stanley Ventures, the CVC arm of hardware product maker Stanley Black & Decker, spoke at the GCV Digital Forum this week.
Nicolas Sauvage, a managing director at electronics manufacturer TDK’s corporate venturing subsidiary TDK Ventures, moderated the discussion.
Routhier revealed Stanley Ventures was looking to build out its portfolio development function, which would focus solely on extracting the maximum strategic value from its portfolio companies, as well adding value.
“I think we need to add people to our team, initially just one person, to start building our portfolio development function.”
“It means that we are able to scale commercial partnerships faster, so that Stanley Black & Decker and the startups are generating and scaling revenues in the fastest way possible.”
She added the person responsible for portfolio development would be tasked with finding multiple applications for its portfolio companies’ products across Stanley Black & Decker.
Tsien said GM’s corporate venturing arm was the best kept secret inside the company.
“A lot of people know a little bit about GM Ventures, but not very much about it. To really drive maximum benefit we need to make sure that there is true synergy with the business and there is a real understanding of how we can extract the most value from the relationship.”
Routhier said Stanley Ventures’ mandate in corporate venturing was to be a large customer of its portfolio companies but not the only customer.
She added, however, there were some situations where the synergises between the portfolio company and the corporate are too great to ignore, and the business has made an acquisition in those cases.