Business development was the topic of the day at the panel entitled “Scaling Up: How VC Is Helping Startups Succeed” at the Global Corporate Venturing Digital Forum.
Jeramiah Gordon, general counsel and chief compliance officer at CapitalG, the late-stage dealmaking arm of US-listed internet conglomerate Alphabet, said access to the firm and its Google search engine unit often lured in portfolio companies and that his team had dedicated resources to help guide new investments through the process.
He said: “Our mandate and goal at CapitalG is to bring the best of Alphabet to growth-stage startups. So we have developed an investment approach as well as growth and operations support.
“We have onboarding process and an entire team for the growth-stage, and our agenda once we have made those investments is, A, Bringing the best of Alphabet to those companies and, B, making sure what happens is up to [the management] at those companies.”
Gordon was joined by Paul Asel, managing partner at NGP Capital – the corporate venture capital firm on behalf of Nokia, and the panel was moderated by John Park, a partner at law firm Morgan Lewis focused on debt, equity offerings and public securities.
Asel argued NGP Partners had a broader span of sector-specific partnerships that could include a whole variety of portfolio companies.
He added “Within our portfolio we have 20 investments, we can go to a potential partner and give them a range of companies that we think might be relevant to them.
“So it is a different type of conversation, a broader type of conversation. There might be meetings we have exposing a variety of companies, that might be a lead-in before the company comes in with this specific pitch.
“I very much see that as being complimentary. Ultimately, we think it is the job of the company to make the sale, but we would like to believe we can help their efforts be a lot more efficient.”