Immediately after Ellen Ehrenpreis’ interview of Nicolas Sauvage, several other speakers joined Sauvage on stage to discuss unlocking innovation potential through collaboration of CVCs and business units.
They included Brandon Yahn, principal at Convivialité Ventures – the venturing unit of alcohol beverage producer Pernod Ricard; Aaron Brandt – vice-president and general manager at Hypertherm Ventures, the venturing vehicle of industrial equipment and software producer Hypertherm; and Nathan Pascarella –business development manager at Hypertherm Ventures.
Paul Holland, venture capitalist in residence at March49, facilitated the presentations of each of the speakers, after acquainting the audience with Mach49, a global venturing incubator with offices across the world, which had partnered corporate venturers such as TDK Ventures, Hypertherm Ventures and Convivialité Ventures.
Brandt and Pascarella provided some background information on Hypertherm, noting that it was an industrial manufacturing company that originated out of Technical University of Dortmund in Germany. The company’s stock was employee-owned and it prided itself for never having laid off employees.
Its venturing vehicle, which Brandt headed, Hypertherm Ventures was established three and half years ago and it focused on industrial cutting, welding, and thermal processing in addition to robotics, automation, machine learning, the industrial internet of things, nanotechnology and additive manufacturing.
Yahn presented the venturing unit he heads, Convivialité Ventures, as a CVC “to fund fun” and explained that its investment thesis looked beyond the Pernod Ricard’s core business of alcoholic beverages, focusing on customer retail experience, hospitality and tourism and other areas that are tangentially related to the core business.