Frederic Rombaut, head of corporate development for US-listed network equipment maker Cisco’s international unit since 2012, is one of a growing elite group of executives to have held a senior corporate venturing role across more than one organisation.
At Cisco, Rombaut’s responsibilities include overseeing Cisco’s international mergers and acquisitions, as well as making direct investments into startups and backing a number of funds.
Over the past 25 years, Rombaut has served in 35 board director seats, and made 65 deals worth $13bn across technology, telecoms and digital media sectors.
Before joining Cisco four years ago to lead its corporate development activities in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia (EMEAR), Rombaut spent six years leading Qualcomm Ventures’ European team, which he helped launch and develop.
However, Rombaut’s first foray into corporate venturing was at France-based construction and telecoms firm Bouygues between 1989 and 1997. He said: “Our CEO wanted to diversify into the telecoms industry, and selected me to form the very first corporate development telecom team.
“I was 27 years old. This job led to the foundation and launch of Bouygues Telecom, a €3bn ($3.2bn) and 8,000-employee business plan.”
In early 2006, Rombaut went on to start Qualcomm’s European venturing unit. He said: “Qualcomm hired me to launch and establish a new corporate venture capital team in Europe. It was before the third-generation phone market, Qualcomm had no business at all at that time in EMEAR.”
Rombaut said he was attracted to investing with a strategic purpose. He finds it exhilarating to make bets on a market trend, concepts and a team. He added he loved the opportunity to help shape the evolution of a company through strategic guidance and business development initiatives.
Rombaut considers his greatest challenge and accomplishment in corporate venturing to be convincing Cisco to double down on Europe. He said Cisco had made few investments in the region before 2011, but last year had committed to invest at least $200m in France, $150m in the UK and a previously unannounced $100m in Germany and Italy.
The investment pots have already begun having an impact. Cisco has so far backed Internet of things UK startup Evrythng, which raised $7m in its series A, provided an unspecified sum to France-based networking software firm 6Wind, supported Germany-based internet of things firm RelayR, partnered accelerator Startupbootcamp, and became a limited partner in investment funds managed by Index, Idinvest, Partech and Invitalia in Europe. In Latin America, Cisco has also committed to Monashees Capital and Redpoint e.Ventures’ funds.
To other corporate venturing units, Rombaut said that they should be more “open-minded and imaginative to figure out what could be done with a particular startup to create a better market opportunity, even if the startup is not capable of articulating the right marketing yet”.
He also said corporate venturers needed to stop thinking of current market size, and think of potential future market size – focusing efforts on the early-stage rather than working leveraged buyouts. Having been a director at private equity firm Apax Partners for five-and-a-half years through the dot.com boom, Rombaut’s depth of investment experience is almost unparalleled in Europe.
He said: “Stop considering open innovation as joint R&D only. Start thinking of open innovation as a way to create new business models.
“Let us be bold and think big from the very beginning of the business you decide to invest in.”
Looking into the future, Rombaut has ambitions of launching his own fund, and making even bigger investment bets, having set up his FR Development investment group in 2005.