Corporate venturing is a relatively collegial part of financial services as the nature of venture capital causes syndicates to form to spread the financial risk and bring different skills together to help the portfolio company. In addition, corporate venturers often face the same pain points when dealing with these entrepreneurs and linking them to corporate parents as well as managing teams and gaining funding from a business.
Still, it is often all-too-rare for this collegiality to spread to recommending another group’s talent for an industry rising stars award. In this category falls Bryan Ciambella, a principal at B Capital Group, a $250m venture growth fund launched in collaboration with management consultants Boston Consulting Group and social network Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.
As Ciambella’s nominator, Skyler Fernandes, founding managing partner at Simon Venture Group, the corporate venturing unit for the eponymous US-listed real estate company, admitted: “I almost hired Bryan.”
A serial entrepreneur after working in equity research from the mid-2000s, Ciambella founded Amped Fantasy, a daily fantasy sports gaming company acquired by the Global Gaming Network, the World Championship of Ping Pong that aired in a billion homes worldwide before being acquired by Matchroom Sport, and Hello Fresh USA, a meal kit retailer with a valuation of more than $2.9bn and $215m of venture funding.
B Capital’s first deals include Ninja Van, a Singapore-based logistics company, and Evidation Health, an analytics platform developed in collaboration with GE Ventures and Stanford Health Care.
Prior to joining B Capital in October 2015, Ciambella was a manager at IAC, the media and internet holding company behind Tinder, About.com, Match.com, Vimeo and HomeAdvisor, focused on new investments, strategy and research. His deals at IAC included buying Apalon, a top 10 worldwide iOS app publisher based in Minsk, Belarus,
Previously, he worked at Liquidity Works investing in early stage software, sports & media companies, and had been board observer at Actionable Data Solutions.