That is about 90% of the job, the rest is broadly rounding errors in terms of impact. So it is with some surprise that US-listed cable group Comcast has taken the decision to limit its fantastically successful corporate venturing unit, as reported by Rob Lavine yesterday.
A Comcast spokesperson told CNBC: “Comcast Ventures has been a valuable innovation pipeline, providing insight into adjacent industries and investment opportunities.
“We are aligning our approach to venture investing more closely with our business units and repositioning Comcast Ventures and its fund under the strategic business development team at Comcast Cable.
The tightening of Comcast Ventures’ focus will likely lead to more departures, sources told CNBC.
Amy Banse, managing director and head of funds for Comcast Ventures, announced in September this year she would be retiring, while managing director David Zilberman has just left to join venture capital firm Norwest Venture Partners.
Headhunters must be crawling over its other team members, including managing directors Gil Beyda, Andrew Cleland, Daniel Gulati, Sam Landman, Dinesh Moorjani, Rick Prostko, principals Andy Cao, Chris Hill, Fatima Husain, Andre Iguodala, Sheena Jindal, Min-Sik Jun, Morgan Polotan, Adam Spivack, and the operations team under managing director and chief financial officer Kim Armor, such as Arjun Kapur.
In some ways Comcast’s move does make sense. Comcast has committed to financial platform Atairos under legendary private equity investor Michael Angelakis, with deals including human resources platform TriNet, events company Spectra and discount coupon company Groupon, so having a more strategic-oriented corporate venturing unit can be very complementary. But spreadsheets can rarely look at intangible factors, such as motivation and leadership.
Comcast Ventures under Banse has had home-run exits in digital signature technology provider DocuSign, which has a $38bn market cap; enterprise communication platform Slack, with a $14.7bn market cap; and ride hailing service Lyft, currently valued at $12.6bn; and a portfolio of highly valued portfolio companies, including social network NextDoor, autonomous driving technology producer Pony.ai, scooter rental service Bird, online home insurer Hippo and luggage brand Away.
Comcast Ventures has also proved to be the training ground and inspiration for Touchdown Ventures, run by alumnus David Horowitz, which has been rapidly picking up corporate venturing mandates for Bentley Systems, Colorcon, T-Mobile and Scotts Miracle-Gro.
Talented people will quickly cut the cord.
