As our news editor, Robert Lavine, wrote for the Global Corporate Venturing daily newsletter yesterday, August has not been a particularly busy time for deals but it does appear to have heralded some interesting executive moves.
He said the “most intriguing” appears to be the appointment of Ji Hoon Rim as the next CEO of Korean internet giant Daum Kakao, as his rapid ascendancy to the top of what was a $9.4bn company as of October last year suggests that current corporate venturing executives may want to set their sights to the very top of the tree.
But other moves reflect the interest in recognising the brightest talents. Yamaha’s creation of a new Silicon Valley innovation team under Hiroshi Saijou, and McKesson attracting away the star healthcare investor Dave Schulte, (who led Kaiser Permanente Ventures’ investment team through its growth from $20m to $400m of assets under management over the past dozen years,) shows groups are continuing to ramp up their talent bench in preparation for more corporate venture capital (CVC) activity.
Other moves have come as CVCs reposition their activities, such as the changes underway at 3M New Ventures, with Lisa Müller leaving to become investment associate at Germany-based ProSiebenSat.1 Commerce.
For Yamaha, Saijou has plucked out rising star Jay Onda, who left Docomo Capital, a corporate venturing subsidiary of mobile network NTT Docomo, and recruited other Silicon Valley venture insiders George Kellerman and Amish Parashar.
Onda will act as director of strategic investments at Yamaha’s corporate venturing unit, Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory (YMVSV), in Silicon Valley; Kellerman, who is fluent in Japanese, will be general partner and director of operations at YMVSV after moving this month from Crystal Tech having also spent two years as managing partner at seed fund 500 Startups; and Parashar is YMVSV’s new venture partner and director of strategic business development having previously spending four years as director of innovation and strategy at Triple Ring Technologies, a “secretive, 120-person, private R&D lab based in Silicon Valley and Boston,” according to his profile.
But as venture capital (re)gains its lustre in the eyes of some investors in the wake of improved distributions so a number of experienced corporate venturers have left to set up their own groups this year, including Fred Brothers and Katie Robinson from FIS (to form Uprising Capital), Andy McCartney and David Raskino from Microsoft Ventures (to form Whitespace Ventures), Claus Schmidt from Robert Bosch (setting up CS Inno Consultants) and Jan Borgstädt and Tobias Schirmer from Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (to form “a new early-stage venture capital firm for Europe”).
Global Corporate Venturing will be recognising the Rising Stars of the CVC world in an invite-only gala dinner ahead of its Sonoma Summit. For nominations, please let me know or contact editors Toby Lewis and Gregg Bayes-Brown.