An oil platform in the North Sea may be an unlikely place to come across the tracks of a corporate executive, but it is just one of the many places where you will find evidence of the long reach of the GE Venture’s legal and business development team.
As drones lift off from the platform to inspect nearby pipelines or flare stacks, more likely than not one of our lawyers will be enabling the activity – often remotely – as we work with entrepreneurs at portfolio companies like Avitas Systems to help them scale the autonomous drone company and navigate uncharted regulatory channels.
While my colleagues are obvious stewards of General Electric (GE) intellectual property that companies like Avitas use, they are also experienced business leaders who can help our portfolio companies grow and succeed. While some lawyers are conditioned to tell executives what not to do, our lawyers use their combination of business acumen and legal training to help entrepreneurs get to “yes” – and success – as often as they can.
The pace and scope of innovation in technology today means entrepreneurs need a seasoned team of experts who know how to launch and nurture startups. That is why on any given day, one of our lawyers may be advising on contracts for Vineti, a cell-therapy startup, or providing new business model training for Evidation Health, a digital health startup.
Meanwhile, in Boston, another member of our legal team may be talking to the Federal Aviation Administration regulators or GE’s government affairs team in its work with Airxos – pronounced air-os, the x is silent – a recently launched company working on a next-generation air traffic management system to integrate air and ground space for autonomous and manned vehicles.
Unlike traditional venture capital groups, we not only invest in startups, but we also routinely create and launch new businesses, like Airxos, after incubating them in-house. This means embedding experts – including lawyers and business development professionals – who work alongside all GE’s global resources, and accelerating the pathway from new business creation to production of innovative products.
In creating new businesses, it is not uncommon for us to identify and commercialise promising technology from within GE that can address needs in industrial industries. These ventures are independent, but connected to GE’s global resources of ideas, intellectual property and business expertise.
In fact, our team looks for new ways to use our innovative technology by seeking partners that will benefit from our solutions, even if they fall outside GE’s established business lines. Our tech licensing model, which keeps our legal team busy as well, frequently bests the “buy or build” approach to startups, which is not always agile enough to keep pace with business today.
And with more than 48,000 active patents globally, there is a wealth of opportunity to apply GE intellectual property in new ways and new industries.
While it may be natural for startup entrepreneurs to look at VCs and see only their cheque books, we hope that we have proven to our partners by now that GE Ventures has more than deep pockets. We have the team and the technology to help bring exciting ideas to life.
This is thrilling work, creating companies and solving problems, and we enjoy the energy that entrepreneurs bring to our offices and research facilities every day. I am continually surprised that being a lawyer at a big company means that I work with so many small and vibrant new companies. And I love it.