US trade body the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) has witnessed a significant increase in its corporate venture group, from an initial 40 corporate venturers in 2004 to 50 a year ago to 67 today, now about 16% of the total membership.
Corporate venturers are increasing their presence and role within the venture capital ecosystem, reflected in media reports notiung the establishment of new corporate venture groups on almost a weekly basis.
Corporate venturers are also playing a more proactive role in sourcing deals and leading investments, no longer relying on traditional venture capitalists (VCs). Accordingly, we are also seeing corporate venturers take a stronger interest in the overall health of the venture community, which can help explain the wave of corporate venturers joining the NVCA.
The NVCA embraces the renewed presence, expertise and resources corporate venture investors possess, and recently designated one of its 26 board of director positions to a corporate venturer – Claudia Fan Munce of IBM.
Given all this corporate venturing activity, I am honoured to have been selected as this year’s chairman of the NVCA’s corporate venture group advisory board.
The board, made up of 16 leading corporate members of the NVCA, is responsible for programming activities for group members. As we are now a couple months into this term, there are many exciting activities under way.
Fundamentally, our overarching goal is to improve the collaboration and mutual value between the group and the NVCA. We envision accomplishing this goal through three major dimensions.
Enhance partnerships: This involves a range of initiatives focused on helping corporate venturers and VCs collaborate – raising awareness among VCs about corporate venturing investment interests, how to work together, and the powerful
contributions corporate venturers may bring to deals other than funding – connecting corporate venturers more directly with entrepreneurs, improving corporate venturing dealflow, and even enhancing corporate venturers doing deals with other corporate venturers. While the NVCA represents the interests of US-based venture capitalists, corporate venture group efforts reflect the global nature and footprint of corporations.
Develop corporate venture group talent: A range of initiatives are focused on education and networking for corporate venturers – providing basic information for new venture teams or new team members, and more comprehensive information regarding issues of structure, compensation, metrics and so on for more senior folks.
This includes documented best practices, online resources, webcasts, roundtable discussions and our fall summit.
Align public policy interests: This is a new area of focus for the corporate venture group. The NVCA has made tremendous achievements in fostering a greater understanding of venture capital, how the industry affects the overall US economy, and advocates for policies that further entrepreneurial activity and innovation (for a list of these accomplishments, visit www.nvca.org).
We believe many of these topics will be of shared interest and priority to corporations. There is potential for future collaboration on some of these issues with corporate lobbyists, and we will
seek to broaden relationships and alliances as interest and opportunities arise.
The NVCA has organised its efforts into four committees that are hard at work on each of these member benefits.
Education
Chairman: Elaine Jones (Pfizer)
Corporate venture group advisers:
Nagraj Kashyap (Qualcomm)
Kevin McElgunn (Dow Chemical)
Matt McElhattan (Chevron),
Brad Vale (Johnson & Johnson)
Group volunteer:
Eileen Tanghal (Applied Ventures)
Events
Chairman: Mary Kay James (DuPont)
Corporate venture group advisers:
Gerald Brady (SVB),
Constance Freedman (Second Century Ventures),
Will Rosenzweig (Physic Ventures)
Group volunteers:
Jim O’Connell (Safeguard Scientifics)
Keith Muhart (Qualcomm)
Outreach
Chairman: Dan’l Lewin (Microsoft)
Corporate venture group advisers:
Lisa Frankovitch (Uplogix, formerly with Adams Capital Management),
George Hoyem (In-Q-Tel),
Chris Kay (Citigroup)
Group volunteer:
Victor Pascucci (USAA)
Public policy
Chairman: Steve Socolof (New Venture Partners)
Corporate venture group advisers:
Alex Marquez (Intel)
NVCA directors:
Claudia Fan Munce (IBM),
Sherrill Neff (Quaker Partners)
Group volunteer:
Scott Olsen (Amgen Ventures)
We welcome all to join the NVCA and participate in these exciting
activities. Save the date of our corporate venture group fall summit,
hosted by DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware, US, November 1-2.