Japan-headquartered consumer electronics manufacturer Panasonic, which in March said it would invest $100m in corporate venture capital, has become the cornerstone investor in new venture capital fund Conductive Capital.
Carey Lai is the managing partner of Conductive and will speak at this month’s Global Corporate Venturing Synergize conference in New York City, having built an excellent track record over the past 14 years in venture capital.
Lai was initially at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) – one of the early pioneers on Sand Hill Road, where he led later-stage enterprise software investments, and later at Intel Capital, where he led enterprise software and Internet investments in 10 companies generating a 4.5x return and 63% internal rate of return (IRR – a form of annual performance measurement).
Some of his deals included: 500Friends (acquired by Merkle), Blueshift, Box (BOX), BrightEdge, Gigya (acquired by SAP), Kabam (acquired by Netmarble), Nexmo (acquired by Vonage), Onefinestay (acquired by AccorHotels), Sprinklr, SweetLabs, Synchronoss (SNCR), and UUCUN (acquired by Baidu).
He said: “I’m excited at the prospects of our new fund as we lead early efficient growth investments in both enterprise software and hardware.”
Panasonic has invested in Silicon Valley startups for nearly 20 years since 1998. As a member of the venture community, the company has been helping these firms grow by providing a wide array of in-house technologies and human resources.
Panasonic Ventures will spearhead Panasonic’s investments in startups that have unique business models or products and services not bound by the company’s existing business fields. Through these investments, as well as collaborating with these firms to explore new business opportunities, Panasonic said it looked to create new businesses that would drive its future growth.