Sherwin Prior, ranked 14th in the Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars awards last year, will leave US-listed carmaker General Motors’ corporate venturing unit, GM Ventures, tomorrow to set up a venture capital firm, Blue Victor Capital.
Prior said: ”March 30th is my last day at GM Ventures. I am off to start my own venture fund focused on transportation.”
For his GCV Rising Stars award, Prior had been described as the “glue in the unit” of GM Ventures, according to Jon Lauckner, GM Ventures’ president, chief technology officer and vice-president of research and development, who was then Prior’s boss.
Lauckner said: “Sherwin’s successor as managing director is an extremely capable senior executive that works in GM, although he doesn’t have venture experience. But, neither did any of us including Sherwin when we started. So, we expect to make a relatively seamless transition, although we will miss Sherwin.”
Prior joined GM Ventures in September 2010 and is “responsible for a range of activities including GM Ventures strategy, operations, deal-sourcing, deal negotiations and ongoing portfolio management,” he said for his awards profile.
Prior’s exits at GM Ventures included speech recognition specialist Maluuba, iris recognition technology provider Delta ID, chemical producer Sirrus, ride hailing app Turo, battery technology developer Sakti3, automotive software producer OpenSynergy and geolocation software developer Telogis.
Lauckner said: “We have had 12 exits (six in 2017 alone) and are closer to $275m already invested at the end of 2017. So, things are moving very well and we are far ahead of any of our peers in automotive.
“Frankly, the word ‘venture’ is being abused to mean anything and everything with startups and the word ‘investing’ to include development agreements (one time, small money) rather than multi-round equity investments.”
For his award, Prior said his greatest successes included “establishing a unique CVC operating model.
“We behave a lot like financial investors representing GM as our limited partner. This means that we lead deals, participate in follow-ons and bridges. In other words, we try to be a strong syndicate partner.
“We have even led two recaps and brought in financial investors in subsequent tranches.”
Prior suggested this approach could be followed by other corporations for the industry to develop.
After graduating from Eastern Michigan University where he remains a board trustee, Prior held a couple of financial analyst roles before coming to General Motors. He then left to return to his studies, this time at Michigan University, where he obtained an MBA.
Prior then joined investment bank Morgan Stanley as a senior associate for a couple of years before moving to Northpointe Capital as an equity analyst from 2015 to 2010, while also lecturing in finance at Eastern Michigan University.
Editor note: updated with name of Prior’s new firm, Blue Victor Capital