Day 1 of the summit
In the morning, Tim Lafferty, chief operating officer of Mawsonia, publisher of Global Corporate Venturing, Global University Venturing and Global Impact Venturing, gave opening remarks to kick off the first day of the summit, welcoming the 831 corporate venturers and industry experts present at this year’s event, understood to be the world largest CVC-themed gathering to date.
Sue Siegel, chief innovation officer of industrial conglomerate General Electric and CEO of GE Ventures, was the first keynote speaker. Siegel, who this year became chairwoman emeritus of the event, joked that “if you have not respected me until now, in the Asian cultures you respect your elders, so now is your chance to respect me”.
Siegel acknowledged “it has been a year that has been fairly tumultuous for many of us” – recognising, as other speakers would do later, that the economy is now facing headwinds. Corporate venturers, Siegel said, “are ambassadors that serve as the bridge between the entrepreneurial ecosystem – entrepreneurs and venture capitalists – and our corporate entities, which sometimes view them as a threat” and while challenges may lie ahead, she declared that “corporate venturing is a discipline that is here to stay”.
Siegel also took the opportunity to implore the audience – particularly men – to support diversity and ask themselves what they have done to increase it, noting that “our strength lies in our diversity”.
Anthony Lin, senior managing director of Intel Capital, spoke on behalf of Wendell Brooks, president of Intel Capital and co-chairman of the GCVI Summit, who had to bow out of the event due to a family emergency.
Lin noted that “as an industry, we are better when we work together” and offered some figures illustrating Intel Capital’s successes over the past three decades – a total of $12.3bn had been invested in more than 1,500 companies to date and the unit had achieved some 660 exits.
Picking up on Siegel’s call for diversity, Lin said 22% of new investments made by Intel Capital last year had backed startups led by women or underrepresented minorities.
Lin also acknowledged that “we are in for interesting times ahead” but that there were opportunities in the challenges to come. Intel Capital had therefore enacted changes, with the division now financially focused, though the unit still ensured each deal would be strategically relevant and that it exercised “extreme due diligence”.
Intel Capital had also formulated its investment thesis upfront, Lin added, and its focus included areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), the cloud and data centres, analytics, 5G and communications, autonomous technology and software.
The unit had also changed its compensation model, moving to a carry-pool model, and had developed seven core principles – communicate and collaborate, debate hypotheses, act with transparency, share risks, develop the next generation, be ethical and have fun.
On developing the next generation, Lin reminded the audience of the open letter signed by Brooks and several other members of the GCV Leadership Society in April 2018 asking corporate venture capital units to hire women and underrepresented minorities as interns.
Lin concluded his speech with a video on an Intel Capital’s portfolio company, Joby Aviation, an electric air taxi company that was also backed by Toyota AI Ventures, a corporate venturing arm of carmaker Toyota, and JetBlue Technology Ventures, the investment subsidiary of airline JetBlue.
This was an example of the co-investment strategy with other CVCs developed by Intel Capital, which GCV Analytics data shows to be the most active syndicate member with other corporations, and a proponent of the GCV Connect collaboration and deal-sharing platform for members of the GCV Leadership Society.
Bonny Simi, president of JetBlue Technology Ventures and co-chairwoman of the GCVI Summit, discussed how she set up the unit she heads in January 2016, saying her story was for those “who have not been in CVC for 35 years”.
Since joining JetBlue three years ago, Simi has grown the unit to a team of 12, who have made 22 investments – typically backing series A rounds and focusing on the intersection of technology and travel.
Simi said: “CVC is most definitely a team sport.” She added that when she set up the division she had no prior knowledge of the area but reached out to incubator Mach 49 for initial input, before receiving a LinkedIn message from Heidi Mason, co-founder and managing partner at consultancy Bell Mason Group, who has recently penned a book – Corporate venturing: A survival guide – along with Elizabeth Arrington, partner at BMG, and James Mawson, chief executive of Mawsonia and editor-in-chief of GCV. Mason offered to help Simi and connected her to Siegel, and from there it was “all open doors”, Simi said.
The first mark of success, Simi continued, came when she realised that both Intel Capital and Verizon Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of mobile telecoms firm Verizon, were co-investors in one of JetBlue’s portfolio companies.
Simi, who remains an active captain with the airline and occasionally flies her team herself, concluded that the unit operated on several core principles. She said: “It is all about the team. You need to offer a strong value proposition to the parent company and the startups, and you need to get the word out about what you do.” The latter, she added, was achieved by each team member being required to give public speeches throughout the year.
Adrian Cockcroft, vice-president of cloud architecture strategy at Amazon Web Services (AWS), e-commerce and cloud computing firm Amazon’s cloud storage and computing business, gave a keynote presentation. As new ideas would often face hurdles placed to avoid risk, Cockroft explained how AWS dealt with risk to foster innovation. He said Amazon had developed a culture that made continuous innovation possible and how other corporates could employ its ideas to benefit and encourage creativity.
Amazon’s culture of innovation focused on customers and long-term thinking through trial and error. Cockcroft said AWS drew lessons from other innovators, such as video-streaming service Netflix and ride-hailing app developer Uber, in terms of market creation. He added that Amazon currently had 50 million deployments a year, thousands of teams, microservice architecture, continuous delivery and multiple environments.
Amazon’s growth strategy included value, selection and convenience. Quoting Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, who said “you must be stubborn on the vision, but flexible on the details”, Cockroft said Amazon was willing to be misunderstood before its ideas were eventually accepted. Some strategies included 66 price reductions since 2006, introducing 1,430 new services and features in the 2017 financial year which resulted in millions of monthly active customers.
“Working backwards is a process to obtain clarity,” Cockroft said. He considered it important to know the customers and one of the ways Amazon improved the experience both internally and externally was to include customer surveys and stakeholder surveys with difficult questions.
A panel discussion focused on delivering on promises. Moderated by Sue Siegel, the panel reprised Adrian Cockcroft, Anthony Lin and Bonny Simi. They talked of numerous ways parent organisations invested in and interacted with startups through their CVC arms.
Lin affirmed it was vital to connect startups back to the parent organisation, while Simi stressed the importance of diverse team-building and how mutual learning played a key role.
Simi said: “It is hard to hire someone – they not only have to have talent you look for, but they also need to match the company’s culture. I have always said the final candidates need to be diverse – particularly women and people of colour. It is easy to go for that first candidate that you really like but insist on diversity – that is a challenge for all of you – and build a team bond. Be sure to build your team diversely as a part of the equation.”
Cockroft said although Amazon had the Alexa CVC fund, entrepreneurs partnered Amazon because of its quick thinking and agility. He said a crucial difference between traditional and corporate VCs was that the latter were often affected by larger organisations and went through transformations as corporate strategies shifted.
Lin said different corporates contributed to divergent values and CVC units often reflected their respective parents’ core belief. Misconceptions that CVCs moved slower due to their strategic nature were also gradually being dispelled.
With regard to geographic trends, Simi said every CVC had its own focus. For example, JetBlue, headquartered in New York with its CVC unit in Silicon Valley, was about to expand to Europe, starting from London where the tech scene is thriving. China, Latin America and India’s ecosystems were also waiting to be ventured.
Cockroft said one ought to visit these countries and regions to change preconceived notions. He considered Bahrain as the gateway to the Middle East because the country was building a digital economy to cope with eventual oil depletion. Siegel added that in certain Middle Eastern countries, a considerable percentage of the population was younger than 30.
Lin agreed that Europe’s tech scene was growing, specifically in London, Paris and Berlin, so Intel was focusing on these new markets.
A panel discussion on supporting end-to-end innovation with CVC on the frontlines was moderated by Mark Radcliffe, senior partner at US-based law firm DLA Piper, featuring Jacqueline LeSage Krause, managing director of Munich Re/HSB Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Germany-based reinsurance firm Munich Re and its US-based HSB (Hartford Steam Boiler) subsidiary, and Rob Coppedge, chief executive of US-based strategic investment vehicle Echo Health Ventures, a joint venture formed by healthcare provider Cambia Health and health insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina.
On how parent organisations assessed the success of CVCs, Coppedge said Echo Health Ventures had two measures – financial returns for parent companies and the number of commercial contracts. LeSage Krause said, in her case, strategic goals came first, then fulfilling financial return targets.
She mentioned Munich Re’s newest fund – the Ergo fund – and explained that although it had the same process as other investment units developed by an investment committee, a different theme and type of engagement with startups were in place.
Martin Haemmig, adjunct professor at the Centre for Innovation & Technology Management in Germany and the Netherlands, presented his data on the impact corporate investors have on startups by pointing out the advantages as well as potential disadvantages of having corporate backers. Haemmig said having had a corporate backer in a round tended to result in a larger median size of deals as well as larger valuations in IPOs and acquisitions. However, he noted that companies with corporate investors took longer to exit and having corporate backing often resulted in lower median IPO multiples.
In a keynote interview, Mark Leahy, co-chairman of the startups and VC group at law firm Fenwick & West, interviewed Michael Redding, managing director of Accenture Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of consulting company Accenture.
Leahy encouraged Redding to speak of Accenture’s approach to investing in startups. Redding said that historically the push for venturing at his corporate parent came with a realisation that, in addition to inorganic growth via M&A, Accenture needed to generate organic growth as a professional services firm of global stature.
“We aspire to be the textbook example of a corporate strategic investor. We are doing it entirely to support our parent’s business. If there is no partnership with the startup, there is no investment.” Redding added that financial performance of portfolio companies and the venturing unit would be tracked every quarter, albeit not part of the investment decision. “There is no specific investment target. The primary metric is revenue growth generated for the corporate parent,” he said.
Redding, however, warned about the problem of corporates falling into the trap of becoming “dumb money” by explaining that a red flag had to be raised if potential portfolio companies were trying to “pick only certain types of investors in their syndicates and looking for the dumb money rather than the smart money”.
He also explained Accenture’s value proposition to startups. “Our pitch is that a startup should want our money because they want Accenture, the world’s number-one professional services firm, which can leverage its vast network of established corporations across industries to help them scale and accelerate their revenue growth.” He said this did not necessarily come with strings attached. “We do not expect exclusivity in partnerships but we expect to be the primary partner.”
Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice-president and global head of M12, the corporate venturing unit of software producer Microsoft, was interviewed on the main stage by Greg Heibel, partner at law firm Orrick, about the venturing unit he heads and the future of corporate venture capital. Kashyap said of M12: “We set it up as a completely independent venturing arm. We are very focused on enterprise software and helping the startups.”
Apart from having a significant degree of autonomy, M12 had team members in San Francisco, Seattle, New York and London. Kashyap also explained how his team counted on the support of key people and senior leaders in the C-suite to ensure Microsoft works with the startups. Kashyap called it “curating engagement”.
Most of the interview, however, revolved around the outlook for 2019 and challenges to corporate venturing. Kashyap said that during the upcycle over the past eight to nine years, the CVC industry “has grown along with the market and we will see a slowdown, but I do not think it is going to be very dire”. He said it would constitute a test of how the market perceived CVCs in times of downturn. “What we can control is the message we relay about our role and what we can actively do. When the time comes for follow-on rounds, we have to make sure we participate. We have to make sure the CVC class of 2019 is not like the one of 2001, which shut down its units.”
Kashyap encouraged a more proactive approach among CVCs. “It is not going to be a smooth ride but, unlike previous cycles, there is a lot of capital to be invested now. This would be a good time to double down and buy, as we expect some valuations to go down and have down rounds.”
Kashyap also touched on the issue of attracting and retaining talen. “A lot of sophisticated people are moving to financial VC funds, so there is a bit of a talent shortage.”
He also called for the application of best practices to ensure that, as investors, CVCs are on the side of the startups. He advised avoiding deal structures, such as those featuring rights of first refusal, that may make startups more reluctant to have CVCs on their investment syndicates. “We are on the side of the entrepreneurs, there is really no reason to demand such rights. It is harmful not only for the startups but also for our strategic goals. If, as a community, we adopt such best practices, we can do as investors better than traditional VCs.”
Polly Flinn, executive vice-president and general manager of retail group Giant Eagle, was interviewed on the main stage by Scott Bowman, managing director at advisory firm Clareo, about supporting innovation from within the C-suite.
Flinn described Giant Eagle as an “85-year-old startup” operating supermarkets and convenience stores. She said that with new retailers such as Walmart and Amazon, the traditional retail model – how shopping was done and how fast customers received goods – was being disrupted. She said it was important to be open-minded about innovation to address longer-term challenges.
“I participate in the venture capital portion of the business, focusing on the next five to 10 years,” she said, adding that when it came to sourcing innovation it was no longer “necessarily about acquiring companies but about acquiring capabilities”.
Ira Ehrenpreis, founder and managing partner at venture firm DBL Partners, was interviewed by Tami Hutchinson, vice-president at Intel Capital, about how traditional venture capital firms would continue to syndicate with corporate VCs. Ehrenpreis said “not all CVCs are the same”. He noted that a key criterion to identifying a company with good potential that had corporate backing lay in understanding that “the best companies do not look just for money but for great partners”. He also warned that it was “very easy for either VCs or CVCs to overestimate their own importance”.
Ehrenpreis joined the call to promote diversity – an important aspect that was often overlooked.
Shankar Chandran, vice-president of the Samsung Catalyst Fund of electronics manufacturing corporation Samsung, was interviewed by CVC veteran Claudia Fan Munce, former head of the venturing unit of computing company IBM and currently an adviser at VC firm New Enterprise Associates. They talked about working with traditional VC firms as co-investors.
Chandran said Samsung used venturing as a strategic tool to look for new large markets and developments that could disrupt its lines of business in order to gather market intelligence and understand the startup community better. He said he saw investing and helping emerging innovative businesses to work with the corporate parent as a way of bringing “a tremendous amount of intelligence quotient into Samsung”.
Touching on one of the major themes of the summit, Chandran shared some reflections on what could be done to sustain the pace of corporate venturing in a downcycle. He said Samsung had been venturing for over 20 years with various funds and units and that the most valuable lesson was “to make sure to work with people you trust, as it is a business based on trust”. He said trust was the foundation stone of collaboration between venture investors. Despite the way in which a corporate venturer like Samsung could help a startup to scale, Chandran noted that “sometimes there is lack of affinity between people”.
The last morning session was the first of several on transport and advanced mobility. It was led and moderated by Sobhan Khani, vice-president of internet of things and mobility at US-based startup accelerator and corporate innovation platform Plug & Play Tech Centre. The session featured Michael Cohen, investment partner at SAIC Capital, a venturing subsidiary of Shanghai Automotive, Marco Marinucci, head of Hella Ventures, the venturing arm of automotive parts manufacturer Hella, Meghan Sharp, managing director of America at BP Ventures, and Roman Vasilev, director at Mobility X, a subsidiary of automotive interior maker Yanfeng.
Sharp, Cohen and Marinucci said they had brought some of their portfolio companies to the summit to provide them with opportunity to pitch and raise additional funding from corporate investors. The participants in the discussion spoke of engaging business unit leaders with startups and how their approaches to doing so differed within their broader organisations.
The discussion also covered co-investing with other corporate venturers. Sharp noted that BP Ventures had co-invested multiple times with competitors. “The mindset is to collaborate now, then compete later. Sometimes we have had deals with five corporates on the table and we are not afraid to have our competitors co-invest with us,” she said.
During the luncheon presentation, James Mawson gave an update based on data from the latest World of Corporate Venturing report, focusing on how corporations were investing with each other and increasingly using corporate venturing strategies as part of a wider innovation toolset of mergers, acquisitions, research and development, and linking this to public market investments and partnerships. Mawson explained how corporate venturing activities – at a record high last year – were changing the concept of venture, and corporates could benefit from the innovation tools to create and add value.
Jody Thelander, founder of consultancy firm J Thelander Consulting, gave her annual presentation of compensation data in the CVC sector that in 2018 attracted almost 900 survey respondents. She provided an overview of income trends, pointing out that incentives, beyond regular bonuses, were dominated by corporate stock, although carried interest, phantom carry and a combination of stock and carry were also used by some CVC units.
New hires for CVC units, Thelander added, primarily came from venture capital firms, followed by other CVC divisions, investment banks, private companies and private and growth equity firms.
Scott Lenet, founder and president of venture capital firm Touchdown Ventures, followed Thelander’s presentation with a talk on the importance of benchmarking. Lenet noted that a corporate venturing operation survived an average of four years before being wound down by the parent company, but that it took an average of seven years to generate a return on investment.
He offered a range of recommendations to increase CVCs’ success rate, including a focus on professionalisation to increase the parent company’s confidence in the unit’s efforts.
He added that innovation programs, including CVC units, incubators and accelerators, that aligned with industry best practices were more likely to build a positive recommendation in the ecosystem, provided continuing value to the parent company, attracted more resources and sustained a longer-term continuous program. He listed 10 essential elements for a CVC – goals, strategy, infrastructure, dealflow, evaluation, transacting, management, commercial deals, alignment and communications.
Shawn Atkinson, partner at law firm Orrick, interviewed Matt Garrett, managing partner of enterprise software developer Salesforce’s corporate venturing subsidiary, Salesforce Ventures.
Garrett said his unit had been building its international efforts in Canada, Australia and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. California, Garrett added, remained the single most significant source for dealflow, but even in the US, more investments were being made across the country and, together with the increased international focus, he predicted this trend would continue.
In particular, Garrett said New York was “exploding” for Salesforce, as startups learned that it was easier to retain talent if engineers were farther from the Silicon Valley ecosystem where they could be easily poached.
Garrett was confident about the year ahead, saying Salesforce, as a platform company and an enterprise software producer, was well positioned to weather any storms. Salesforce Ventures remained bullish, he said, and continued to hear from its clients how important enterprise software was, as every company was having to go through digital transformation.
He said his unit had made more than 300 investments to date and said he was particularly proud of a recent deal involving Narvar, a post-purchase consumer engagement platform, which raised $30m in a series C round from Salesforce Ventures and others in August last year. Salesforce Ventures, Garrett added, put every deal under a significant degree of scrutiny.
Jim Fischer, a partner at law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath, interviewed panellists Tom Heyman, president of Johnson & Johnson Innovation–JJDC, the strategic investment vehicle for medical product group Johnson & Johnson (J&J), and Barbara Dalton, senior managing partner and vice-president of worldwide business development at Pfizer Ventures, pharmaceutical firm Pfizer’s corporate venturing arm.
They discussed how their funds were structured and how healthcare innovation came about through corporate venturing. J&J Innovation’s focus was biotech and medical devices, while Pfizer Ventures’ was therapeutics. They both agreed that investing in healthcare was a long-term commitment.
A panel with emerging markets leadership as its theme featured Brazil’s market experience. Luiz Henrique Noronha, healthcare-focused multi-stage investment partner at DNA Capital, interviewed Flavio Pripas, corporate venture officer at internet-focused early-stage venture capital firm Redpoint eVentures, and Rodrigo Menezes, founding partner at law firm Derraik & Menezes Advogados.
The panellists concurred that despite a global downturn, Brazil’s corporate venturing and entrepreneurial activities had been growing exponentially, and the Brazilian government was spearheading the effort to incorporate the country into the global innovation capital ecosystem.
In a panel focused on automobility leadership, George Kellerman, CEO and managing director of Yamaha Motor Ventures and Laboratory Silicon Valley (YMVSV), the venturing arm and lab subsidiary of Japan-based carmaker Yamaha, was interviewed by Faisal Rashid, partner at Fenwick & West.
Kellerman spoke about YMVSV’s evolution. He said the fund was launched three and a half years ago and was meant to invest off the balance sheet with some challenges in the initial stages. He said the fund was structured as a traditional partnership with a 2% management fee and a carried interest compensation structure. The investment horizon of the fund was five to 10 years, focusing on four broad areas – mobility, agtech, ageing population and aerotech, including unmanned aerial vehicles, satellites and rockets.
Kellerman said he had increased the size of his team from six people to 14. While strategic in orientation, the purpose of the fund was at least to return the cost of capital. There were three major strategic criteria for investments – solving a major social challenge, leveraging Yamaha’s capabilities in the near term and accessing major future valuables.
A panel revolving around the oil and gas industry explored the evolution of CVC and corporate incubation through the experience of three firms – Shell Ventures, the venturing arm of Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major Shell, industrial conglomerate Schneider Electric and Mach49, an accelerator helping corporations create, build and launch ventures from within their organisations.
The session was co-moderated by Geert van de Wouw, vice-president of Shell Ventures, and Steve McGrath, investment director at Shell Ventures. It included Linda Yates, CEO and founder of Mach49, Paul Holland, general partner at Foundation Capital, and Heriberto Diarte, head of corporate ventures and external innovation at Schneider Electric.
Each participant spoke about the unique challenges in venture investing or implementing other innovation tools in their organisations. Van de Vouw said that in addition to equity investment, Shell Ventures had also been involved in growing spinouts, which was “really hard to do, so it had better be worth the effort”.
Diarte spoke of Schneider Electric’s innovation toolkit and Yates talked about Mach49, which claimed to be the only incubator and accelerator in Silicon Valley helping corporations set up venturing units and run accelerators or incubators. Holland brought the perspective of a traditional venture capital firm.
The final part of the first day was the GCV Awards ceremony (see report).
Day 2 of the summit
The second day was opened by Mark Radcliffe, senior partner at law firm DLA Piper, who invited Michael Redding, head of Accenture Ventures, and Quinn Li, senior vice-president and global head of Qualcomm Ventures, on stage.
Li, a co-chairman of the summit, noted that Qualcomm Ventures had invested in the parent company’s broader ecosystem, citing mobility, automotive and the internet of things as particular areas of interest. He also declared that in Qualcomm’s view, “mobile is going to be the most pervasive artificial intelligence platform” and that he was “very excited about this trend”.
“It has been a great ride,” he said, having overseen the unit for three years and having celebrated several big exits over the past 12 months – smartphone maker Xiaomi, smart doorbell manufacturer Ring and on-demand ride-hailing company 99.
Qualcomm Ventures was primarily interested in identifying future technology trends for its parent, investing in potential and current customers as well as in business partners with a view to driving the ecosystem forward. Li conceded that quantitative measuring was hard, because it was almost impossible to figure out whether a portfolio company became a client of the parent corporation because an investment was made or whether they would have become a customer anyway.
It was important, therefore, that a corporate venture capital unit followed three rules – senior management had to be on board, there had to be a very clear plan and the team had to be disciplined about it, and there had to be a long horizon because returns would not be generated for five to six years.
While the size of Qualcomm Ventures’ operation may be the envy of some – the team is spread across seven regions internationally – Li noted that this caused its own set of problems, particularly when it came to arranging an all-hands conference call.
Victor Hwang, senior vice-president of entrepreneurship at non-profit Kauffman Foundation, took the stage to provide an overview of his organisation’s work in supporting entrepreneurs through schemes such as investing in training programs and helping to shape policy. Hwang pointed out that entrepreneurs, not corporations, were the ones who created jobs and drove productivity, and cautioned that “we are at a four-decade low for new businesses being launched”, before adding that “it is a silent crisis in this country”.
Today, Hwang said, three out of 1,000 people decided to become entrepreneurs – half the rate seen in previous decades. It was also about what the remaining 997 people decided to do – going to a restaurant or backing a crowdfunding campaign were all critical roles that everyone could play to help drive the innovation ecosystem. Hwang concluded by inviting feedback from the audience about how the organisation could support entrepreneurs further.
Those who took the microphone included George Hoyem, managing partner of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital affiliate of the US intelligence community, and Jeff Farrah, general counsel of US trade body the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) (see box on government).
Farrah said: “There are precious few of us focused on early-stage companies because a lot of the lobbyists in Washington are with your corporate parents.” That meant startups were often forgotten about, a challenge NVCA was trying to tackle. He spoke about the challenges of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), an interagency committee that considered international investments and acquisitions through the lens of national security issues and had the power to unwind deals after the fact.
The agency’s remit had been expanded significantly last year with implications for startups, Farrah said. The law now required basic mandatory filings when there was investment by an overseas entity in an area deemed critical, such as satellite technology, because this gave a foreign entity access to the technology, provided it with a board seat and involved it in substantive decisions about the technology. There were significant fines for breaches of the rules.
Hoyem noted that he was aware of a recent series A round where the US Department of Treasury confiscated the equity purchased by an overseas investor and was now auctioning it with all the rights – such a measure, he said, would put the startup at high risk of failure.
The problem did not affect merely corporate venture capital units based in the US, Farrah explained. “If you are the CVC of an overseas company, then there is every chance that you will be considered a foreign person under the CFIUS. That puts you one step closer to a filing.”
Farrah said the NVCA was trying to narrow the scope of what the Department of Commerce was looking at but he cautioned that as startups increasingly developed advanced technologies, they may also fall under export control, which could hamper their growth and an exit for any CVC investors.
Tracy Isacke, head of corporate relationship management at financial services firm Silicon Valley Bank, welcomed Karen Kerr, executive managing director of GE Ventures, Meghan Sharp of BP Ventures and Katherine Resteiner, chief of staff at Intel Capital, for a discussion on inclusivity and diversity.
Resteiner picked up on Brooks’s intern challenge, mentioned the previous day by some of her colleagues, and noted that Brooks liked “throwing out challenges” and that even she did not always know what the challenge was going to be before he uttered it on stage.
Kerr noted that GE Ventures was “very purposeful” about diversity, with 60% of the team diverse, but this was not true of the portfolio. Kerr said GE had been trying to change this, bringing in an entrepreneur-in-residence, developing a framework and launching a tool called Flux that offered a curated media library with materials to develop inclusive teams. Delegates were invited to test the tool.
Sharp had a similarly challenging reality to face, noting that of some 50 investments made by her unit, only two companies were led by female chief executives. On the upside, Sharp added, her team boasted many women and BP Ventures was making a difference by putting them on boards and creating diversity in startups that way.
Kerr also remarked that unconscious bias was a real threat, leading Sharp to note that even the present panel on diversity was not actually diverse, consisting of four women of whom three were white. Sharp described the diversity issue as “a messy and imperfect process”.
In a keynote interview, Harshul Sanghi, managing director of American Express (Amex) Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the US-based financial services company, presented the company’s investment approach. He was interviewed by Reese Schroeder, managing director of Tyson Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of US-based meat processor Tyson Foods.
Sanghi joined Amex Ventures in 2011 and helped the digital transformation of American Express. He built the unit’s team from scratch and now had a team of more than 50 people. As compliance and regulatory requirements were pressing concerns for financial institutions, Amex Ventures’ portfolio companies had had a fintech focus since 2013, ranging from artificial inteligence to big data. Amex Ventures had made 15 investments, achieved 13 exits and Sanghi was involved in two deals – fintech firm Even Financial and cybersecurity software developer Menlo Security.
The following session focused on the innovation strategy of alcoholic beverage producer Anheuser-Busch InBev through its investment arm ZX Ventures and its sustainability accelerator scheme 100-plus Accelerator. Maisie Devine, global director of 100-plus Accelerator and an investor at ZX Ventures, was interviewed by Anthony Nicalo, entrepreneur-in-residence at Canada-based startup co-creation company Highline Beta.
Devine said the accelerator focused on initiatives such as water stewardship, product upcycling, farmer productivity and green logistics to build sustainable companies that would leave a long-term impact.
In the following session – crossing the chasm of AI innovation – Jeff Herbst, vice-president of business development at graphics processing unit (GPU) technology provider Nvidia, spoke to interviewer George Hoyem about Nvidia’s GPU Ventures. The unit focused on deep learning, AI and data science solutions. Herbst said Nvidia’s GPU platforms could help entrepreneurs develop data analytics, healthcare, virtual reality and AI-empowered autopilot vehicles. Its 21 portfolio companies could be divided into three categories, data science, AI and self-driving cars.
A session focusing on advanced mobility, energy and travel technologies was chaired by Tom Whitehouse, GCV contributing editor, and Glynna Christian, partner at law firm Orrick. Speakers included Tony Cannestra, director of corporate ventures at automotive parts manufacturer Denso, Meghan Sharp of BP Ventures, Raj Singh managing director of JetBlue Technology Ventures, and Jon Lauckner, president of General Motors’ GM Ventures.
As mobility was gathering momentum, Cannestra said: “It is good to have a hype, but the performance of our investments is important. The hype drives up valuations.”
Sharp said BP Ventures pledged investments in autonomy and electric vehicles last year and its efforts in UK-based charging points network operator Chargemaster evidenced that.
Lauckner spoke of the ride-sharing trend, saying: “There is a lot that startups can contribute, but there is a limit as well.” He continued: “We do think about scale, what the startups’ business model looks like. They might need to work with our suppliers, because it is really hard for startups to start from nothing.”
Singh said he also loved the hype. He said there were many deals in which JetBlue Technology Ventures would not invest, but he added: “For us, it is important that somebody wins to help grow and change the ecosystem. Losing money is not strategic. Put companies in touch with suppliers and save more money.”
Singh added that the VC model was collaborative, but JetBlue Technology Ventures sought to differentiate itself by bringing advantages to startups such as customer base and infrastructure in addition to capital.
After this session, there was a related breakout session in which corporate and venture-backed businesses from the energy, advanced mobility and travel space gave presentations, while leading CVCs provided insights and participated in discussion.
Boris Maslov, CEO of iGlass Technology, presented his company. iGlass has developed thin flexible transparent electrodes as well as matching electrochromic materials and devices with a range of market applications. It has created a new category in smart window appliances – digital blinds, a transparent, flexible and durable film with digitally tunable light transmission, which it claims performs better than traditional blinds. They can be installed easily on existing window, turning it into a smart window connected to smart home or smart office systems. It can also be used in augmented reality glasses.
Ramesh Singh, CEO of US-based computational storage technology startup Agylstor, a Boeing HorizonX portfolio company, spoke of of the high-performance distributed computing platform his company has developed. It includes software and in-system hardware acceleration for processing big data in edge computing applications. The company’s technology provides secure data storage and transfer for video and film production, geoscience, infrastructure mapping and aerospace applications, including autonomous systems.
Daniel Henbest, CEO of UK-based cleantech-empowered transport platform provider Intelligent Power Generation, spoke about how the company was inspired to reduce harmful emissions at low cost. It has developed a ceramic-based turbine using flameless combustion, which claims to provide electrical efficiency and a huge reduction in fuel cost. Its target markets include energy, industrial, transport and agriculture.
Edward Warren, CEO of US-based car services provider Zippity Cars, a BP Ventures portfolio company, explained how Zippity provided on-site car care. Zippity claims to free customers from the car frustrations of repair shops.
Maha Achour, CEO of US-based wireless technology developer Metawave, a Denso portfolio company, detailed how Metawave developed smart radars for self-driving cars using a long-range object detection and recognition technology that offers 3D imaging and vehicle-to-vehicle communication.
John de Souza, CEO of US-based electric vehicle charging technology developer Ample, a Shell Ventures portfolio company, showed how Ample provided a range of charging solutions for electric car fleets. It has developed a scalable and quickly deployable platform that uses autonomous robotics and smart battery technology, including smart modular batteries, autonomous battery swap robots, battery pod charging and dispensing.
JoeBen Bevirt, founder of US-based aviation vehicle developer Joby Aviation, a company backed by JetBlue Technology Ventures, said Joby was developing an electrically-powered vertical take-off and landing aircraft intended to form the basis of a five-seater taxi service. It is intended to be much quicker and quieter than traditional rotorcraft, such as helicopters, and fly up to 150 miles on a single charge.
Meghan Sharp of BP Ventures returned to the stage for the first main session of the afternoon to discuss harnessing the power of enterprise, along with Faran Nouri, managing director of Lam Research Capital, the investment arm of semiconductor company Lam Research, and Stephanie Newby, chief executive of innovation platform Proseeder, who facilitated the discussion.
Nouri remarked that CVCs “are the new kids on the block” but that she had already survived one top management change, referring to a colleague who once told her that “you are not a real corporate venturing person until you have survived a CEO change”.
Her unit was considered an integral part of the corporate’s innovation ecosystem, alongside divisions such as M&A and R&D, but it was the one with the longest horizon. Lam Research Capital had to demonstrate strategic relevance for each startup and had to articulate the value the unit would bring to each potential portfolio company.
Sharp said the purpose of BP Ventures had shifted significantly since it was launched 12 years ago, having originally been set up to drive investment in alternative energy projects. When the decision was made to create a fully-fledged corporate venturing arm, there was debate about whether each business unit – cleantech, upstream and downstream – would get its own fund or whether it would all be handled centrally, but BP eventually settled on the latter.
BP Ventures experienced another shift two years ago, when it officially became part of the corporate growth strategy and its annual budget grew from $50m to $200m – though Sharp noted that her team still invested in many early-stage companies. She added that it was not simply about closing a deal but also about what support was provided afterwards.
Dominique Mégret, head of Swisscom Ventures, the telecoms firm’s corporate venturing unit, had also experienced significant changes, albeit more recently. About nine months ago, Swisscom Ventures had decided to seek external investors for its fund, and that had had the positive effect of forcing a long-term perspective on to the unit.
Scalability was also a big factor in the decision to bring in external investors, Mégret added, because it was not just the parent corporate supplying money. There had been some resistance, he admitted, because the parent was worried it would lose control and it might damage reputation, but this was mitigated by setting up an investment committee that was exclusively internal.
Mégret concluded that, having made six investments from the new fund, he had yet to encounter difficulties, and was confident the model would continue to work for Swisscom even while conceding it might not work for everyone.
Rajesh Swaminathan, general manager of materials engineering company Applied Materials’ corporate venturing fund Applied Ventures, discussed the challenges faced by semiconductor-related companies, such as AI, augmented reality and optics. The problem boiled down to access to equipment, materials engineering expertise and fabs, which was why the company had announced a materials engineering technology accelerator, Meta Centre, featuring an $850m investment in state-of-the-art fab.
Swaminathan said it took 25 to 30 years to get from the first mobile phones to smartphones. The first iterations were very bulky, the same problem currently faced by augmented reality devices, which was why the technology remained obscure. He said to enable augmented reality, more than a dozen innovations were needed, ranging from organic light-emitting display to solid-state batteries.
Applied Ventures had invested in more than 80 companies to date, Swaminathan continued, and had achieved 35 exits. It provided approximately $50m a year and with the Meta Centre remained committed to providing an increasing amount of support beyond capital.
On the main stage, Amit Sridharan, director of US venture investments and partnerships at Mahindra Partners, the venturing subsidiary of diversified conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra, spoke of CVC practices to measure strategic value. He said the problem peaked his curiosity after graduating from Stanford Business School and realising there was little information on how to set up a corporate venturing unit. He stressed the importance of defining and measuring strategic value by breaking it down into a strategic importance element – which entailed the involvement of key stakeholders in the business units of the corporate parent – and the operational relatedness element, which was about the efficiency an emerging enterprise could bring to the operations of the corporate parent.
In fireside chat, Gabriel Sidhom, chief operating officer of Orange Silicon Valley, was interviewed by Liz Kerton, executive director of Telecom Council, which connects global communication service providers and vendors with innovations. Sidhom spoke about the evolving approach to corporate innovation at France-based telecoms firm Orange and how and why Orange had been committed to its San Francisco Bay area innovation arm for the past 20 years.
He also explained how Orange Silicon Valley had evolved from an R&D unit to launching an accelerator, Orange Fab, in 2013 and subsequently opening it to partners – Fab Force – and then setting up a corporate venturing arm making equity investments in 2015. He stressed the importance of working with business units.
Eric Budin, director at Touchdown Ventures, interviewed Rob Martens, president of Allegion Ventures, the venturing arm of hardware company Allegion. Martens outlined his unit’s support of CVC activity, saying it had been active for five years. He described its thesis as based on people and asset management, explaining that his job revolved around integration of senior people into areas of emerging tech with which they might be unfamiliar. He also talked about adding value to portfolio companies.
Albert Vazquez, operating partner at Sway Ventures, was interviewed by Anne Gherini, vice-president of marketing platform Affinity. Gehrini spoke briefly of relationships being the backbone of any business and how often they were not managed well. Affinity addresses this problem through technology. Vazquez spoke of how his organisation, a traditional venture firm investing predominantly in software enterprises, employed Affinity to effect the solution. The system scraped databases, calendars and emails and identified the person within an organisation who had the highest level of connections and contacts with external people. Vazquez said Sway Ventures leveraged Affinity’s solution in networking with both co-investors and entrepreneurs.
There was a Latin America-focused track in a breakout session in the afternoon.
The first session dealt with how technology was transforming healthcare in Latin America. It was moderated by Rodrigo Menezes of Derraik & Menezes Advogados and featured Leopoldo Lima, innovation manager at health and wellness-focused incubator Eretz.Bio, Luiz Henrique Noronha of healthcare-focused multi-stage investment partnership DNA Capital, Paulo Braga, head of corporate venture at pharmaceutical firm Eurofarma, and Barbara Alvim, partner at tech-focused growth-stage venture capital firm Oria Capital.
Menezes spoke of the CVC activities carried out by hospitals, which could be different from a typical corporate. Lima said he was surprised hospitals were keen on innovating with novel technologies.
Braga said his $50m fund, the first pharma fund in Brazil but designed initially to be a traditional VC vehicle, sought to improve diagnosis and other aspects of the healthcare arena.
Alvim said Oria, a business-to-business tech investment firm, had few relationships with healthtech companies so far, which she hoped to improve. She added that more tech-focused entrepreneurs were emerging, as in the past one had to be a medical professional to venture into this industry.
As for the future of the healthcare business in Brazil, the panel agreed that health and productivity-related problems could be solved through healthtech and software-as-a-service.
The next panel focused on raising Latin America through innovation and was moderated by Eric Save, partner at law firm K&L Gates. The speakers included Gustavo França, innovation manager at long steel producer Gerdau, Fabio Lunis de Paula, partner at venture capital firm Indicator Capital, Pierre Schurmann, managing partner at micro-venture capital firm Bossa Nova Investimentos, and Lodewijk Verdeyen, CEO of energy group Engie’s Chile-based accelerator and business incubator Engie Factory.
Save asked when Latin America would reach a level on a par with the US. However, Verdeyen said Latin America did not need to pursue a Silicon Valley model as the situation in the region was unique. CVC was a growing phenomenon, he added, because Latin America-based companies had a more conservative culture. For that reason, apart from Engie, Telefónica and Gerdau, most other global corporates did not focus on Latin America.
França said Gerdau, a company more than century old, was trying to modernise its business through corporate venturing, encompassing corporate innovation-related activities beyond minority stake investments. Such initiatives included corporate-backed accelerators, incubators, hackathons, innovation labs and open innovation programs. He said it was important to build a healthy ecosystem in Latin America. De Paula said corporate venturing was a tool the region had to employ to be more competitive. Schurmann said it was important to insist on implementing corporate venturing and growth was going in the right direction.
The last session was moderated by Jayme Queiroz, investment officer at government agency Apex-Brasil, and featured Rafael Wadpinar, new platforms manager and digital transformation head at Chile-based millwork company Masisa, Javier Alejandro García Quiroga, head of Femsa Ventures, Mexico-headquartered beverage producer Femsa’s corporate venturing unit, Flavio Pripas, corporate venture officer at venture capital firm Redpoint eVentures, and Peter Seiffert, corporate venture head at Embraer Ventures, aviation company Embraer’s CVC arm. They explored how corporate investors tapped into venture capital in Latin America. They agreed that the priority of CVC units, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists was to work together to foster the innovation ecosystem in Latin America.
Events before the summit
The GCVI Summit was preceded by a two-day GCV Academy program in Redwood City led by Paul Morris, adviser to the venture capital unit at the UK government’s Department for International Trade and head of the academy.
Kaloyan Andonov, GCV reporter and data analyst, also contributed to the interactive workshop, which was attended by corporate venturers based in Silicon Valley and beyond. Other guest speakers included Lee Sessions, managing director at Intel Capital, the venturing unit of semiconductor maker Intel, David Horowitz, founder and CEO at venture firm Touchdown Ventures, and Markus Moor, partner at Emerald Ventures, a Switzerland-based venture firm with over 20 corporate limited partners (LPs).
On Tuesday afternoon, a pre-event workshop on corporate venture capital in an uncertain economic climate took place. The workshop was hosted by Sandi Knox, corporate venture capital counsel at law firm Sidley Austin, and Glenn Nash, co-chairman of Sidley’s technology practice and a member of the corporate department. They were joined by Daniela Proske, senior venture principal at BP Ventures, the venturing subsidiary of the oil and gas company.
The number of new CVC groups investing for the first time has increased steadily from 2009 to 2016 with a huge jump in 2017 and 2018, totalling more than 180 units. Knox and Poske discussed what CVCs would have to do in the context of an economic climate defined by fear, uncertainty and doubt. Proske said as the future was uncertain, it would be important for CVCs to show continuity and resilience, keeping high-level management support.
She added: “Although it is easy to start a CVC arm, that is often the first unit to be eliminated when a financial downturn hits.” She highlighted the importance of gaining high-profile support from the corporate parent to achieve successful exits.
Nash highlighted key factors making CVC deals attractive in good and bad financial markets for the corporate partners, such as access to intellectual property (IP), technology, data, talent and competitive advantage. He noted that, for startups, having corporate backers is a way to gain access to new markets, capital, distribution channels, access to sophisticated compliance and regulatory experts, third-party validation, flexibility and options for the future.
Nash also said trends in CVC technology transactions included a spectrum of legal issues, such as non-disclosure agreements to protect IP. Access to data, rights to data, privacy and security issues arising from data, and liability were other issues to be addressed.
On Tuesday evening, the GCV Rising Stars awards dinner, hosted by Intel Capital and GE Ventures, took place at Monterey Bay Aquarium to celebrate this year’s top 100 corporate venturers coming through the ranks.
University of California pitches
University of California held its third annual UC Entrepreneur Pitch Competition at the GCVI Summit to recognise creative approaches that revolutionise contemporary business models.
UC faculty, alumni and students were invited in November to submit pitch videos and materials explaining their vision and strategy. Nearly 150 entrepreneurs from all 10 UC campuses competed in this year’s contest. Company models represented a range of industries, including technology, healthcare, energy, agriculture and transportation. More than 30% of the competitors represented companies founded by women.
The 12 finalists pitched to two panels of corporate investors who served as judges, as well as to an audience of more than 800 people. The judges selected Byron Shen of Velox Biosystems as the early-track winner and Jason McKeown of Neurovalens as the late-stage winner, each receiving a $15,000 cash prize.
Christine Gulbranson, UC senior vice-president for innovation and entrepreneurship, and UC chancellors representing the campuses of the finalists, congratulated the entrepreneurs in a video message and said: “The UC community is full of entrepreneurs and startups creating groundbreaking products and revolutionary companies, so we created two tracks for this year’s competition.
“I am so impressed with the innovations in our ecosystem. There is not an industry we are not tackling. These finalists embody the bold range of innovative, market-driven and impactful initiatives our entrepreneurs are undertaking.”
Each of the 12 finalists was paired with a mentor to help them prepare for their pitch. This year’s mentors were:
Linda Elkins, chief technical officer, Gore Innovation Centre at WL Gore & Associates
Jay Eum, co-founder and managing director, TransLink Capital
Albert Kim, head of Ericsson Ventures
Pramila Mullan, principal director, Accenture
Hash Pakbaz, senior director of emerging businesses and principal, Lam Research Capital at Lam Research
Bonny Simi, president, JetBlue Technology Ventures
The UC awards were supported by ClearAccess IP, P&G Ventures and Lam Research.
Impact
A roundtable discussion on corporate-impact investing was held under Chatham House rules.
The core focus of interest was the new idea of entrepreneurs being agents for change with CVCs as curators of quality dealflow and interest in impact for financial or strategic returns or both.
Governments and development finance institutions, such as United States Agency for International Development (USAid), a partner of the roundtable, can facilitate this process of change to make sure its tasks of safety, population wellbeing and economic development are being met, and by convening the right actors and helping to scale good entrepreneurs by leveraging CVC portfolio companies and encouraging corporate change.
The initial discussion was about what people mean by impact, with a general agreement that a degree of ambiguity rather than a strict definition was fine. Attendees then explored how the groups that already had a corporate impact fund had set one up, in particular the tools offered through the Impact Engagement Project among others, and the role of senior leadership in creating the vision and bandwidth.
Other corporations with a CVC fund were interested in whether the impact label was useful for their own goals, as their investments in emerging markets or sectors could be seen as impact-focused but they had yet to apply the term.
A third group of CVCs were interested in setting up a corporate venturing unit but had yet to commit.
The final part of the discussion was on how people viewed development agencies – were they helpful? Generally, only a handful had started to use development finance institutions as part of a CVC program but those that had on the whole had found them helpful for convening and follow-on money – perhaps a risk shield by providing first loss capital – but nothing too significant so far.
All agreed to share contact details and form a working committee on this topic ahead of the launch of a Corporate-Impact Engagement Program to be announced by USAid at the GCV Symposium on May 22-23, 2019 in London, UK.
Attendees included:
Wendy Lung, IBM
Brad Rock, DLA Piper
Pauli Martilla, Sitra, Finland
Maisie Devine, AB InBev
Anthony Nicalo, Highline Beta
Tian Yu, Helsinki Business Hub
Paulo Braga, Eurofarma
Moses Choi and Jay Onda, Orange
Julianna Zhang, IHS Markit
Rich Osborn, Telus
Willem Bulthuis, WBX Ventures
John McIntyre, American Family Insurance
Alexandra Prosszer, British American Tobacco
Lodewijk Verdeyen, Engie
Christina Catzoela, Orrick
Claudine Emeott, Salesforce
Emily Linett, Tyson Ventures
Tom Yeh
Gabriel Vasconcelos, Einstein Hospital
Mike Biddle, Evok Innovations