This week we bring you big news stories featuring Lineage Logistics, Coupang, AstraZeneca and IonQ. We also bring you deal news from JD.com and Starling Bank, fund news from Ascension Ventures, and exit news featuring Roblox and Hippo Enterprises, plus much more.

Global Venturing Review

15 March 2021 – $1.9bn for Cold Chain Services Provider Lineage Logistics

This week we bring you big news stories featuring Stripe, Tuya, SK Group and Vaccitech. We also bring you deal news from ElevateBio and Momenta, fund news from Volpe Capital and Natural Products Canada, and exit news featuring Robinhood and Megvii, plus much more.

22 March 2021 – Stripe Raises $600m with a $95bn Valuation

This week we bring you big news stories featuring Canva, Discord, Citi Ventures and BitSight.

20 September 2021 – Investors help Canva paint $200m picture at $40bn valuation

This week we bring you big news stories featuring Swiggy, Wisk, FTX Trading and Deloitte Canada.

31 January 2022 – Swiggy Swipes $700m in Series K

Interview with Anish Patel, COO and Managing Director of Yamaha Motor Ventures.

Anish Patel: Yamaha Motor Ventures

One of the interesting shifts that happened during the covid pandemic was in building things. Larger construction projects slowed down while at home DIY projects took off as people had to spend inside. This is but one of the patterns that Stanley Ventures, the venturing unit of Stanley Black & Decker, had a front-row view to, sitting on the intersection of construction and consumer goods.  

Dina Routhier and Michael Mahan, the respective president and managing director of Stanley Ventures, join me on the show to talk about that shift and about how changes in a parent company’s business units – such as Stanley Black & Decker’s divestiture from its security and healthcare business and the launch of its outdoor tools business – can effect portfolio management. We also talk about emerging trends and technologies in the construction sector, what it’s like sitting in both construction and consumer markets, and what venturing units should do to best help them survive when their parent company has difficult decisions to make about its future.

Dina Routhier & Michael Mahan: Stanley Ventures

Increasingly, buildings are more than just bricks and mortar. Today they’re smarter, they’re more capable, they’re greener, and they’re continually improving. Few companies are doing more work in this space than Johnson Controls, and today I’m speaking with Youssef Mawad, managing director Johnson Controls’ CVC unit, JCI Ventures.  

In our conversation, Mawad talks about finding his feet when he first started in the role, and the process of figuring out where you fit in an organisation and how you can contribute real value, as well as the importance of establishing purpose early on.  

We talk about the ongoing digitisation and decarbonisation of the built environment, and the sheer size of the opportunity that exists to do this globally, given that roughly 40% of all emissions come from buildings.  

The simple fact, therefore, is that no grand energy transition can exist, to meet our climate goals, without a serious approach to make buildings greener – and an effective way to do that is also to make them more digital.  

Don’t forget to like, shares and subscribe to CVC Unplugged, and above all, enjoy the show.

CVC Unplugged

Youssef Mawad: JCI Ventures

In Latin America’s biggest market, things are not slowing down. The venture scene in Brazil is running along at an impressive clip, despite the macroeconomic climate. 

My guest today is Cassio Spina, founder and lead partner of a new advisory and venture management firm Alya Ventures, which launched earlier this year. 

He just published the second edition of his CVC book, aptly named Corporate Venture Capital, which takes a deep dive into a wide compendium of CVC case studies across Brazil, chronicling alongside those very investors the obstacles they’ve had to overcome across various sectors and the lessons they’ve learned.  

He talks us through a few of those case studies, as well as the genesis of Alya Ventures, the common pain points their corporate clients have,  how the fact that corporate executives are doing more and more angel investments of their own helps them see the value in venture investments for their company, and the impact that last year’s change in government has had on the Brazilian venture ecosystem.  

As the founder of one of the largest angel investor networks in Brazil, Anjos do Brasil, Spina also talks about how the role of angel investors has changed over the past decade, as well as which elements of VC he has to keep educating investors on, and why he continues to be very optimistic about where the market is going despite the wider cooling. 

You can find Spina’s book here: https://www.livrocvc.com.br/

Cassio Spina: Alya Ventures

Cars have been on their way to essentially becoming rolling computers for quite some time now. They are better connected, increasingly electrified, and packed with features to make the driver’s life easier.  

Mike Smeed, managing director of Jaguar LandRover’s (JLR) venturing unit, InMotion Ventures, has been in the CVC business for only one year, but given that automotive OEMs are already designing the cars of 2030 and beyond, his outlook needs to be in decades.  

Having previously been at JLR since 2018 across a couple of finance-related roles, Smeed is one of the relative minority of CVC unit heads who were brought in from the operational side of a parent company, and talks about the value that company insiders can bring to a role that is more often than not the domain of people with years of venture experience under their belt.  

Being new to venture, the learning curve has been steep, specially during a time when InMotion’s approach has changed to focus on the more strategic benefits they could bring to JLR. He talks about how he wishes he would have had more engagement with the portfolio companies when he first began, the importance of being able to demonstrate tangible results – not just financial, but strategic – to senior leadership, as well as minding the power law – where a minority of investments can make up the bulk of returns, taking pressure off other investments that you can take more learnings from.   

Be sure to like, share and subscribe to CVC Unplugged, and above all, enjoy the show.

Mike Smeed: InMotion Ventures

Despite their products being so ubiquitous anywhere you live in the world, and an integral part of so much of what we eat, the B2B egg, dairy and food sectors are among the least digitised out there. What this has opened up is a lot of space for startups to make a big impact.

Schreiber Foods is one of the largest dairy products producers in the world, supplying stores, restaurants and other food providers all over the world. Almost exactly a year ago, The Wisconsin-based food giant launched its corporate venture capital fund, focusing primarily on next generation supply chain and sustainability.

Today I speak to Blair Tritt, director of corporate ventures and partnerships at Schreiber Foods, who is responsible for overseeing Schreiber Ventures. We talk about where the technological gaps and opportunities are for startups to capitalise on, the process of coming up with Schreiber Ventures’ thesis in the midst of the pandemic, and the interplay between the unit’s investment, venture clienting, and partnership activities. He also touches on what it was like launching Schreiber Ventures just as the venture market was shifting to it’s downturn in late 2022, and why it was so useful to begin with a strategy of investing initially in LP positions in other funds, before making direct investments, which the unit is looking to now begin doing.

Barely a year old, this is a very young CVC unit navigating many of the same questions marks – both internal and external – that so many other corporate investment outfits have to deal with, and has been described by Liz Arrington, the director of the GCV Institute, as a “poster child for how to be thoughtful about planning for an impactful strategic programme.”

I think a lot of investors at that early stage will have a lot to take away from what Blair has to say.

Blair Tritt: Schreiber Foods

The story of the past year or so has been artificial intelligence and, in particular, generative artificial intelligence, or gen AI. Doesn’t matter what sector you’re in, or what countries you look at, everyone is trying to apply gen AI to their business, and investors are seeing a gold mine.

Whether we’re talking about popular large language models like ChatGPT (the launch of which kicked off the big hype around gen AI), or other programmes designed to generate images, or videos, or audio, everyone wants a piece of the pie.

We now have enough data to look back on and see where corporate investors have fallen into the mix. Today I speak to my colleagues, GCV editor Maija Palmer, and GCV’s head of analytics and general data guru Kaloyan Andonov, who have recently co-authored a piece looking at the past year in Gen AI investment, and we’ve seen that we’re seeing that half of all VC dollars invested in the space has come from rounds featuring one or more corporate players.

It's not just the numbers that stand out, but their context. We’re seeing significant changes in the competitive dynamics in the tech sector – at least in so far as the public markets can indicate. Two of the longest-standing rivalries in tech have been upended – chipmaker Nvidia, which has historically played second fiddle to Intel, has seen a massive surge in its stock price in recent years, overtaking its chief competitor in terms of market cap, while Microsoft has also overtaken Apple – in both cases, the previous leaders fall to second place as massive bets are made on AI.

It's a time of great change in tech, and the tectonic plates are set to keep moving.

Corporates underpin over half of all Gen AI investment

For years now, people – myself included – have been waiting for the advent, in earnest, of plant-based meats. Everyone loves a barbeque, but not the meat industry’s effect on the environment, our health, or the treatment of animals themselves. Alternatives have been coming to the shelf for years now, but the same problems persist – the taste is not quite the same as real meat, and the price is far too high to really compete.

Today I speak to Giacomo Fanin, managing partner of Grey Silo Ventures, the corporate VC arm of family-owned Italian grain processing company Cereal Docks, which has a portfolio that heavily features startups working on alternate meat and protein. Fanin describes how the barriers that have been holding alternate meats back competitively, not only persist, but have in fact been excacerbated by inflation despite the enthusiasm for them. He talks about the gap between the sophistication of the technology being developed and the capacity to actually scale its production, leading to lacklustre sales in recent years that have undershot expectations, which in turn have quieted investment in the B2C alternate meats sector.

He also talks about how founding the CVC arm will position Cereal Docks in its industry, and how he sees open innovation as a route to strengthen the company, the founding family of which he is a second-generation member, for years to come.

We should temper our expectations for alternate meat, says Grey Silo Ventures

There are very few corporates out there that have two CVC funds, Toyota is one of them.

Not only does it have an early-stage fund in Toyota Ventures, but also a growth stage unit in Woven Capital – which was previously investing on behalf of , as its name suggests, Woven by Toyota, the automaker’s next-generation mobility business, but has more recently expanded its scope to being the growth investment arm for Toyota as a whole.

Today I speak to George Kelleman, managing director of Woven Capital, who is a real veteran of the industry, with a deep background in investing as fund manager, angel investor, consultant, and was a founding member of Yamaha Motor Ventures before going over to Woven. We talk about what it means to go from being an automobile company to a mobility company and Woven Capital’s role in helping Toyota do just that, as well as how broadly we can look at the concept of mobility itself to encompass not just the movement of people, but of goods and information, too. We touch on the relationship between Woven Capital and Toyota Ventures and how they work together to cover all three innovation horizons simultaneously for their parent company, as well as the difference in mindset needed between early-stage and growth-stage funds.

Kellerman talks about the increasingly crucial importance of the portfolio success function – also known as venture platform – and how Woven is expanding its own portfolio success team, not just in terms of numbers, but geography.

From automobiles to mobility - how Woven Capital is helping Toyota evolve

A booming market for secondaries

Today I speak with two people who know a lot about getting stuff from A to B– Rose Chen, head of innovation investments and partnerships at supply chain and distribution company Wesco, and Hector Shibata, who has for over half a decade led AC Ventures, the CVC unit of coca cola bottler Arca Continental.

We talk about what it takes to make a supply chain more resilient, how artificial intelligence, and Gen AI in particular, can help not just with information to make decisions, but in the actual decision making process itself, the importance of data analytics and management, as well as supply chain visibility, and the extent to which investors are keen to take risks on new technology in this space.

Investing in a strong supply chain

The way we buy things has been changing. Supercharged by the pandemic, the digital and physical sides of the retail experience continue to merge, data analytics continues to play an increasingly large role in how companies target and sell their products, and the consumer journey is, hopefully, getting easier and easier.

My guest today is Jose Pascual, head of Cencosud Ventures, the corporate VC unit of Chilean retail giant Cencosud, since its inception in 2021. Pascual, who goes by his nickname Pepe, talks me through the unit’s multi-faceted strategy, and how Latin America’s emerging market presents a host of opportunities for retailers across the region.

Pascual also talks about the value he sees in contrarian thinking, arguing that VCs need to look in the areas that most would not think to look, and defend their position and persist, even when facing pushback from colleagues within the parent company, as Cencosud Ventures has had to do.

He also explains, among other things, why the idea of “omni-channel” marketing could be going out the door, giving way to a “unified client” approach where companies look to understand the customer holistically in order to find better ways of reaching them.

Why Cencosud Ventures loves contrarian thinking

We are once again bringing you a conversation from the latest edition of GCV’s The Next Wave webinar series, in which an expert panel discusses an important topic of the day.

This one, moderated by yours truly, is all about hospital tech and, broadly speaking, what the hospital of the future will look like.

For a while now, there has been a clear trend, for example, of hospital functions like patient monitoring, diagnostics, and other treatments being moved closer to the patients, even into their homes, which frees up space within hospitals, which of course, even before covid, have been dealing with huge capacity constraints. Many hospitals are operating at capacities in the high 90s and have a lot of trouble finding enough beds, enough appointments, or enough staff, for a number of reasons, but a big one is the fact that the processes within hospitals need to be overhauled and streamlined for higher efficiency.

Add to that the prospect of technologies like AI coming just around the corner, and the future of what a hospital is starts to look slightly different.

It was a super fun discussion, from which I learned quite a lot, actually, and I think if you’re involved in investing in healthcare, or in selling some kind of product to hospitals or healthcare systems, you’ll be interested in taking a listen.

The Next Wave Webinar: What does the hospital of the future look like?

We’re going back into the vault this week!

They say that the only constant in life, and business, is change – so how do you manage it effectively?

That’s why last year I spoke with Jonny Crowe, a lawyer by training whose long career has been tied together by one central theme: executing and managing transformation. This is something he’s done both as a member of the C-Suite within the structure of an organisation, or in an advisory capacity, for many companies including Cinch, BCA Marketplace, Naspers and Axel Springer, to name just a few.

In early 2020, he established Liminal Ventures as an advisory firm that helps businesses transform, and he’s been doing it ever since. Since this podcast was recorded, Crowe also became senior director at management consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal, focusing on digital transformation, value creation and optimisation.

In our conversation, we talk about what exactly digital transformation means, what hurdles organisations run into when trying to implement one, and how mere surface-level digitisation is not good enough – the transformation needs to permeate the underlying functions of a business in order to really make an impact.Crowe also talks about the importance of gathering information – and subsequently buy-in – from every level of a business in order for transformation to be successful, and how a business needs to have an existing willingness to adapt before it can dive head first into a transformation initiative.

How do you deal with, or prevent, internal resistance to change? How do you think about the downstream effects of wholesale transformation? Can every business benefit from becoming more digital? What do those first steps look like? We discuss all this and more.

How to effectively manage change and transformation (re-broadcast)

Jeppe Hoier is a long-time venture investor with experience in financial VCs, corporate VCs and on his own as an angel investor, based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
A former partner at Maersk Growth, the CVC arm of Danish logistics giant Maersk, Hoier talks about how he was initially sceptical of going into a corporate VC, having been initially dissuaded by the reputation that CVCs had at the time, but how he has since been convinced of the benefits a corporate can bring.

We talk about the venture scene has evolved in Denmark and the Nordics, and how many CVC have popped up over the years, but many have also gone defunct, and how the environment can be improved. Hoier explains how he sees the corporate like a human body, with the brain as the C-suite, and how badly things can go when the brain doesn’t communicate well enough with the rest of the body, especially the CVC unit, among many other things.

Hoier has, for the last several months, been writing a newsletter on LinkedIn which I recommend CVC folks to check out, it’s always got nice nuggets of information and interesting interviews.

A CVC is like an organ transplant, the body would be wrong to fight it – with Jeppe Hoier

Covering the week's venturing news including funding, investments, exits and people moves. This week's episode includes:  News that Ford invests $1bn in Argo AI, Enterprise Ireland backs four funds totalling $200m, deal news from SoftBank, funding news from Nasdaq and much more.

20 February 2017 – Ford Invests in Argo AI, Enterprise Ireland backs 4 Funds and Much More

The week we bring you big news stories featuring Jio Platforms, Alphabet, Farasis Energy and Paige. We also bring you deal news from RobinHood and UiPath, fund news from AMR Action Fund, and exit news featuring Relay Therapeutics and nCino, plus much more.

20 July 2020 – 5G & IoT Provider Jio Platforms Gains $4.5bn from Google

The CVC Unplugged podcast is a weekly show that brings you fascinating and wide-ranging conversations with leading corporate venture capital investors, subject matter experts, startup founders, journalists and other market participants to keep you informed of the most important trends affecting early-stage investing.

Hosted by Global Corporate Venturing's, Fernando Moncada Rivera, guests dive into strategy, market movements and drivers, best practices, macro trends and much more.

New episodes are available every Monday on your favourite audio platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

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