Corporate Venture Capital: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective

While never a dominant part of the venture capital industry, corporate-sponsored venture capital investors (think for example AOL Ventures) have long been an important part of the industry.  Entrepreneurs thinking about seeking venture capital should, preferably at the beginning of the quest, consider whether they want to seek, or will even consider, corporate venture capital.  For some deals, corporate venture capital is a priority; for most it is an option; and for some, it might be a last resort.  Herewith, some of the issues to consider.

Corporate Venture Capital as Deal Validation.  Generally, the more technology risk a deal has, the more attractive corporate venture money is, all the more so when the expected amount of pre-revenue capital needed and time to market are greater. Corporate venture capital is often a plus, for example, in biopharma deals, where technology risk, capital needs and time to market are huge.  Getting a corporate fund in a deal sends a powerful due diligence signal to all but the highest tier traditional funds (they are as a rule less impressed by third party due diligence) that the science passes the blush test.  On the other hand, deals where time to market, technology risk and risk capital requirements are not so great – say, a niche social networking concept – are not likely to get as great a validation enhancer across as broad a range of traditional funds.

Corporate Venture Capital as Lead Investor – Usually Not.  As a rule, corporate funds don’t make very good lead investors.  First, while a corporate fund can be a nice validator, getting too close to a corporate fund can make doing business deals with companies that compete with the corporate fund’s parent harder to do.  If “Competitor A” is your lead investor, “Competitor B” will be understandably more cautious about doing a deal – or even sharing information – with you than if Competitor A is only a follower in the deal.  Further, remember that most corporate funds (there are exceptions: ask) are not “pure return” investor, and thus is not in a good position to set the price – which is one of the important things the lead typically, well, takes the lead on.  (Traditional funds will – quite correctly – discount an entrepreneur’s assertion that a price agreed to by a corporate fund is a fair price, particularly if the corporate fund is not a pure return investor.)

 Corporate Venture Capital: The People Difference.  Not to say that there are not exceptions, and not to say that corporate venture capital professionals are not exceptional in their own corporate worlds, corporate venture capitalists are as a general rule not the brightest bulbs in the venture capitalist universe.  First, compensation at most corporate venture capital firms is generally not as generous/aggressive as at traditional funds that don’t have to “fit in” to a broader corporate compensation system.  If traditional venture capital firms pay more, you would expect they would attract the best people.  Second, corporate venture capitalists, while needing, of course, to earn the confidence of senior corporate managers, don’t have to go through the hurdle of successfully selling themselves to a typically fairly large group of sophisticated investors who specialize in evaluating venture capital professionals as traditional venture capitalists do.  Finally, most traditional venture capitalists – certainly the stereotypical venture capital professional – are folks with big egos who like to make others fit to their rules rather than vice versa.  That’s a personality profile that doesn’t generally fit very well in  below C-level jobs in big business management cultures.  

Corporate Venture Capital:  Here Today, ….  Whether considering a relationship with a traditional or corporate venture firm, one criteria, of course, is how long a fund team  has been around: generally, fund teams that have managed several funds across several investing cycles are more desirable investors than less experienced funds. While there are notable exceptions, corporate venture capital funds don’t as a rule have the staying power of more traditional funds, as in addition to the performance hurdles all funds must overcome to stay in the business over the long haul, corporate funds have some of their own longevity issues.  For example, being pieces (usually small ones at that) of much larger enterprises, corporate funds are subject to the whims of senior management teams that at most companies blow hot and cold on venture capital investing, depending on short-term earnings pressures and more broadly shifting management priorities over the corporate cycle and as senior managers come and go.  Entrepreneurs considering venture capital should, to the extent possible, try to focus on corporate funds that have demonstrated both some staying power and some real success (which, of course, are also good criteria for evaluating competing proposals from traditional venture funds, too).

As noted, corporate venture capital is an important if relatively small part of the broader venture capital industry.  There are, as with traditional venture capital funds, good corporate venture investors and not-so-good corporate investors.  The ideas noted above are offered not as hard and fast rules – for all of them there are exceptions – but rather as a framework for analysis.  An analysis that entrepreneurs are wise to undertake before launching a campaign for venture capital funding.