CVC Unplugged Mawsonia

Just because you can grow very quickly, doesn’t necessarily mean you should. That’s the argument that Rob Bier, managing partner of Trellis Partners and 6:30 Partners, makes against the concept of “blitzscaling”, the hypergrowth philosophy popularised by Reid Hoffman. In his new book, called Smooth Scaling, as well as in a recent op-ed for Global Corporate Venturing, Bier argues that growing at all costs may work for a few startups, but for the majority, following the move fast and break things with loads of money in your pocket approach can have deeply detrimental effects.

Financial services permeate every other industry, and is a crucial part of everyone’s lives – whether you’re talking about payments, wealth management, or anything else, fintech touches it all. Today I’m joined by Hugo Bongers, partner at Motive Ventures, who by his own admission “lives and breathes” fintech. Formerly the head of ABN Amro Ventures, he has a great overview of the space from both the corporate VC and financial VC sides.

Fred Schonenberg is the founder of VentureFuel, a New York-based advisory firm focused on bringing together startups and large organisations, mainly corporates including the likes of Coca-Cola, ABInBev, The Hershey Company, Comcast and more, to efficiently create commercial partnerships between them.

One of the biggest hurdles to getting technology from universities out into the market has been that of intellectual property – who does this technology belong to and who can benefit from it? Traditionally, many universities have been loath to part with their IP rights, which is a death knell for any investment a potential spinout may be hoping for. Investors want to know that the company they’re investing in owns the very thing that gives it value.

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’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.