Corporate Venture Builders help corporations spin-out new ventures to commercialize products, services, ideas, and intellectual property - all without the inefficiencies of innovating within a large organization.
Corporate Venture Builders are a component of Corporate Venturing. Corporate Venturing refers to initiatives of corporations to invest into external ventures. The most common types of Corporate Venturing are:
- Corporate Venture Builder
- Corporate Venture Capital
- Corporate Incubators and Accelerators
Most large corporations will have a combination of the above initiatives with the aim to invest, acquire, and develop new technologies and opportunities. Quite often those initiatives lead to an acquihire, where the corporation acquires a startup for the current team's talent.
Corporate Venture Building (CVB) is different from Corporate Venture Capital (CVC). CVC invests in external ventures with the aim to acquire a small percentage of equity in high potential startups. Quite often, Venture Capital investors are vulnerable to eccentric founders that may not align the startup's goals with the corporation's goals.
Corporate Venture Building creates brand new ventures that leverage the corporation's expertise, intellectual property (IP), insights, and existing networks. The ventures that are spun-out are operated independently, however remain strategically aligned with the parent corporation. The parent corporation generally retains a majority equity stake, enabling long term control of the spin-out.
Corporate Venture Builders like Outroll provide a wide range of services ranging from product development, marketing, and day to day operations. Venture builders are able to reduce costs and improve efficiencies by leveraging synergies from launching and growing multiple ventures at the same time. Corporate Venture Builders generally provide:
- Legal and Company Incorporation Services
- Branding and IP protection
- Minimum Viable Product Development
- Marketing and Customer Acquisition
- Operations and Accounting Services
- Strategic Planning
- Ongoing Research and Development
- Fundraising (Equity, VC, Debt)
In addition to traditional services, Corporate Venture Builders like Outroll may also provide a common digital platform that can reduce development and operational costs for digital technology ventures. Such platforms can reduce MVP development costs by more than 50% and ensure scalability from day one.
Corporate Venture Builders also provide proven methodologies to successfully develop, launch and grow digital and technology ventures. By launching a Minimum Viable Product and adopting agile methodologies, Venture Builders deliver products with better product-market fit in considerably shorter times than traditional startups.
Corporate Venture Builders are not limited to large corporations. CVBs can spin-out new ventures for small and medium enterprises, universities, and research institutions. CVBs are a great vehicle for driving the commercialization of new technologies, especially IP that needs to be translated into real world applications.
CVBs are an attractive alternative to CVC, with potentially lower risks, capital requirements, and geographical limitations. Corporations need to rethink their Corporate Venturing strategies and dedicate a higher percentage to Corporate Venture Building.
