Investment Process (End to End) 

• Startup and VC expectations of ‘professional’ CVCs? Changes in current industry perceptions?  

• How can the CVC investment process balance VC/startup (agility, professionalism) and parent (rigor, strategic value delivery) expectations?  

• What are good examples of types of partnership/collaboration agreements that resonate with corporations?  

• How do you handle deal flow coming from inside the corporation?  

Term Sheets 

• What is the role of the CVC in term sheet development (leading round, following)?  

• What are typical terms to include in a strategic rights side letter with a CVC? 

Cap Tables 

• What are the most important issues to understand about cap tables and financing vehicles?  

• What is your approach to valuation?  

Concerns 

• What repeat mistakes do you see CVCs making as investors and syndicate partners?  

• How to avoid conflicts of interest as a strategic investor (access to info, board/observer roles…)?  

• How to address special considerations for global strategic investors?  (CFIUS, similar guidelines in Asia-Pacific, Europe?)  

• Can you give some examples of red flags and watch outs regarding interactions between corporations and startups? 

• Exits – What do we need to know about SPACs and involvement of PE/Hedge in VC investing? 

• Your backgrounds:  Brief overview of CVC programs, and personal history 

• Tell us how you established your programs -- What allowed you to move faster and be more impactful?  Key learnings? 

• What were your initial charters? How did they change over time? 

• What makes you an attractive partner for startups (‘founder first’ orientation)? How contribute to the growth and valuation of portfolio? 

• How have you developed and leveraged your relationship with the parent at both the executive and operational levels?  

• Relationships formalized?  

• What has worked well?  

• Biggest challenges?  

• How do you facilitate parent company engagement and deliver strategic value, even from  a longer term (H2-H3) investment vs a near term collaboration?  

• Engagement and venture development platform  

• What is a representative example of an engagement between a startup and a parent business group or the Research group?   

• One piece of advice for building impactful and resilient CVC programs? 

• Please provide a brief overview of the role that your program plays in supporting corporate innovation strategy? 

• What are your primary investment themes/focus areas?  Why are they important to the corporation? 

• How are CVC investment themes and strategic theses developed?  

• Process (Structure and key elements, roles of investment and CVBD/innovation teams) 

• What role does the corporate parent/or do corporate LPs play in defining those themes? 

• Do investment themes need to be approved by the investment committee? 

• How do you execute on investment themes? (Is team organized by investment theme? E.g. investment team/CVBD pods)? 

• How frequently are themes reviewed and refined? 

• Is performance/progress against investment themes tracked and reported on? 

• How are insights communicated? 

• What steps did the strategic investors take to support the company? (What could they have done better?) 

• ‘onboarding’? 

• How connected were the strategic VCs to the operations of their companies?  Were they able to influence the behavior of the operating teams or seen as outsiders/not relevant to the decision to use your company’s products? 

• What were the most successful approaches to engaging operationally with investors – key steps (e.g. pilot=>commercial trial=>rollout), terms, timeframes, evidence required for testing/adoption? 

• What were the least successful approaches? 

• What can startups/portfolio companies do better to optimize engagement with CVC’s corporate parents? 

• Did any of the strategic investors require that you had contracts with their operations before they invested? 

• Did the strategic investors collaborate with each other to make engagement easier, faster, more successful? 

• What do you know now about taking investment from strategic investors that would change what you did in the future? What would you change? 

• Advice for strategic investors? What could they do better/differently/more of? 

• Can you give us a brief overview of your CVC programs – when established, focus, overall structure (‘integrated VC/CVBD model’)?  

• How is your CVBD/portfolio development ‘platform’ organized to drive the CVC program’s charter and objectives?  

• Size of team 

• Key roles and skillsets 

• Locations (with investors, embedded within parent) 

• How does CVBD/portfolio development team align with investment team pre- to post-investment?   

• How do you engage with the parent BUs and functional teams? (Partners, resource network…) 

• What are your key portfolio development/CVBD ‘power tools’ (Investment theme pods? Events? Operating guide? Startup resources?)  

• What’s the same and what’s different in the way that they are applied to different types of investments?  

• Near term/later stage investments (parent engagement focus)? 

• Long-term/early-stage investment (venture development focus)? 

• What is a good examples of how the CVBD/PD model in action?  What were the key success factors?  Performance metrics? 

• What have been your key CVBD/portfolio Development learnings challenges as your programs have developed?  

• Do you have one piece of advice for other CVCs/CVBD teams? 

• Describe your role and introduce your program (age, scale, strategic investment focus) 

• What is your CV programs’ approach for facilitating portfolio company engagement with the businesses?  

• Parallel CVBD and investment functions? (Respective Roles and process) 

• Typical types of engagements? 

• How have you gone about developing and leveraging the internal parent network at both executive and operational levels   

• Relationships formalized?  

• What has worked well?  

• What are the biggest challenges the CVC team has faced in preparing the BUs to engage with startups and vice versa? 

• Where are CVCs most likely to encounter challenges/barriers to facilitating parent engagement with portfolio companies.  (Procurement, legal…) 

• Approaches to addressing them?   

• Examples of successful portfolio/parent engagements  

• Who played what roles in facilitating engagement from initial introduction to PoC to Commercialization?  Who funded PoCs/Pilots? 

• What were the KSFs in making parent-startup relationships work and what did the CVC team contribute? 

• How did you measure that success?  (CV program and parent perspectives) 

• How do you facilitate parent engagement and deliver strategic value from a longer term (H2-H3) investment vs a near term collaboration? 

• Within large companies, there are often many different groups (tech scouts, alliances, BU innovation) that may be engaging with startups…what lessons have you learned about how best to coordinate activities and avoid market confusion, competitive missteps?