GCV Institute

Wednesday 15 December, 2021

The second cohort of our flagship Landing the Value of Corporate Venturing (LVCV) course have just wrapped up their learning journeys by sharing the outcomes of mentored, six-week ‘Challenge’ projects designed to move the needle for both CVC program and parent. The global, cross-industry make-up of the cohort and a range of program maturity levels led to rich and insightful discussions.

The LVCV course took the cohort through a ‘systems approach’ to portfolio success where they worked to interpret their individual program charters into strategies for partnering, team roles, end-to-end investing processes, and strategic performance measurement. Valuable input to their thinking came from luminary CVCs and their portfolio companies who applied key course concepts to their own models in candid, interactive Q&A panels:

• Jim Adler/Toyota Ventures and Bill Taranto/Merck Global Health Innovation compared approaches to building resilient strategic investment programs
• Amy Burr/JetBlue Technology Ventures, Ran Kurup/Intel Capital and Yogis Nijhon/Munich Re Ventures shared CV Business Development (CVBD)/Portfolio Development best practices
• Eileen Tanghal/In-Q-Tel and Nick Washburn/Intel Capital provided insights on developing investment themes across a range of parent innovation horizons
• Tarik Galijasevic/Allstate Strategic Ventures and Jocelyn Byrne Houle/Capital One Ventures discussed strategies for removing barriers to effective parent engagement
• Michael Levin/Vericred and Ram Menon/Avaamo didn’t hold back with portfolio company perspectives on startup expectations of corporate investors

Another highly-rated element of the ‘Immerse’ live online sessions was the four-part case video study that followed Vericred, a portfolio company of Echo Health Ventures, through the end-to-end pipeline from investment to parent engagement. Echo Health Strategic Investor Jessica Zeaske, Echo Health Advisor Jonathan Rickert, (Echo Parent) Cambia Health Solutions VP Nancy Reardon and Vericred CEO Michael Levin walked through the why, the what, the how and key challenges to impactful strategic investing.

But the highlight of LVCV was the ‘on the job’ mentored Challenge where CVC team/Parent pods applied course concepts to address opportunities for both personal development and broader CV program impact. Pods benefitted from the stellar insights of their hand-picked mentors who included: Tarik Galijasevic/Allstate Strategic Ventures, Ran Kurup/Intel Capital, George Hoyem/In-Q-Tel, Amy Burr/JetBlue Technology Ventures, Dave Stevenson/Merck GHI, and Ian Sanders/Munich Re Ventures.