Learnings From Building 24 Corporate Ventures

Building new ventures in partnership with mid-market and large-scale corporations is one of the most hyped subjects in the innovation world. However, most business building ventures fail. Bernd Schmidt and Matthias Kramer at Mantro have helped launch over 20 ventures through partnering with corporations, and they shared their early strategies for building new ventures at the Innov8rs Connect on Business Design, Venture Building & Portfolio Management. The three key stages to this process are: Find, Build, and Grow. In the Find stage, they use strategic business potentials to define the infrastructure of the startup that will meet their strategic requirements. In the Build stage, Mantro focuses on team setup, product-market fit, and conversions to scale when the core needs are met. Lastly, in the Grow stage, they wait until the solution is proven until the venture team and business strategy team can begin scaling. Furthermore, they emphasize balancing autonomy and alignment in governance models.