To CVC or to VC?

Throughout theDOCK’s journey we held hundreds of hours worth of discussions with corporate leaders on the prospects of investing in innovation. The ultimate goal of all executives and owners was often one and the same - to obtain exposure to emerging innovative technologies, in order to either become an early user or shareholder of relevant solutions. While the goal might be the same, the means to achieve that goal vary significantly between corporations. A good summary of the alternatives an organization faces is presented in this article. Those alternatives range from cases of ad-hoc direct investments made by the corporate and all the way towards well defined closed-end structures which involve VC-like operations. These structures could be either internal to the corporate (aka CVC) or in cooperation with an external VC.

The benefits of running an internal CVC platform are obvious. Being in control - that is control over the investment, over the startups’ product roadmap and over business development aspects of the startup.

The question often raised however is - should corporates who wish to obtain exposure to startups go down the CVC path or the VC-collaboration path?