Event Recap: “Working With Strategic Investors”
By Bella Liu.
Thank you for those who joined us at our Working with Strategic Investors panel! This past Wednesday, Marco Lobba, CEO of our tenant CatenaBio, moderated a panel with Rachel Haurwitz, CEO of Caribou Biosciences, and Wei Wu, Senior Director of Venture Investments at J&J Innovation to explore what entrepreneurs and investors each see in the world of corporate venture capital (CVC).
“Between all these investors and companies,” Haurwitz said, “I think it becomes very clear over time that different incentives drive different interactions.” She advises building personal relationships to find out how and why each fund makes investments: some for profit, some for strategic reasons (like licensing or later acquisition); sometimes both at the same fund.
(Haurwitz was the first student to work on CRISPR in Jennifer Doudna’s lab, she said; traditional VCs had no interest in CRISPR while CVCs – Dupont first among them – were knocking on the door, quick to see the long-term potential.)
After discussing the unique nuances of CVCs and what it’s like working with them, the panelists moved to most of the audience’s main interest: how startups can win CVC funding.
“First and foremost for our consideration is the strategic fit of this opportunity with our company strategy,” Wu said, speaking from the investor’s perspective. “We map out our internal strategy, and then we look at [the] external opportunity to see where it fits.”
Entrepreneurs, meanwhile, should consider what the dynamics between their startup and a potential investor would look like ahead of taking any capital, keeping in mind that taking corporate funding from one company may close the door on other opportunities, according to Haurwitz. She also recommended looking at Pitchbook to see a CVC’s recent activity: whether they made lots of small investments, or appeared to do deep research before making a few big ones.
All three panelists, agreed on the importance of making professional connections — at panels like this, and beyond. “If you come to an event like this, you meet people from corporate venture,” Wu said. “It’s a good time to get some insight.”
“That insight,” Lobba said, “the ability to learn from experts within these companies that have been doing this for years and sometimes decades, I think goes without saying can really speed up a company’s development.”
