Was Yahoo! buying tumblr an example of corporate VC? How about Facebook buying Instagram?
In my experience, the VCs themselves do. Their bosses say they do (hence why the corporation started a VC arm). But after a few failures, that tends to change. (Analog: why many corporate cultures try and fail at emulating Skunkworks.)
> Was Yahoo! buying tumblr an example of corporate VC? How about Facebook buying Instagram?
No, that’s M&A. Generally when one says Company A bought Company B, that’s corporate finance.
GM investing in Lyft is corporate VC. Tyson investing in Beyond Meat is corporate VC. Minority stakes, early-stage companies and a strategic motive describes corporate VC.
Also 'corporate VCs' are generally terrible VCs.
But yes, investing in is different than buying in.
Anyone care to indicate a corporate VC model that has actually worked well strategically? As far as I remember - could be wrong - even Google's VC arm is there to 'make money first' less so strategic. Or I could be wrong.
Having dealt with both, there is a difference. Corporate M&A is corporate finance. Their teams come from investment banking backgrounds and are not equipped to evaluate early-stage investments. They therefore don’t get pitched them.
Corporate VCs, on the other hand, exist to evaluate young companies and write small checks. The market know that, and therefore shows them early-stage deal flow. (Whether this be founders pitching directly, competitors mentioning them, or investors or their LPs or lawyers getting chatty.) This flow provides different investment and intelligence opportunities from the corporate finance flow.
Practical example: if you’re pitching corporate M&A, it tends to start with an NDA and a data room full of financial models. If you’re pitching a corporate VC, a one-pager and high-level deal terms can kick directly into negotiations.