Venture capitalists invested more than $6 billion in agriculture technology startups as part of an overall record year — Predictions about venture capital diverged from reality in 2020, as PitchBook summarized last July. At the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020, many of us anticipated that funding activity would slow down amidst the uncertainty of lockdowns, social distancing, and strains on the healthcare system. However, 2020 proved…

An analysis of whether leading companies are founded during stock downturns — In August of 2020, I published research inspired by a 2009 Kauffman Foundation study that is frequently referenced by investors to support the idea that Fortune 500 companies are founded in economic downturns. In this research, I distinguished between recessions and bear markets to isolate the effect of each type…

Is it true that more Fortune 500 companies are founded during economic contractions? — Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, investors in our network have speculated about the prospects for newly formed startups. Have we entered a period where fewer companies worthy of our capital would be founded, or more? On June 8th, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced that the U.S. economy…

Year 3 update on corporate venture capital programs’ potential impact on public stock price performance — Executives express a common concern when considering a corporate venture capital (“CVC”) unit: namely, market perception. Stock price is one potential sign of that perception, so two years ago we began studying the stock price of public companies with CVCs. Last year’s analysis of U.S. based public corporations on the…

A majority of venture-backed IPOs have corporate investors — Many venture capitalists consider an IPO to be the most prestigious type of exit for their portfolio companies. Public offerings are rare and lucrative — according to NVCA and Pitchbook’s Q4 2018 Venture Monitor report, 10% of venture-backed exits in 2018 were IPOs, but these IPOs represented $63.6 billion of…

Stock Price Performance in the 1st Year of a Corporate Venture Capital Program — Data from Insead shows that corporate venture capital (“CVC”) programs operate, on average, for only four years. With this short lifespan, it makes sense that corporate executives might experience trepidation when considering launching a venture capital effort. In addition to the capital, time, and other resources required to start an…

Revisiting whether a corporate venture capital program may have a positive effect on stock price performance — Well-run corporate venture capital (“CVC”) units can deliver many benefits to their parent companies. A year ago, we hypothesized that CVC efforts could positively impact corporate stock price, because of the long term benefits of venture capital investing. Our analysis showed that the stock price of the median U.S. corporation…

Minority investment governance tips for corporate VCs — One of Touchdown’s corporate partners asked us how corporate venture units typically approach board governance, and we noticed a lack of data to demonstrate the best practices in the industry. So we conducted a survey to collect first-hand information about how corporate venture professionals staff portfolio company boards and how…

How the Stock Price Performance of CVC Parent Companies Varies with the Age of the Venture Capital Effort — We constantly seek data to support our hypothesis that a well-run corporate venture capital (“CVC”) unit provides the parent corporation with a variety of benefits. In January, we published a study of the stock price performance of U.S. companies with CVC units compared to the performance of the market. That…