When courting the best entrepreneurs, corporate VCs should focus on how they can provide unique value — The NBA season is finally underway, after an off-season filled with drama. …

Productive venture capital relationships require time & effort — Most people don’t think about college football during the summer, but it is the heart of the recruiting season. Schools try to get a leg up on the competition to attract the best players. …

Guiding a corporate venture capital group through the early years can be challenging — With the Philadelphia Sixers up by 20 points late in a game I attended recently, Joel Embiid went to the line to shoot free throws. The sell-out crowd, almost none of whom had left early to beat the traffic (for a game against the last place team) chanted in unison…

What start-ups need to know about forging commercial deals with big companies — I recently revisited one of my favorite shows from the 1980s, The Greatest American Hero. If you’re under 45, you may never have heard of it, but the rest of you are probably now humming the theme song, “Believe It or Not.” The premise was that aliens gave an average…

How Corporate VCs Find More Ways to Score — We named our firm Touchdown Ventures and we always enjoy a good sports debate. With the NFL draft approaching, Selina Troesch and I recently argued about which of our favorite college football players would fare better in the NFL. We championed the merits of players from our respective schools: Adoree’…

Or, How Corporate Venture Capital Efforts May Boost Public Stock Share Prices — Co-authored by Scott Lenet with contributions from Selina Troesch We are a little obsessed with demonstrating that corporate venture capital creates value, so we constantly look at data to find patterns that show the benefits of a well-run corporate venture capital (“CVC”) program. …

What College Football Can Teach Us About Corporate Venture Capital — Co-authored with David Horowitz (with contributions from Scott Lenet) Anyone who knows us even a little bit knows that we are huge Michigan football fans. We know way too much about their third string linemen, we spend an inordinate amount of time on recruiting blogs, and we even scheduled our…