Diary of a recovering consultant
Once railroaded by Powerpoint to building digital businesses from the coalface
The world of consulting seemed so glamorous to me at one point. At such an early stage in my career, I was exposed to some of the largest companies in the world and the projects I worked on were both rewarding and challenging, yet at some point, I wanted more.
After some careful consideration, I made the uncommon leap from ideating in a top consultancy to building corporate ventures (co-creations) at FoundersLane. I have always been a practical hands-on approach type of person, and the idea of building a new business from scratch appealed immensely to me.
In this article, I would like to discuss some of the main differences I noticed and what has changed in my day-to-day tasks. Still, when I talk to many people, they have no idea what a corporate venture builder does. So you are a tour guide? Oh, you work in construction? Do you build businesses or something? At least that last one is getting close. But what a corporate venture builder does is very, very different from a business builder, which I will also touch on later in this article.
Strategy vs. Execution
After several years in consulting I quickly realised that most of my output was Powerpoint packed with roadmaps and strategic recommendations. I did this time and time again, repackaging the content to suit different blue-chip clients.
Of course, a good strategy is fundamental but it’s just the start. Luckily, I experienced some projects in which we also took over the execution part.
In venture building, execution is at the core of everything you do. Despite this, huge care is given to adhering to the strategic direction of the project. The shared vision and mission of the co-creation partner, above all, must be the backbone of the venture building process.
“Consulting makes you an efficient highly structured problem-solver, one who thinks strategically, but creating something new, changing the status quo was my desire.”
Structure vs. opportunity
In the classic top tier consultancy, your career is structured, as a result, you benefit from mentorship, a clear career path, and regular performance reviews. And, if you ever have any technical questions there is always an expert at hand. One aspect of consulting that always frustrated me was being assigned to one stream and that’s your faith — your path to walk.
Accordingly, the defined structures create a hierarchy, wherein most situations titles matter more than ingenuity. Every now and then, in brainstorming sessions, ideas would pass fluidly, but the decision-making came from the top, which narrows the filter for novel ideation.
Contrast that to working in a startup co-creation, where you are expected to wear multiple hats and can actively contribute to areas outside of your domain to improve the company as a whole. Your scope of impact is much broader.
“If you’re starting something on your own, you better have a passion for it, because this is hard work.” ~Sallie Krawcheck, Co-founder of Ellevest
Advising vs. selling
The fundamental role of a consultant is to be an analytical, data-driven advisor and provide recommendations to your clients. Before moving up the ranks no selling is involved.
As an entrepreneur, you need to sell your product, the idea and the team. In time, you learn to become a master at pitching. And this is a key distinction. While a consultant is paid up to deliver a solution, a corporate venture builder has to convince usually the CEO and board that the startup co-creation will work. And, you are passionate about it working, because you share the risk, the equity, and eventually build the venture together. You can’t just deliver a solution and walk away. This is yours as much as it is theirs.
Business building vs corporate venture building
A business builder is a business model to promote the self-sustaining revenue growth of early-stage tech startups, involving sales and marketing, strategic and operational support, as well as admin and legal. The model aims to fill a gap in the market between accelerators, business incubators and traditional funding models, such as venture capital or angel investment.
The focus of the business builder is to develop a go-to-market strategy to drive sales and marketing, allowing the startup to generate revenue earlier on, letting the technical founders concentrate on product development.
Corporate venture building involves finding white space opportunities together with large established companies. We provide them with a speedboat to test new products and markets, creating a nimble, moveable co-creation, so they can digitalise without having to manoeuvre the ocean liner themselves. The ventures we build are always strategically relevant to the business i.e creating Solytic — a cleantech startup — with Vattenfall to ease their transition into clean energy.
One huge difference between a business builder and corporate venture builder like FoundersLane is the equity share; once the co-creation is ready for the market. What does that mean? It means rather than venture building as a service, we are motivated to make sure the new high-tech venture succeeds, whether that is a B2B marketplace or a standalone digital vehicle.
Lessons I learned
- Be bold take risks and get your hands dirty
- Go for 100% impact first / forget about 100% detail
- Listen and talk to your customers and test (get feedback as early as possible)
- Make decisions with incomplete information (a good decision today is better than a slightly better decision in 2 weeks time)
- Ask for forgiveness, not permission (try new things and break rules, drive changes in industries, customer habits and laws)
- Constantly adapt & change to new conditions/ environment
- Measure your success/ outcome in learning and understanding customer problems
- Be visionary and try to solve the big problems
In brief, I wouldn’t be a corporate venture builder today, if I hadn’t previously been a consultant. Though my colleagues come from all different backgrounds (mostly entrepreneurs), I bring the structured mindset of a consultant with the execution skills of an entrepreneur.
Ready to build the next corporate co-creation.
Please reach out to me if you are leading digital change at your business and want to find out what is possible.
