Rocket Fuel
How we work with Value Creation at Maersk Growth🚀
This is the first in a series of articles detailing how Maersk Growth creates value as a strategic investor.
- More than 100,000 customers
- A global brand with offices in +130 countries
- Data covering ~20% of global trade
- 80,000 industry experts around the world
This is the true value that Maersk Growth can offer the companies in our portfolio. And in this post, we’re going to talk about how we work with them to unlock it.
As a strategic investor, we don’t just provide funding for our startups; every dollar we invest is augmented by our expertise and a plug-in to global trade via Maersk.
Or as we like to call it, Rocket Fuel🚀⛽
Before getting into specifics about how we unlock our value-add, we’d like to talk a little bit about the structure of our team.
When we set up Maersk Growth in 2017, we designed the decision-making and workflow structure to look, and feel, like any conventional early-stage fund investor, anchored with our Investment Team.
Additionally, to emphasize the strategic collaboration and help realize synergies with Maersk, we built a dedicated value creation team to actively support in identifying and executing on joint projects with our portfolio.
Our broad expertise in logistics and supply chain is the starting point for everything we do. This influences all our activities, from our investment themes to our assessment criteria, and eventually the most significant thing of all…
How we create unique value for each company in our portfolio.
Each startup receives a unique benefit from Maersk. Some startups benefit from our brand reach, others from our vast data and platforms, and yet others from the physical assets at our disposal.
In fact, we’ve split our potential value-creation into five key areas. We call it the A, B, C, D, E approach.
To determine what kind of value-creation advantage our startups need, we engage in constant open dialogue.
This begins during the investment process when a dedicated portfolio manager has an in-depth conversation with the startup about their needs, challenges and opportunities. We talk about how we can support them, and how we can bring the right stakeholders into the conversation.
Then, during a kick-off at deal close, we jointly agree on which activities to prioritize. We go deeper into the startup’s objectives, and discuss the various options at Maerks’s disposal. This enables us to agree on the specific value-added activities we will explore together with Maersk and the startup.
Now, the real work starts. As well as determining priorities, the value creation manager actively manages all value-creation activities, from start to finish.
Through workshops, the two sides establish exactly where Maersk Growth will inject its value-add. Then the portfolio manager follows up with stakeholders on a weekly or monthly basis, to ensure targets are being met and escalate when things aren’t moving forward as agreed.
Ultimately, our goal is to create a genuine partnership with, and for, all the startups we invest in.
There can be a degree of trepidation when engaging with corporates, especially a global multinational like Maersk. When done right, however, we can leverage the skill, speed and agility of a startup, coupled with the reach and resources of a truly global business. We believe this delivers more than the sum of the parts — for all stakeholders.
Our portfolio now encompasses more than 20 companies, and each of them has gained something unique from our partnership. We have provided them with everything from branding support and expert calls to joint product development, customer introductions and API integrations.
Here are some examples:
And this is only the start…
Over the next few months, we’ll share a series of deep dives, detailing how we’ve partnered with companies in our portfolio to add ‘rocket fuel’ to their growth and create synergies with us.
We would love to hear from you👋
If you’ve got a great idea and you’d like to discuss it, email us at dealflow@maersk.com. If we think your venture could be truly disruptive, we can use our global access to help you reach your potential.
💙This article was brought to you by the Value Creation team:
- Peter Friis, Head of Value Creation
- Taiyo Jønsson, Sr. Associate, Value Creation
- Philip Adrian, Sr. Associate, Value Creation
- Julia Kositzki, Associate, Value Creation
