next47’s new Managing Partner: From the Valley with a Vision
Lak Ananth is a Pathfinder. Well, no longer by name but certainly still by nature. As of the 14th November, Lakshmikanth Ananth will become the head of next47, leaving his position at Pathfinder, the venture capital and partnership unit of Hewlett Packard Enterprise to take on a new challenge. We sat down with him to find out more about the man and his mission.
Lak, what’s your background and what brought you to next47?
I am joining next47 from Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, HPE’s venture and partnership vehicle. After being part of the industry for more than 20 years, I now look forward to contributing my background and knowledge to next47. I consider next47 an historic opportunity to create value both for startups and for Siemens as our parent company. With many market-changing technology shifts ahead, next47 has the potential to spearhead innovation and establish a new kind of collaboration.
What is your personal vision of next47?
next47 has the potential to be a unique innovation catalyst for three groups: the startup community, our parent company Siemens, and customers who are hungry for innovation to transform their businesses. next47’s purpose is not just to create a sandbox for innovation, but to find and scale businesses that will help Siemens stay ahead. And we have to deliver on that promise.
As a Siemens subsidiary, we have both an external and an internal vision. The external vision is to be the world’s premium address for ventures between corporates and startups, as well as a role model for open innovation. The internal vision is to shape Siemens’ core businesses of tomorrow. A decisive factor will be the team’s ability to find opportunities and engage with the Siemens ecosystem. My personal vision is to position next47 as the perfect facilitator to blend the best of these two worlds.
How do you plan to breathe life into next47’s mission?
What we really need is a new era of collaboration between young and mature enterprises that is based on mutual respect and the will to provide answers to the big questions of our time in terms of technology and in society. Fortunately, the notion of collaboration is not new to us. We have some very good programs to build on and a lot of experience with startups.
What does it take to lead next47?
next47’s goal is to invigorate the entrepreneurial mindset with courage and curiosity. Having the courage to explore new technologies and tap uncharted territory, as well as the curiosity to keep on exploring. To enable this mindset, next47’s partners must enjoy the freedom to act in a quick and agile manner in order to seize their opportunities.
Secondly, it takes a strong organization to deliver value. We are starting by bringing together amazing people and teams that have worked with the entrepreneurial ecosystem for the last 20 years. These teams will evolve toward what we need to accomplish as next47. The leadership team will focus on the five innovation fields.
A third success factor will be our credibility toward Siemens. There has to be ongoing dialogue to enable us to use the ecosystem as our biggest asset and provide value.
What key performance indicators will make next47 successful?
next47 has been set up to be a success. Our initial investment horizon is five years. With regard to the innovation fields it will address, the speed of growth and volumes of investment will vary significantly, based on how market transitions and innovations develop. The key performance indicator will be our ability to spot developments and upcoming opportunities at the right time and be quick enough to position next47 as the partner of choice. Moreover, another KPI will be our ability to make the best use possible of Siemens’ extensive resources, provide the right use cases to take innovations to market, scale fast and develop joint solutions with our customers.
What will next47 offer to startups?
next47 will make Siemens as accessible as a small and nimble company for our startup partners while bringing the awesome customer trust, reach, and knowledge of a large company to the table — characteristics that include global presence, name recognition in regional markets, customer access, proprietary use cases, and prototyping paired with deep vertical know-how, to name just a few.
We have the ability to form a great business from just an idea in a short time. For instance, we have enabled a robotics business to develop eight generations of hardware within less than a year. We can offer access to some of the world’s most sought-after clients, including Siemens.
Want to hear more from the man at the helm? Watch the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCn08dpTewc&feature=youtu.be
