Ziv Ragowsky: Corporate Venture Myths, Why Innovation Fails & How Startups Survive Inside Conglomerates – E671
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
25 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 18 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
On day one, the corporate has taken a lot of risk. We've taken some risk. The founder is not taking any risk in this model. But as the time goes on and the founders achieve success is the risk in the corporate, in fact. And so making that flow back is what we try to facilitate by being as involved and having this constant discussion with the corporates and whatnot.
Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on Success. I'm Jeremy O, Venture Capitalist, Sarah founder, Harvard MBA, science fiction nerd, and dad of two daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.bravesea.com. Stay well and stay brave. Hey Ziv, good to see you. I'm fascinated to have your story here, a little bit about Indonesia, but also about Compert Vagin building, which is something people are still thinking about, right? And so, Ziv, could you uh kind of introduce yourself?
Yes, my name is Ziv. I'm from the United States. Moved to Jakarta in 2014 after an NCL MBA. Left consulting in two thousand fourteen to do a startup. I was an angel in a very small agri tech startup and then became the CEO in two thousand fourteen. That brought me to Myanmar for three years, which is where I started doing More corporate venture building, was partnering with a local agri player and built a cash in, cash out system, scaled their microfinance, et cetera. Came back to Indonesia in two thousand and seventeen, work across a couple of things, you know, with one of the large corporates here, ended up doing Corporate venture building for them as well. left in twenty nineteen with a lot of learnings as such and started in twenty nineteen corporate venture builder called Right Partners, together with two partners.
One of them his name is Arnold Egg out of Indonesia as well. One of the original founders of Docopagus that sold to OLX and then set up Ovo. And that we've been operating ever since.
Yeah, fantastic. And, you know, Ziv, I, you know, want to talk a little bit about your prior career history because I think it's quite fascinating. Well, one of the interesting things is that, you know, you were working at Ciner Mask, right? Which is, you know, you're working at their corporate ventures, et cetera. So can you share a little bit more about what the experience was like?
So I was working across a couple of areas within Cinemas. One was their at that time they had a accelerate, which was kind of an incubator slash accelerator, right? And it was interesting because there were a lot of things to do, but working a bit from internal, a lot of things to overcome. Right. And those were a bit of our inspiration later for how we built that, right? Which is to then figure out how it is to bypass some of these walls to create impact was one lesson. I then moved to one of their startups on the other side of cinemas called Busy. That's where I met Arnold Eck. And there it was slightly more proper startup, but she still required quite a heavy interface with the mothership. And that was difficult to achieve.
Right. You know, and so for a variety of reasons. Inertia, corporate politics. The most important thing, which is I think is less controversial that people often misunderstand about it, is that when you build a brand new venture in a corporate. For the first few years of the venture, it's actually going to be meaningless for the organization. Because you're dealing with organizations that are billions of dollars in revenues and whatnot. And you're trying to build something that with your best aspirations is going to have one, two, ten, thirty million dollars of revenues in the next five to six years. And so to expect most organizations to be able to support that in the early days becomes super difficult.
And I think that is actually. one of the biggest hurdles for venture building, which is actually
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:28
2
What is the background of Ziv Ragowsky and how did he get into corporate venture building?
4:28–4:53
3
Why do early‑stage ventures feel irrelevant inside billion‑dollar corporations?
4:53–5:18
4
How does over‑promising innovation create failure incentives for corporate ventures?
5:18–9:47
5
When should a company choose to build a new venture instead of buying an existing startup?
9:47–16:19
6
How do lean venture budgets protect future funding and keep startups investable?
16:19–19:51
7
Why do corporate‑heavy cap tables scare investors and founders?
19:51–22:21
8
How does founder‑led governance attract venture capital in corporate ventures?
22:21–25:30
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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