CVC Unplugged
Episodes
Advice from a CVC freelancer
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What’s it like to come into corporate VCs from the outside as a contractor? My guest is Bruno Meireles de Sousa, who is an operating parter at Bidra...
Secondaries are breaking into the mainstream
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The whole point of investing is to hopefully get your money back at some point. But what if, as we’ve seen, the usual routes to doing that are effec...
Do we have enough energy to power the AI future?
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The ugly truth behind the AI revolution is that it needs to be powered from somewhere. Every query you make into ChatGPT or DeepSeek of Claude takes e...
Why invest in LatAm
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Latin America is one of the fastest growing regions in the world, with a growing number of unicorns, an increasing array of international investors lo...
Getting rid of bias in the investment process
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Human decision-making – even when a lot of money is at stake, is not always rational. A lot of the time it’s based on intangible factors that infl...
Economic ruts are a good time to double down
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In recent months we’ve seen quite a few corporate VC units either shut down, or get spun off, as their corporate parents grapple with how to deal wi...
Investing in the in-space economy
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Space has historically been the domain of governments – as that has changed and it’s becoming a more private sector-based commercial endeavour, so...
Dealing with an unprecedented demand for power
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Demand on the power grid is not getting any lower, in fact it’s growing faster than ever, and putting real pressure on the existing infrastructure. ...
Protecting critical infrastructure is big business
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The world is becoming, if not a more dangerous place, then perhaps a testier one. Over the past decade or so, we’ve seen an intensifying staccato of...
Canada’s startups navigate the new normal
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Talia Abramowitz, managing partner of Deloitte Ventures, a unit which has made the vast majority of its direct investments in Canadi...
How CVCs can help hard-tech startups
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It is commonly thought that if you’re dealing with deeptech, that means you’re dealing with long horizons and long timelines to make your money ba...
How innovation can keep democracies ahead
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Innovation has long been one of the primary forces shaping power around the world. If your society is innovating, it will be more prosperous, more inf...
Everyone is waiting for IPOs, but will market uncertainty delay them?
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since the end of last year/beginning of this year there’s been quite a bit of optimism that investors will once again be able to count on the public...
The coming Web3 acquisition wave
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If we rewind to 2021, as we were starting to come out of the covid pandemic, there is nowhere you could look without seeing a flurry of investment rou...
rEnergy Partners: Charting a new course as a spun-out cleantech investor
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Greg Zavorotniy, who was managing director at what was then called BayWa Energy Ventures, and is now partner at rEnergy Partners. We...
Cencosud Ventures: Venture clienting should involve skin in the game
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Pilot projects between corporates and startups are a dime a dozen, just about any large corporate can do one. The problem, according to my guest today...
BMW i Ventures: Carmakers must innovate to navigate rapid technology shift
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Investing in automotive is not what it used to be – it has gone far beyond just what makes the car itself better, but of course to the entire ecosys...
Leaps by Bayer: Agtech investors look for zebras, not unicorns.
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you happen to be a human being, chances are you need to eat in order to survive. Agriculture is as crucial an industry to the maintenance of modern...
Argentina’s turbulent economy is a forge for fintech founders
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Investing in fintech is hard wherever you are, but what if where you are is known for its economic and political turbulence? My guest today is Sebasti...
Looking ahead at fintech’s comeback
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The past year has been a big one for fintech startups. The high interest rate environment we’ve been under is slowly easing, along with the uncertai...
We are in another iPhone Cambrian explosion for the chips industry
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For every dollar that is invested in semiconductors, around $3 of economic activity is thought to be generated downstream – and in this case, downst...
Torq hopes to replicate Brazil’s fintech success across LatAm
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Latin America has always been fertile ground for fintech innovation and growth. Combining a young, tech-savvy population and a relative under-penetrat...
Best Nights VC wants people to meet in real life again
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nightlife has changed in recent years. It’s not just the macro-effects of the pandemic – with higher costs of living and young people having less ...
How to get first-of-a-kind cleantech projects off the ground
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve got a bit of a different episode again this week – Fernando sits down with GCV’s editor-in-chief Maija Palmer, who asks him some questions...
M&A and liquidity making a slower comeback in healthcare, but CVCs are stepping up to the plate
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At the beginning of the year, I spoke to Bill Taranto, president of the MSD Global Health Innovation Fund about what he expected over the course of th...
While others are cautious in a slower Brazilian market, L4 wants to be greedy
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The past year has not been the most active for the Brazilian CVC market. High interest rates, lack of sufficient liquidity, and decreased dealflow, am...
How Olympus Innovation Ventures is looking into the human body
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
To fix things in the human body, you have to see them. This is what Olympus does. The legendary Japanese camera-maker, which in recent years divested ...
Opening a new CVC office in the US is not easy – here’s how Lotte Ventures is doing it
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With Lotte Group’s expansion into biotech, it wanted its CVC, Lotte Ventures, to set up a new office in the world’s largest biotech innovation eco...
The US healthcare system has a huge resource shortage. Here’s how small and medium-sized investors can help plug the gap.
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The group of smaller and medium-sized investors has been growing, and their value has never been clearer to founders and co-investors. They tend not t...
Petcare will be a half-trillion-dollar market in the next decade, and its not just treats and toys
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you have a pet, you will no doubt have come across one of Mars Petcare’s brands – Pedigree, Whiskas, Iams, Royal Canin, and many others – it ...
Radical change is needed to fix CVC’s gender problem. Here are some ideas.
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m talking to my colleague Angela Logan, news and production editor at GCV. Angela recently had a very interesting interview with Nichola Bat...
Investing in the hard assets of cleantech – a conversation with TechEnergy Ventures’ Alejandro Solé
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Alejandro Solé, chief investment officer of TechEnergy Ventures, the CVC unit for the energy transition division of Tecpetrol, an e...
Making investing for everyone – a conversation with FISV’s Alokik Advani
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Investment is no longer the exclusive domain of investors. Increasingly sophisticated tools are coming on the market that are giving everyone access t...
Sabanci wants to invest $200m into renewables technology
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Murat Arcan, managing director of Sabanci Climate Ventures, the CVC unit of Sabanci Climate Technologies, the international energy a...
Venture clienting as an entry point for more risk-averse corporates
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As companies are increasingly looking for faster innovation cycles and increased collaboration with startups, but don’t always want the risk associa...
Can mining be at the forefront of the energy transition? A conversation with Vale Ventures’ Bruno Arcadier
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paradoxical though it may seem that an industry as extractive in nature as mining would be so important to making the world more sustainable, that’s...
LatAm is hungrier for venture service providers – a conversation with Innova 360’s Laura Chicurel
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Historically, Latin American corporates, have been risk averse, wanting control, often family-owned, and that has been a barrier to innovation, but th...
Should accelerators chase revenue instead of investment?
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The “typical” accelerator model as we know it – a cohort of young startups that go through some sort of curriculum and hopefully convince invest...
Innovating in an intractable healthcare system
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The US healthcare market is a big, complicated one. It’s fragmented, it’s large, with long sales and feedback cycles, making it difficult to innov...
A year of learning at InMotion Ventures – Mike Smeed returns
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last September, I had the pleasure on this show of speaking to Mike Smeed, managing director of InMotion Ventures, the VC unit of Jaguar Land Rover, w...
The future of payments – a chat with Visa’s David Rolf
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Payments, payments, payments. In a world with a diminishing reliance on cash, payment technology is quite literally making the economy go round. But o...
The Next Wave Webinar: Investing in the changing world of sports
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The world of sports has been seeing some really dramatic shifts in recent years, including huge changes in how sports are consumed – less via the bi...
The transition from academic to entrepreneur
10 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Universities, by their very nature, have always been strong centres of innovation. Scientific discoveries are routinely made in university research la...
Slower and steadier wins the race – Rob Bier’s case against blitzscaling
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Just because you can grow very quickly, doesn’t necessarily mean you should. That’s the argument that Rob Bier, managing partner of Trellis Partne...
Let’s give everyone more control over their finances – A conversation with Hugo Bongers
20 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Financial services permeate every other industry, and is a crucial part of everyone’s lives – whether you’re talking about payments, wealth mana...
How to get startups and corporates to fit together – a conversation with VentureFuel’s Fred Schonenberg
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fred Schonenberg is the founder of VentureFuel, a New York-based advisory firm focused on bringing together startups and large organisations, mainly c...
Universities take a more investor-friendly approach to IP
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the biggest hurdles to getting technology from universities out into the market has been that of intellectual property – who does this techno...
A CVC is like an organ transplant, the body would be wrong to fight it – A conversation with Jeppe Hoier
29 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jeppe Hoier is a long-time venture investor with experience in financial VCs, corporate VCs and on his own as an angel investor, based in Copenhagen, ...
How to effectively manage change and transformation (re-broadcast)
22 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We’re going back into the vault this week! They say that the only constant in life, and business, is change – so how do you manage it effectively?...
The Next Wave Webinar: What does the hospital of the future look like?
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For a while now, there has been a clear trend, for example, of hospital functions like patient monitoring, diagnostics, and other treatments being mov...
Why Cencosud Ventures loves contrarian thinking
08 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The way we buy things has been changing. Supercharged by the pandemic, the digital and physical sides of the retail experience continue to merge, data...
Investing in a strong supply chain
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I speak with two people who know a lot about getting stuff from A to B– Rose Chen, head of innovation investments and partnerships at supply c...
A booming market for secondaries
25 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With valuations down from where they were a couple of years ago, the exit horizons that investors had in mind when they made their original investment...
From automobiles to mobility – how Woven Capital is helping Toyota evolve
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are very few corporates out there that have two CVC funds, Toyota is one of them. Not only does it have an early-stage fund in Toyota Ventures, ...
We should temper our expectations for alternate meat, says Grey Silo Ventures
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For years now, people – myself included – have been waiting for the advent, in earnest, of plant-based meats. Everyone loves a barbeque, but not t...
Corporates underpin over half of all Gen AI investment
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the past year or so has been artificial intelligence and, in particular, generative artificial intelligence, or gen AI. Doesn’t matter ...
A portrait of Sopra Steria’s CVC rebuild
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sopra Steria Ventures, the CVC unit of French IT giant Sopra Steria, has been around for half a decade. After a few years, however, the investment pro...
The Next Wave Webinar: Venture building – how to avoid the common failures
19 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s show is a bit different – instead of a normal conversation, we’re bringing you GCV’s most recent edition of the Next Wave – our mont...
Blair Tritt: Schreiber Foods
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite their products being so ubiquitous anywhere you live in the world, and an integral part of so much of what we eat, the B2B egg, dairy and food...
Bernardita Araya: CMPC Ventures
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most exciting up and coming venture ecosystems in Latin America is that of Chile. In an already innovative and fast growing business enviro...
Kerry Carter
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kerry Carter is an entrepreneur, executive and investor in the area of sports technology, who also happens to be a former professional athlete, having...
Bill Taranto: MSD Global Health Innovation Fund
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Most people think that the Covid-19 pandemic has a supercharging effect on digital health – while that’s certainly true of things like telehealth ...
Jung Lee & T.A. McCann: Pioneer Square Labs
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the past year or so, of course, has been an explosion in demand for all things artificial intelligence. Every company in the world is thi...
Alex Mahr: Stryber
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is a podcast that focuses primarily on the world of corporate venture capital, but as we look at corporate innovation more widely, is CVC the bes...
Ginger Rothrock & Meghan Hunt: HG Ventures
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a company in the industrial sector, you’re going to have a lot of waste. Industrial processes are massively resource-intensive, whether ...
Stéphane Longuet: Convivialité Ventures
27 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many CVCs, because of their parents’ core business, tend to have, for lack of a better term, high-minded or particularly noble missions – whether ...
Hakan Goker & Owen Lozman: M Ventures
20 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Innovation is moving fast across most sectors, but in healthcare we are really seeing how tantalisingly close we are to solving some of our most endur...
Juan Niet: Zacua Ventures
13 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The construction sector continues to face a number of massive challenges – skill and labour shortages, lack of standardisation, regulatory hurdles, ...
Crispin Leick: EnBW New Ventures
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For Crispin Leick, managing director of EnBW New Ventures, a passion for energy technology came early in life, and was supercharged later on when he b...
The Next Wave: Functional foods – Investors are hungry for more
23 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s show is a bit different – instead of a normal conversation, we’re bringing you GCV’s most recent edition of the Next Wave – our mont...
Richard Zeiger: MSW Capital
16 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What precisely is the role of a third-party CVC fund managers in the venture ecosystems of emerging economies? According to Richard Zeiger, general pa...
Owen Thompson: Cambridge Future Tech
09 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We have plenty of knowledge hidden all over the place, with potential for transformational change on important problems, but without the ability to co...
Are IPOs back?
02 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
IPOs are back! With the recent listings of companies like chip manufacturer ARM and delivery app Instacart, we are seeing the resurgence of the public...
Mike Smeed: InMotion Ventures
25 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cars have been on their way to essentially becoming rolling computers for quite some time now. They are better connected, increasingly electrified, an...
Cassio Spina: Alya Ventures
18 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Cassio Spina, founder and lead partner of a new advisory and venture management firm Alya Ventures, which launched earlier this year...
Michelle Gonzalez: M12
11 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Michelle Gonzalez, the global head of Microsoft’s corporate venturing unit, M12. She joined me to talk about the strategic shift t...
Arthur Alves: Gerdau Next Ventures
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Arthur Alves, corporate venture capital manager of Gerdau Next Ventures, the CVC arm of Brazilian steel manufacturer Gerdau. The ven...
Youssef Mawad: JCI Ventures
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Increasingly, buildings are more than just bricks and mortar. Today they’re smarter, they’re more capable, they’re greener, and they’re contin...
Jonny Crowe: Liminal Ventures
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Jonny Crowe, a lawyer by training whose long career has been tied together by one central theme: executing and managing transformati...
Arvind Purushotham: Citi Ventures
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Money, as they say, makes the world go round, and investments in financial services grew forty-fold in the decade between 2011 and 2021, from around $...
Debbie Brackeen: CSAA Insurance
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Every successful business needs a strategy, and every business will need to innovate to survive. Strategy, of course, sets out long-term direction and...
Miles Kirby: Deeptech Labs
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
My guest today is Miles Kirby, CEO of Deeptech Labs, the Cambridge-based accelerator and investor focused, as its name suggests, on deep tech – whic...
Mario Augusto Maia: Cogent Venture Partners
08 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Setting up a corporate venture capital unit comes with a lot of hurdles. You have to deal with a wide range of stakeholders, and you have to find a pl...
Jeffrey Grabow: EY
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The scale and speed with which the venture market has changed over the past year has caused some whiplash for startups and investors alike. All of a s...
Dina Routhier & Michael Mahan – Stanley Ventures
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the interesting shifts that happened during the covid pandemic was in building things. Larger construction projects slowed down while at home ...
Erin VanLanduit: Cargill Ventures
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone needs to eat, and as one of the largest private companies in the world, Cargill has played a large role in providing much of what, at least i...
Raj Singh: JLL Spark Global Ventures
10 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Every business needs a space, but how will those spaces be valued in the future? Commercial real estate is in the beginning stages of some important c...
Lukasz Garbowski: Btomorrow Ventures
03 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Btomorrow Ventures (BTV), the venturing unit of British American Tobacco, is a CVC unlike the rest, in the sense that While the typical aim of corpora...
Brian Walsh: Wind Ventures
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to grant “unfair” access to a region? That’s what Wind Ventures, the venture capital arm of Chilean energy company Copec, want...
Brian Schettler: HorizonX
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Spinning a fund out of the corporate parent’s umbrella can be a tricky process. If done right, though, you can end up with a situation where you can...
Investing in defence tech
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There has never been a more crucial time to invest in technologies related to defence and security. War in Ukraine and growing geopolitical tensions b...
Paul Asel: NGP Capital
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The world is changing, along with the way we look at it and experience it – this includes a merging of the physical world and the virtual one. This ...
Andrew Chang: United Airlines Ventures
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Air travel is a notoriously hard to decarbonise sector. Next to heavy industry, aviation is the poster child for widespread carbon emissions. For Unit...
Andrew Ferguson: Databricks Ventures
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If it hasn’t already been clear for at least the past decade, there is certainly no doubt of it today: data runs the world. It… The post Andrew Fe...
Last Year in Data
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
I’m joined by GCV’s Kaloyan Andonov, an analyst and reporter who also happens to be a resident data guru, and has put together an extensive… The...
Dan Ateya: RTX Ventures
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Happy New Year! For our first episode of 2023, one thing is clear – defence is not a business like any other, for obvious reasons.… The post Dan A...
The Next Wave: Investing Beyond Earth – Spacetech
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It is our last episode of GVR for the year! To close out 2022, we’re bringing you a recording of a conversation on one of… The post The Next Wave:...
Oil and Gas Investment
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In all likelihood, you will be acutely aware of the energy crisis we are experiencing virtually all over the world. What you may be less… The post O...
Should CVCs want more independence?
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean for a corporate venturing unit to be independent? Is that a structural dimension or a cultural one? What are the benefits… The pos...
The collapse of FTX – where next for crypto?
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve got a big, ongoing story that’s been causing serious ripples across one of the fastest growing industries of the past few years. FTX, the…...