Analysts on the interaction of major corporations with startups

Original author: 500 Startups and INSEAD
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10 facts in favor of the acumen of the largest corporations.



1. Traditional venture capital funds are no longer the only sources of financing startups. For example, in one of the investment rounds (round E), DocuSign raised funds from corporations such as SalesForce, Google, Recruit, Mitsui & Co, BBVA, NTT Dacoma, Telstra and MKI.

2. Most of the startups (61.7%) mentioned by the Wall Street Journal, whose market value exceeds $ 1 billion, received financial support from at least one corporation (not including investment companies and banks).

3. Corporations invest not only in their subsidiaries and companies operating in the same industry. For example, Coca-Cola’s funds received the Spotify music streaming service.

4. Corporations that have their own R&D departments are slowly starting to cooperate with startups. Every 9 out of 10 such corporations that spend large sums on research and development work with startups.

5. Not only companies like Google are investing heavily in startups. Ordinary companies do this. For example, the insurance company Ping An Insurance Group has a unit called Ping An Ventures that invests in young companies.

6. At the moment, it is France (not the United States) that occupies the first place in the number of large corporations (23 out of 25) cooperating with startups.

7. Investing in startups involves not only joint cooperation. ProSieben-Sat.l Media AG, through its venture division Seven-Ventures, provides advertising time in exchange for profits or equity securities.

8. Currently, not only technology corporations are involved in creating business incubators, as one of the most popular ways to help startups. Diageo has created the Distill Ventures business incubator to generate new brand concepts.

9. Companies cooperate with startups not only alone. Many world famous corporations often come together. A striking example is the Ecomobility Ventures fund, created by five corporations (Air Li-quide, Michelin, Orange, SNCF and Total).

10. 68 of the 100 ForbesGlobal 500 listed companies

are collaborating with startups . 11 examples of collaboration between startups and corporations

1. Sprint, RIGA, Kaplan, Microsoft, Disney, Barclays, Qualcomm and METRO own Techstars-based business incubators.

2. Johnson & Johnson shares its coworking center with Jlabs Research Laboratory.

3. Stripe (payment startup service) received investments from Visa and American Express.

4. Coca-Cola collaborates with entrepreneurs through the Coca-Cola Founders platform.

5. Startups themselves finance startups. For example, a Twilio startup has created a special unit of Twilio Fund for these purposes.

6. Monsanto and Syngenta have established investment units called Monsanto Growth Ventures and Syngenta Ventures.

7. Bouygues Immobilier, a real estate company in France, has a BIRD venture division.

8. Investments of the world's largest telecom and Internet company Softbank received Alibaba, Snapdeal, Tokopedia, GrabTaxi, Gilt Group, RenRen, Yahoo.

9. SalesForce investments were received by DocuSign, Box, Apptus, MongoDB, Evernote, Twilio.

10. Even the oldest brands in the world have venture capital divisions. For example, LVMH has L Capital.

11. Even CIA has an In-Q-Tel venture division, which invested in Facebook in the early stages of its development.

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