Latest Episodes
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Blair Tritt: Schreiber Foods
Listen nowDespite 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 sectors are among the least digitised out there. What this has opened up is a lot of space for startups to make a big impact. Schreiber Foods is one of the largest dairy products producers in the world, supplying stores, restaurants and other food providers all over the world. Almost exactly a year ago, The Wisconsin-based food giant launched its corporate venture capital fund, focusing primarily on next generation supply chain and sustainability.
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Bernardita Araya: CMPC Ventures
Listen nowOne of the most exciting up and coming venture ecosystems in Latin America is that of Chile. In an already innovative and fast growing business environment, corporate VCs are sprouting up left and right across the country, and funds are increasing in size. One such CVC, which announced the launch of its $100m fund late last year, is CMPC, the pulp and paper company that is one of the largest companies in the country, which will use its venturing arm to tackle problems related to sustainability, single-use plastic reduction, novel construction and packaging materials and more.
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Kerry Carter
Listen nowKerry Carter is an entrepreneur, executive and investor in the area of sports technology, who also happens to be a former professional athlete, having played in the National Football League and the Canadian Football League before making a jump to the world of business and currently sits as chief operating officer of Atavus, a sportstech company focused on the mechanics of tackling.
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Bill Taranto: MSD Global Health Innovation Fund
Listen nowMost people think that the Covid-19 pandemic has a supercharging effect on digital health – while that’s certainly true of things like telehealth services, is it necessarily the case for the rest of the sector? Maybe not, according to today’s guest – but independent of Covid, digital health is a booming area. Joining me today is Bill Taranto, President of MSD Global Health Innovation Fund – as it’s known outside North America – to talk about his outlook on the healthcare space – particularly in digital health – in the coming year and the shifts in the venture market.
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Jung Lee & T.A. McCann: Pioneer Square Labs
Listen nowThe 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 thinking about how their business, processes, or products can be improved with the addition of AI across all levels, and all are looking for applications relevant to them.
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Alex Mahr: Stryber
Listen nowThis 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 best tool available to bring innovation into a larger organisation? According to this week’s guest, Alex Mahr, co-founder and managing partner of venture-building firm Stryber, the answer is no, or at least not necessarily. Having worked in corporate innovation for many years in a number of capacities including consultant, corporate VC, and now venture building, he sees corporate VC as perhaps a suboptimal tool to rely on, at least in isolation.
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Ginger Rothrock & Meghan Hunt: HG Ventures
Listen nowIf you’re a company in the industrial sector, you’re going to have a lot of waste. Industrial processes are massively resource-intensive, whether it’s water or other raw materials, and what you get out the other side is not just the finished product itself, but literally tons of waste byproduct that needs somewhere to go. What is becoming increasingly clear is that in and around that waste, is a lot of money. Anyone who comes up with technology that can effectively help large industrials reduce the amount of waste they produce, maximise the yield they can get from their inputs, and extract useful things from their waste, will find financial reward.
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Stéphane Longuet: Convivialité Ventures
Listen nowMany CVCs, because of their parents’ core business, tend to have, for lack of a better term, high-minded or particularly noble missions – whether that’s saving the planet from climate change, or humanity from disease, or anything else that may in some way contribute to the saving of the world – but then you have some investor who just want you to have a grand old time with the people you care about. That’s what Convivialité Ventures, the CVC unit of Pernod Ricard, aims to do.
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Hakan Goker & Owen Lozman: M Ventures
Listen nowInnovation is moving fast across most sectors, but in healthcare we are really seeing how tantalisingly close we are to solving some of our most enduring health problems, and we’re advancing at a fast clip. We talk about the leaps and bounds that we’ve come over the past decade in treating and finding cures for notorious ailments, how patient selection is an often overlooked but crucial part of the drug discovery process, and why we should be optimistic about our ongoing combat against disease.
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Juan Niet: Zacua Ventures
Listen nowThe construction sector continues to face a number of massive challenges – skill and labour shortages, lack of standardisation, regulatory hurdles, and a massive carbon footprint, to name just a few. Zacua Ventures, the construction-tech focused VC firm launched last year by three alumni of construction CVC units, aims to alleviate them.