Adaptation to new market circumstances and fast innovation to solve current challenges has proven to be difficult for large organisations. Corporates can be seen as Elephants, heavy, secure and loaded with governance requirements. The Venture Generator believes that impactful innovations for Corporates can be realized considerably faster in a lean and disruptive startup environment. The Elephant dancing with the Mouse.
Combining the Corporate and Startup is a challenge that needs careful guidance. Since 2015 the Venture Generator has built powerful companies and conducted cooperation to realize impactful innovations for Corporates.
Read below the stories of our 1.0 successes. Or switch to our 2.0 initiative: the “Masters of Scale” which we started Summer 2019. Interested to learn more and meet our new team ?
What we do:
We design startups for Corporates by finding innovative, promising ideas from within the Corporate. Taking them out of the company, surround the idea with highly educated young startup entrepreneurs, together we foster the idea in a 3-months Proof of Concept period. We closely work in a team of entrepreneurs, Corporate and the Venture Generator. The result of this phase is a POC that will be presented to the Corporate management board.
The Corporate can decide if they see enough potential value in the proposition to invest in the startup as the first, arms-length Seed Investor. This will give the startup the resources to quickly build a power-team and develop the first commercial products. At the same time the Corporate will be the launching customer and could have a limited exclusivity period.
A new startup has been built and is fully ready to go.
Reference case: Peeeks
Together with Dutch commodity company Eneco we built startup Peeeks and developed an energy trading platform that enabled energy companies to quickly adapt to changing energy needs. Since the start in 2015, Peeeks successfully adapted to changing market situations and has been acquired by Eneco in 2017.
Reference case: Dutch Analytics
Beginning 2016, BAM Rail Infra reached out to the Venture Generator to check their innovative ideas on avoiding unplanned train delays in the Dutch railway system. As a maintenance contractor for Prorail BAM planned to implement an AI based solution to give them insights on the health of track switches and predictions on upcoming disturbances in the railtrack. The Venture Generator reccruited the young team of entrepreneurs and surrounded them with an experienced team while delivering a promising Proof of Concept. By the end of 2016 the new startup, Dutch Analytics, kicked off and has been successful since then. As of 2019 the company is expanding internationally after taking on funding from BAM Infra Rail and Global Founders Capital.
Reference case: Venture Café
Coming from Boston, US and sponsored by the Municipality of Rotterdam, the social initiative Venture Café aimed to land at Rotterdam. Venture Café being the sister of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) targets to connect local innovators to build innovative initiatives in the Central District of Rotterdam. From the start at late 2015 until today, the weekly Thursday Gathering has over 300 visitors.