Nov 11, 2025

Nov 11, 2025 • Kim Moore Many corporate VC investment teams hire entrepreneurs for their ability to connect with startups, but it is not a job for all founders. Building the right corporate venturing team means everything, CVC veteran Bill Taranto, who founded US pharmaceutical firm MSD’s VC investment unit, said in a recent op-ed for Global Corporate Venturing . A blend of talents, from visionaries, financial wizards, strategists, tech scouts and legal mavens is essential for building a winning team, according to Taranto. Former startup founders can be a good asset in this mix. They know the challenges that startups face and can act as a bridge between the corporate hierarchy and founders seeking investment. In fact, several of GCV’s Rising Stars and Emerging Leaders in corporate venturing are former founders. But, going from founder to CVC is not for everyone. Founders are used to making decisions quickly and independently. They may find that working inside a large corporate with its myriad rules and layered governance structures saps their enthusiasm and leaves them too frustrated to thrive. They may even be more prone to take more unwanted, risky bets than a corporate financial type. Which begs the question: Could having a founder on the team actually end up being a liability? The importance of being empathetic One of the biggest advantages of having a former founder team member is their ability to empathise with the leaders of investee companies. Because they have built businesses themselves, they know what the founder is going through and, some argue, this makes them a better startup investor. Ginger Rothrock, senior director at HG Ventures, the corporate venture arm of US industrial company The Heritage Group, says her experience of cofounding a business makes her a better board member of portfolio companies in her role as a corporate investor. As a founder, she saw how VC investors could undermine the confidence of a startup’s leadership by threatening to get rid of them. “I observed sometimes veiled threats to the CEO in a way that was unproductive to the leadership, which is so critical to the company,” says Rothrock, who co-founded in 2005 Liquidia Technologies, a nanotech-based startup, which is now a public company. “It’s really important to keep in mind that CEOs are working hard. They are generally trying to do good things, and to have them even be afraid to attend a board meeting is not appropriate.” She also feels she has more empathy as a former founder for the highs and lows that startup CEOs go through. This has made her more cognisant of letting people down gently. “Sometimes you’ll see a founder who has been on the road for a really long time, and they haven’t gotten a connection. Sometimes it is about letting people down the nice and easy way, because you can just tell they are having a tough day,” says Rothrock. “We can say we are not just a bunch of, and no offence to MBAs, but we are not just a bunch of business folks who work on Excel spreadsheets all day. We have been in the trenches and built [companies].” Ginger Rothrock, senior director, HG Ventures Having a former founder on the team can also differentiate you as an investor in the competitive market for the best deals, she says. “We can say we are not just a bunch of, and no offence to MBAs, but we are not just a bunch of business folks who work on Excel spreadsheets all day. We have been in the trenches and built [companies].” But, at the same time, being a founder also can make you biased in the technology scouting process, she admits. “That is something that as a founder you need to be aware of – that you will have biases because you made mistakes. I do always have that in the back of my mind when I see somebody who I surmise is starting to make the same mistakes that I made.” What is the best make-up for a CVC team? Being a startup founder on the CVC team can also risk making that team member overly empathetic to fellow startup CEOs. It can be tempting for some former founders to be more on the side of the startup than the corporate, whose interests the CVC ultimately represents. “In CVC, you have to transition from being empathetic to founders to being empathetic to the ecosystem. You have to include more stakeholders in that ecosystem,” says Kyle Tsai, investment manager at Wayra Capital, the CVC arm of Spanish telecoms company Telefónica. Tsai founded Alcohonly, a Taiwanese wine e-commerce platform, in 2020. The business was acquired by a Japanese beer brand. “I want to help these founders grow, but at the same time, there are a lot of scenarios that are very frustrating – there is a lot of internal change, reorganisation, change of strategy on an annual basis. But it is same with startups. They also iterate even more quickly. You have to get the sentiment for both sides,” says Tsai. Making the founder head of the CVC There are several examples of former startup heads successfully leading corporate venture units. Tom Lounibos, managing partner at Accenture Ventures, the corporate VC arm of the accounting and consulting firm, is one of these. Lounibos, who is retiring this month , founded several software companies which were eventually acquired. He joined Accenture because he liked the idea of being able to have an impact on a large, global organisation. He also felt that corporate investors play a unique role in helping shorten the time it takes for founders to find product market fit, enabling them to maintain more equity in their startup. Lounibos argues investors with a financial background tend to be linear thinkers, concerned with getting from A to B. But founders need to pivot and adapt, and the best investors know how to do both. It can also be frustrating for founders to adapt to the slower pace of decision-making involved in corporate venturing. It is not suited to every founder. “I joke that most founders are founders because they are not good employees,” says Lounibos. “You have to put your ego aside when you join a corporate environment, which is a difficult thing for most,” he says. The essential role of the go-between Former entrepreneurs can act a good go-between for startups who decide to take investment from a corporate, setting realistic expectations about the investment process and keeping the parent attuned to the needs of the startup founder. Ben Haskell, principal at Lam Capital, the investment unit of Lam Research, a supplier of wafer-fabrication equipment to the semiconductor sector, says that as a former founder he has a good grasp of what founders look for in a strategic investor. In 2005 Haskell co-founded Inlustra Technologies, a deep tech startup which closed down after seven years. When he led the startup, he wanted to have a strategic investor but ended up with a partner that didn’t work out. “We chose the wrong strategic partner, and it ended up proving quite costly. We really needed to find a good strategic partner to be successful. That should have been our path to market,” says Haskell. That experience has informed his approach to tech scouting. He stays attuned to the needs of the startup as well as to the corporate parent. “I really try to look at how this could fit together for our best interest and for theirs. I am better capable of envisioning what the win from their side might be. And it’s not just about the revenue that the company might make or the improved valuation they might be able to get. It’s about the experience that they may have working with our company,” says Haskell. Corporate venture teams that haven’t worked in the startup world may not be aware of the lasting impact they can have on startups by changing strategy or dumping an investment. Thiago Iglesias, head of Torq Ventures, the investment arm of Evertec, a Chilean financial services company, says he talks to the leaders at the corporate about the consequences of its investment decisions. Keeping the corporate on the straight and narrow “I make them understand that if we do this and then we decide to shift, it could have a big impact on the startups. I mean, they could fail because of what we did,” says Iglesias, who co-founded Keenesys, a cloud-based software company, in 2013. He also impresses on management the reputational risk to the company if it shifts focus, leaving its portfolio companies in the lurch. Corporate executives may not be as aware of this risk if they haven’t worked in startup ecosystem. The founder community is close, says Iglesias, and startup CEOs will spread the word to each other to avoid investment from a corporate if they didn’t have a good experience. “If you don’t pay enough attention, or you don’t show that you care for the startup or for the entrepreneurs, there is going to be word of mouth about that, and it is going to have an impact of future investments that you are going to want to make,” says Iglesias. “It’s a close community and we as founders want to help one another. There is a lot of, oh be careful with that company, they say they will do something but there is no roll out,” he says. Most founders say that working in CVC will help them become a better startup leader if they decide to go back into that ecosystem. It teaches them how corporate investors approach startup funding and how they can benefit from commercial partnerships with a large corporate brand. “My experience in corporate venture capital has made me a stronger, more effective founder,” says Austin Hwang, a former founder who is now principal at ADVentures, the newly formed CVC of US chipmaker Analog Devices. “I’ve built a network of trusted advisors for candid feedback and gained firsthand insight into corporate decision-making. This perspective helps me set more realistic expectations, navigate complex organisations, and connect with the right people to drive initiatives forward.” Tsai at Wayra says working in CVC has given him a much more comprehensive perspective on why people want to invest – as well as a better understanding of whether to accept investment or not. “I have a very clear vision of whether getting funded is that important,” says Tsai. Read more