Shift Magazine - April 2020 - 21

different
Venture capital firms
have varied approaches

FIRST MOVER

Mark Schulz
Founder and venture partner at Fontinalis
Partners, started with Bill Ford and Ralph
Booth in 2009
"We believe we were pioneers and the
first movers in this [mobility] space. But
mobility was pretty narrowly defined
back then: Uber and Lyft didn't exist,
lidar companies didn't exist. ... Some of
our first investments were smart parking,
pay by cellphone. Parkmobile was a company we invested in early on and ended
up selling to BMW.
"But it has expanded in the last decade,
so we expanded our definition of mobility
with it. And it now includes movement
of goods, services, people - and it's
not just auto but marine, logistics, air,
trucking, lots of things. But it's still future
mobility as a focus."

STRATEGIC FIT

Marco Marinucci
Partner, head of Hella Ventures
"We strongly prefer to invest in startups alongside top-tier financial VC like
Kleiner Perkins or Lightspeed Venture

arinucci

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BY JAMIE BUTTERS

nnovators seeking funding should keep
in mind that venture capital firms each
have their own approach, depending
on their strengths and strategies.

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Partners. ... and we only invest
if we can convince an executive VP at Hella to commit to
work with the startup.
"If we get involved, then you have
our commitment that we will roll up our
sleeves and work with the company to
actually bring them to market. Combining
these two things is more work-intensive
because you're not only an investor but
you're also supporting the startup as
an internal business developer. But ultimately you're seen as somebody who
helps the VC community, the startup
community and provides tangible benefits to Hella, which in the long run provides you access to the best companies
in the world."

CORPORATE SELF-DISRUPTION

Angel Gambino
Partner at Co-Created
"We partner with big corporations who
are facing a lot of sideways disruption
from new startups or new technologies. We work with them to first scan
the market to see if there's any potential
acquisitions ... because a lot of the times
the C-suite won't hear about these companies until they're already ... making too
big of a mess for them. If there aren't
any good deals to be done, then we
co-create a new digital business, which

is separated enough from the
core business that it can really
kind of flourish on its own as a
true startup.
"It's got about an 18-month runway.
And then ... they either continue to operate it as a separate subsidiary or they
bring it into ... the bigger organization.
Some of them they'll sell off because
that can help their balance sheet. And
then finally, some of them just don't work
and so we shut those down."

NEXT OPPORTUNITY

Edward Hightower
Managing director at Motoring Ventures
"Our approach is to encourage businesses that the next growth market
opportunity ... is the African continent.
So whether that be automakers, Tier 1
or Tier 2 suppliers or aftermarket product manufacturers. We try to show them
the opportunity of the growing markets
around the continent: 1.3 billion people
growing to 2.5 billion people, the largest
work force in the world will be on the
African continent by 2035.
"If you look at the 90 million vehicles
that are produced per year - the African
continent with 17 percent of the world's
population, producing a little more than
1.5 percent of the world's vehicles - it
kind of shows the opportunity." n
april 2020 * shift

Shift Magazine - April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - April 2020