CVC Unplugged Mawsonia

Last September, I had the pleasure on this show of speaking to Mike Smeed, managing director of InMotion Ventures, the VC unit of Jaguar Land Rover, when he had just recently completed his first year on the job, which was also his first year as a CVC at all. Now, I’m happy to have him back on to talk about what he has learned, and how the team has applied those lessons, in Year 2.

Payments, payments, payments. In a world with a diminishing reliance on cash, payment technology is quite literally making the economy go round. But obviously, it's not always as easy as tapping a credit card. Today I speak to David Rolf, head of Visa Ventures, about the difficulties, and the opportunities out there, when it comes to letting people pay each other as quickly and easily as possible.

The world of sports has been seeing some really dramatic shifts in recent years, including huge changes in how sports are consumed – less via the big networks and more via mobile platforms, for example – and that’s having big implications across the space, opening up opportunities for startups and investors alike.

Universities, by their very nature, have always been strong centres of innovation. Scientific discoveries are routinely made in university research labs – but spinning those discoveries out into an operational business comes with numerous hurdles. Academics who go on to found companies based on their research have not just a steep learning curve to adapt to the new commercial environment, but also a wider shift in their mindset. The lab, after all, is a much different place than the market.

Just because you can grow very quickly, doesn’t necessarily mean you should. That’s the argument that Rob Bier, managing partner of Trellis Partners and 6:30 Partners, makes against the concept of “blitzscaling”, the hypergrowth philosophy popularised by Reid Hoffman. In his new book, called Smooth Scaling, as well as in a recent op-ed for Global Corporate Venturing, Bier argues that growing at all costs may work for a few startups, but for the majority, following the move fast and break things with loads of money in your pocket approach can have deeply detrimental effects.

Financial services permeate every other industry, and is a crucial part of everyone’s lives – whether you’re talking about payments, wealth management, or anything else, fintech touches it all. Today I’m joined by Hugo Bongers, partner at Motive Ventures, who by his own admission “lives and breathes” fintech. Formerly the head of ABN Amro Ventures, he has a great overview of the space from both the corporate VC and financial VC sides.