Most newly founded com­pa­nies ini­tially want to go it alone and aim to blaze their own trail to ulti­mate suc­cess. Gen­er­ally, some­where along this adven­tur­ous and fre­quently ardu­ous jour­ney, it often becomes clear that the path to mak­ing a major dent in the world would be sig­nif­i­cantly short­ened by part­ner­ing with oth­ers that have spe­cial assets which can bring the ulti­mate goal closer, such as prod­uct devel­op­ment exper­tise, com­ple­men­tary offer­ings, mar­ket access, deep pock­ets, etc.

Of course, for young com­pa­nies, find­ing well-suited part­ner­ships is not as easy as snap­ping one´s fin­gers. In addi­tion to pos­sess­ing an attrac­tive inno­va­tion, young com­pa­nies need to build a solid foun­da­tion that engen­ders trust from larger cor­po­ra­tions, which will always be weigh­ing the poten­tial ben­e­fits of coop­er­a­tion against the risks to their busi­ness that a part­ner­ship can intro­duce. Prob­a­bly the most del­i­cate bal­ance start-ups must mas­ter is advanc­ing their devel­op­ment at light­speed while also estab­lish­ing the struc­ture, reli­a­bil­ity, dis­ci­pline, and secu­rity that are essen­tial pre­req­ui­sites for engag­ing in sin­cere dis­cus­sions with larger cor­po­rate part­ners. Inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies that do this well are able to estab­lish proof-of-tech­nol­ogy, proof-of-mar­ket, and proof-of-com­pat­i­bil­ity with strate­gic part­ners seam­lessly along their journey.

For young com­pa­nies that man­age this bal­ance and become attrac­tive for cor­po­rates, deter­min­ing the right time to sac­ri­fice par­tial (or com­plete) auton­omy for enhanced chances of suc­cess by gain­ing access to these spe­cial cor­po­rate assets is rarely crys­tal clear. How­ever, a gen­eral rule is that a part­ner­ship only makes sense when the com­bined forces dra­mat­i­cally increase the impact that a prod­uct or solu­tion can have in the world. There will inevitably be fric­tions involved in shar­ing the steer­ing wheel, so it is impor­tant that the ben­e­fits are large and clear in order to keep every­one dri­ving toward the shared goal.

Ulti­mately, a busi­ness´ value should be deter­mined by its pos­i­tive impact on soci­ety and join­ing forces with a cor­po­rate part­ner can often be the best way for inno­va­tions to drive mean­ing­ful change and thus cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant value. We are extremely pleased with the three excel­lent part­ner­ships with cor­po­rates that our Investee-Part­ners achieved so far this year, pre­cisely because we are cer­tain that in each case even greater value cre­ation lies ahead.

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