Startups and Corporates collaboration Strategies

Working with industry participants instead of trying to disrupt a whole industry, for some startups is a more valid strategy that will help them gain access to markets and scale faster.

Therefore, relationships between Startups and Corporates are multi-layered, and can potentially lead to a variety of benefits over time, for both participants.

From a Startup point of view potential interactions fall into the following categories:

• Corporates as a strategic partner: Strategic partnerships, create deep, win-win relationships that lead to a growing array of benefits for both sides. For this reason, the best startups tend to concentrate time and effort on Corporates where the human intangibles like culture, strategy and way of execution are complementary.

• Corporates as a marketing channel: Startups, especially in the B2C space tend to see Corporates as an established marketing channel for gaining presence in new markets or growing their footprint in an existing market. This relationship is primarily symbiotic with both participants reaping the short and long term benefits of this collaboration.

• Corporates as investors: Startups especially in verticals that require deep pockets for developing the technology like BioTech – FinTech – IoT – CleanTech and others, view Corporates as a potential investors through the Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) arms ’s these Corporates have.

• Corporates as customers: Startups, especially in the B2B space view Corporates as potential users / end customers of a product/ service, where right communication channels for needs analysis and active stakeholder management are keys success factors.

• Corporates as acquirers: Corporates whether they employ a Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) arm or not, that grow through acquisitions are relatively easy to identify and building a relationship with them can provide a viable exit strategy for Startup founders.

• Corporates as a talent source: Startups look for future talent in Corporates by targeting primarily the ones that fail to identify high profile (hi-pro) Authentic Byron Maxwell Jersey employees and develop the processes and benefits to increase those employees’ engagement and commitment.

Apart from the obvious benefits that can occur implementing any of the above interactions it is also vital for Startups to engage Corporates in order to learn through this collaboration how established businesses operate (e.g. processes & systems, people management, budgeting & timeplans, marketing /communication, sales, financial management & business development).

For Hippocampus.io,
Christos Lytras – Managing Partner

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