191. Corporate VC (David Horowitz)

David Horowitz of Touchdown Ventures joins Nick to discuss Corporate VC. In this episode, we cover:

• Backstory/ Path to Venture
• Talk about the 14 years you spent with Comcast Ventures -- what you learned and why you left?
• What lead to founding Touchdown Ventures?
• At Touchdown, you partner with leading corporations to manage the complete venture lifecycle from entity formation to investment management…Can you dive into the thesis/focus of the firm?
• Why would a founder choose corporate VC funding over institutional funding?
• I was reading through the “Risky Business” blog on the Touchdown website and found some pretty interesting articles…specifically one that talks about “the most overlooked skill in Corporate venture" being deal management…that it “requires more effort than all other activities combined”…why is deal management so challenging?
• Why do you think CVC’s funding has historically been more inconsistent than institutional venture funds?
• Why are corporations willing to take minority stakes in startups? As Fred Wilson said on CVC—“You want the asset? Buy it.” Is there a risk to founders of taking investment from a large corporate that can "look under the hood" and reverse-engineer the tech or exploit the IP?
• Is the core objective of a CVC financial return or is it more of a strategy play? (i.e. market insight, actively trying to grow certain sectors)
• How does the mindset of a CVC change in a bear market, especially compared to institutional VC?
• How does follow-on funding work in corporate VC? If the corporate has a poor financial year, does a lower funding allocation affect follow-on allotment for winners?
• The firm was recognized by Global Corporate Venturing for having both established and managed the most corporate venture funds to date… At the industry level corp VC has peaked in funding in recent years. Why do you think corp VC has grown to this level and why did you raise the number of funds that you did?
• One of the articles on the Risky Business blog talks about fraud detection with reference to Fyre Festival and Theranos…Talk about some red flags that an opportunity may be a fraud and what you should do if those red flags are present?

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