The VentureFuel Visionaries

Today’s episode features Sallie Krawcheck the Co-founder and CEO of Ellevest, a financial company built by women, for women to reach their financial goals. Sallie is one of the highest ranked women ever to have worked on Wall Street, having held posts such as CEO of Smith Barney, CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, and CFO of Citigroup. She is one of the most-read “Influencers” on LinkedIn and has been profiled as one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People” in business, as well as in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, and more. Ellevest has a community of more than 3 million, raised a $53 million Series B funding round and has $1.5 billion in assets under management. Learn why “nothing bad happens when women have more money.”

Fiercely female, always rogue. Why investing in women is good business and how innovation can change the world. This is a rebroadcast of our conversation with Caroline Lewis, Managing Partner Rogue Women’s Fund from 2020 as she was launching the Rogue Women’s Fund and we were beginning our Rogue Women Event Series together. This also serves as a preview for our 2023 Rogue Women VI event on Mar 9 2023 in NYC.

On Wednesday, February 1st, we honored the 2022 Visionary and Venture of the Year: Antonia Dean of Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs & Curio Digital Therapeutics’ Shaila Dixit. Join us for a conversation with them about the state of innovation today, the opportunity for entrepreneurs to reshape the industry, and the power to drive positive societal change through collaboration. Learn more about Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs' work with startups and entrepreneurs and Curio’s efforts to transform women’s mental healthcare.

On Wednesday, December 7th we sat down with leaders driving transformation within their organizations and reshaping industry in the process.They shared their take on the role of Innovation in 2022, learnings and lessons; plus made some predictions for 2023: what’s coming on the horizon in terms of consumer trends, customer needs, and business transformation. Featuring: Christina DeJesus, Chief Innovation Officer, InHouse Physicians, Jelena Joffe Weil, Worldwide Venture Innovation Lead at Amazon Web Services & Dion Lisle, Director of Corporate Ventures at Huntington National Bank. Moderated by Vanessa Rosado, Head of Brand Strategy, VentureFuel

Why CVC? Why accelerators? Why startup collaboration in any form when you are a $79Bn a year company ahead of the pack? Daniel Grubbs breaks down the piece of the puzzle that corporate venturing plays in keeping your business ahead of the core, beyond the bottle, closer to consumers, and ahead of trends. We talk about the balance of strategic and financial goals, the value of tip-of-the-spear insights, and how unlocking growth can also fuel employee engagement.

David Olivencia gives us an inside preview into his upcoming book NetWORKING Excellence with an actionable framework for the most important skill for career acceleration, community building and accomplishing goals. David is the CEO of Angeles Investors, has held executive roles at Verizon, Oracle, Ford, and Accenture; is an active Board Member of Chicago PBS, the National Museum of Mexican Art and has invested in over 70 startups, including 2 unicorns and 10 companies with valuations over $100M. We talk about how to network to meet investors, to improve deal flow of the right startups and how to jump up the corporate ladder to the future you envision.

“Games will become the creations of their players.” Chris shares how his company has built the business engine for creators to accelerate video game commerce globally. What can large organizations learn from gaming as they think about the metaverse and web 3? How to embrace emerging technologies like distributed development and Generative AI and how the continued improvement in tools and automation will forever change how content is created, enjoyed and monetized.

What does the world’s largest aerospace company and leading provider of commercial airplanes, defense, space and security systems, and global services think about innovation? Bobby Niehaus is on the Applied Innovation team, which is the corporate ventures group that brings outside innovation into Boeing, essentially the bridge between Boeing's internal technology strategy and external innovation partners. We talk about outside-in innovation, the value of Corporate Venture Capital, the dual mandates of corporate venturing, overcoming NIH (Not Invented Here) Bias and portfolio development to trigger strategic transitions.

How do you innovate on one of the world’s largest and most iconic consumer brand portfolios? We ask Anton Vincent, President of Mars Wrigley - North America, which is the largest subsidiary of Mars Inc. which is one of the world’s largest privately held companies. We talk about fostering growth in various macro-economic situations, how to set the table for tomorrow and why the most difficult challenges are often the ones that demand the most innovation. Of course, we also talk about M&Ms and candy.

From Light Fields to 10G, how will we connect together in the future? The confluence and convergence of multiple technologies will change how we consume media – by applying the art of the possible with limitless thinking, Anju Ahuja and CableLabs are helping the cable industry go from vision to implementation. We discuss Co-Innovation, extended realities, the venture capital view of market creation, and the need for always developing the business case for what’s next.