The VentureFuel Visionaries

This is quite simply a master class in collaborative innovation to solve meaningful challenges. Dr. Simon is a practicing cardiologist, the President of Academic & External Affairs and Chief Scientific Officer for the University Hospitals Health System (UH). We discuss the unique non-profit, for-profit model of The Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Centre’s Therapeutics Accelerator. The Accelerator is a first-of-its-kind, transatlantic initiative to identify, fund and advance breakthrough academic discoveries to deliver new treatments for the 400 million people worldwide who suffer from rare diseases.

On today’s show we have Andrew Merinoff. Andrew is the founder of Dispact Ventures, which is disrupting industries with impact investing. What started off as a small fund to assist his close friends and confidants eventually grew into a 16-venture portfolio. Andrew is also a seasoned entrepreneur and the Co-founder and CEO of Chinola Liqueur. With a passion for building companies, particularly in the Wine & Spirits space, Andrew has made a mark through innovation. We talk about SPVs, impact investing, the future of wine & spirits and innovating in traditional, established industries.

How can you create a system of innovation, that becomes a membrane to attract the best transformational technologies to collaborate with your organization? Markus Bohl, the Managing Director of Intel® Ignite, which is Intel Corporation’s global startup accelerator program for early-stage deep tech startups shares his insights. Markus has a phenomenal track record as an entrepreneur, corporate innovator and Ignite just launched their sixth cohort in Europe. We talk about the value of corporate-startup collaboration, equity vs. non-dilutive partnerships, how to build a startup ecosystem and how to avoid putting on an “innovation fig leaf.”

Does innovation drive market value, and do investors pay more for innovation? Brenda O’Connor Juanas is a Senior Vice President and Financial Advisor at UBS International and is an industry thought leader on financial markets, frequently speaking across CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business, to name a few. We talk about R&D to Sales Ratios, the delta in valuations from innovators like Tesla and Airbnb to their legacy competitors, and how companies like Visa elevate beyond their competitors through innovation. We discuss how the market impacts VCs and Founders – and why now is the time for commercial partnerships between startups and large organizations.

Jeff Allyn is the CEO of StudioX, a first-of-its-kind open innovation studio powered by Shell that brings a collaborative approach to reimagine energy exploration and break down the silos of traditional R&D - they call it “open exploration.” We talk about their new model and how it is accelerating the pace of innovation in climate tech and the energy industry's transformation.

What is the future of product development in an increasingly complex and fast-paced world? How can organizations keep up with rising consumer expectations, accelerating timelines for new features and products, while also increasing the amount of personalization and the fit to emerging market needs without skipping a beat? Who will help enterprises better leverage the vast and disparate unstructured data sets that they’re sitting on quickly, accurately & in a simple and intuitive way? Enter Venture to Watch: Monterey AI, a graduate of the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator: Generative AI ’23 & YC S’22. Monterey AI is your Copilot for product insights. The platform accelerates product development by synthesizing and analyzing unstructured data from multiple sources, including user feedback, support tickets, social media mentions, and call logs, enriched by business and behavioral metrics. In this episode, we sit down with Chun Jiang, their founder & CEO, to talk all things data, AI & product development. Chun previously led products and design at companies like Unfolded (acquired by Foursquare), Scale AI, and Uber. She graduated from Cornell in 2018 and has been obsessed with building the most ambitious and delightful Data and AI products in productivity, developer tooling, and autonomous vehicles. In this conversation, we talk about Monterey AI’s unique value proposition in the marketplace, the opportunity for more insightful & data-driven product development, and what lies ahead for AI.

What is the future of celebration? How can the industry-leading global spirits company co-develop the next generation of digital products to elevate consumer experiences? Sallie Jian is the Director and head of Ventures North America at Diageo, where she oversees Diageo’s venture capital activities, including minority investments (lead, co-invest, partnerships, JVs) and Distill Ventures in North America. We talk about Fusion by Diageo, a new partnership lab to identify and build with the world’s most pioneering startups, as well as the role of corporate entrepreneurship and how startups help corporations through unique value, speed, and customized solutions.

This podcast explores why corporations invest in startups, the balance between exploiting competitive advantages and exploring the future, the power law in investments, and insights from Nicolas Sauvage, President of TDK Ventures. They discuss the value of corporate venture capital, operational insights, and the importance of investing in new ventures for a better future.

Angela Lee is an award-winning professor and former Chief Innovation Officer at Columbia Business School, where she teaches venture capital and leadership courses. Angela started her career in product management and then moved to McKinsey. She has started 4 startups and is also the founder of 37 Angels, an investing network that has evaluated over 20000 startups, invested in 100, and activated new investors through a startup investment bootcamp. She also serves as a venture partner at Fresco Capital, has been recognized by Inc. Crains and Entrepreneur, and has spoken at NASA and the White House. We talk about vetting startups, the value of corporate-startup collaboration, and why saying no is the secret to driving results.

Blooming Health announced on Sep 6, 2023, they raised an over-subscribed $4.2M seed fund to enable service providers to engage older adults and their family members. This episode was recorded almost a year before the raise, on Sep 9, 2022, and is a conversation with AARP Foundation and Blooming Health in which we walk through the innovation program's success between the two firms. It's the perfect example of tangible innovation leading to growth for all involved.