The behind-the-scenes of corporate venture building
Written by Melanie Cornejo & Lucía Valencia-Dongo, co-founder’s of Colectivo23
One and a half years ago, we (a team of three designers / entrepreneurs / intrapreneurs and a biologist-turned strategy consultant-turned education expert) were tasked with a somewhat singular brief: How might we transform Latin-American talent into the most digitally-savvy in the world? With that one sentence and no anchors whatsoever, we set out to explore, design and launch Colectivo23, a learning hub that helps young professionals in Latin-America stay fit for the digital era and what might come next. And all of this in a corporate setting, within Peru’s most prominent and diversified economic group.
In one year, we learnt more than we had ever before and in any of our previous lives. In a nutshell, this is what we distilled as key learnings on corporate venture building:
1.Think in phases as growth spurts.
In a context of extreme uncertainty, think in short phases instead of trying to envision the long term.
We started out with a one-sentence-long brief: a solution to bridge the digital talent gap in Latin-America is what we were going after. We would most certainly not be where we are today if we had tried to tackle that brief as a whole. Instead, we decided to break it down into the smallest possible units or phases and have clear outcomes for each of them. This approach reduced the uncertainty and pressure, even though we had a very vague, if any, idea of what the next phases would bring about at any given point.
2. Form an initial unicorn team.
Instead of wasting resources in looking for a multifaceted individual that most likely does not exist, think in plural and build a dream-team that is 100% invested in the venture’s take-off and success.
Every start-up or new venture (and, let’s be honest, almost any company today) is looking for a unicorn — a brilliant, self-motivated and multifaceted professional who can do it all. But finding a unicorn can take forever, if it ever happens. Instead of waiting for a unicorn to magically appear, we decided to form an initial unicorn team — a group of people who shared the same core mindsets and believed in a common (and bold) vision, but covered an ample set of hard skills.
Some of these mindsets included an entrepreneurial spirit, the willingness to do any type of work, ship things as fast as possible, embrace ambiguity and even failure with a sense of humor and the feeling of having a lot of skin in the game. In a nutshell, if the ship was ever to sink, each of them should be prepared and willing to take command and save the venture and the team from an imminent death.
3. Bring on (and off) the precise people at the right time.
Do not overload the team with too many people that might only slow you down by questioning already agreed-upon decisions.
The initial unicorn or “4-wheel drive” team has to craft the design process and think of the system as a whole. But once the plan is set, it should divide and conquer, by organizing the work into streams and bringing the necessary skills on board when needed. Analogous to the team configuration (a core vs. fluid teams), the process is organized into sprints for all different streams. It is important to note that a stream should never be a one-man-show and that the different sub-teams need to have a conjoint weekly planning session, to “tunk” (i.e. give honest feedback with love) and get “tunked”, and make sure that everyone is still rowing in the same direction.
4. In times of great ambiguity, create artifacts that force decision-making about the product.
If the brief is very open and ambiguous, the team needs to force one or two anchors or non-negotiable conditions to start moving.
At Colectivo23, after an initial phase of research, we decided that we would not be yet another online offering and that we would cover a breadth of skills, rather than siloing in on a specific discipline or a highly demanded skill. In addition to these initial non-negotiable anchors, crafting a first live version of our website forced us to make further decisions, such as our purpose, targets, key initial offerings, main pillars, our personality and tone of voice. With these anchors on paper (or rather on a screen), we were able to focus on moving forward, instead of in relentless circles.
5. Be your biggest advocate and bring stakeholders on board by selling your vision & purpose.
When you have nothing launched in the market, your biggest (and only) selling point is your vision and your team’s passion.
Your initial vision should be extremely bold, so as to get your most important stakeholders excited and wanting to have your back. However, you also need to gain trust and credibility by showing quick wins and conquering the low-hanging fruit early on in the process. Even before launching Colectivo23, we opened a few hallmark events (e.g., inspiration talks, panel discussions with top global experts) to the public for free, so as to start building a brand and getting people curious and talking about us as a new venture. We also built fake communication pieces to convince our board members and potential strategic partners of how ambitious our vision really was. In addition, the core team was also very aggressive and ambitious when reaching out to potential thought partners. No rock-star seemed out of reach and therefore was addressed directly and candidly for help and advice. You will be surprised at how willing these experts are to pay it forward and share their knowledge.
6. Own the simplicity that gets you started.
At the beginning, back-of-the-envelope calculations help you define assumptions and key questions, more so than a full-blown financial model.
One struggle Colectivo23 had at the beginning was to convince the Board that we could not (and would not) build out a financial model for the venture before even exploring and understanding the opportunity. We stayed true to this belief of initial simplicity and kept pushing this ask into the future, as we felt that it would only slow us down and restrict us in our thinking. This choice helped us explore different business models early on and test them at the same time as we were testing our value proposition, brand, and key features. Once in the growth phase, it makes more sense to work on a financial model that will give the team and the Board clear visibility of what is to be expected of the venture.
7. Align to a metered funding approach.
In the design phase, funding should be based on the number and quality of the learnings, instead of the business case.
It is much healthier for a nascent venture to obtain each round of funding based on clear (and mostly qualitative) goals and milestones. The budget should then grow proportionately to the de-risking of the initial idea. If we had had a massive budget for Colectivo23 from the get-go, we would have probably been more complacent and ready to be a copy-cat, instead of really digging deep and trying to uncover the real need and opportunity in this space. The initial team always felt the pressure to present meaningful learnings and decisions to the Board, so as to get the go to keep moving forward and having a next round of funding.
8. Place the brand design at the same level of the service, space or even business design.
Think about branding from day one, not only in terms of visual identity but also brand personality, tone of voice and key differentiators. A solid brand from the start ensures credibility and also builds a solid relationship with your earliest users.
If you want to know more about Colectivo23’s brand, check out the following article.
In the end, these learnings and insights from a year of venture building seem very intuitive and all of them could be reached if one just follows one’s gut feeling. If the idea and the venture that evolves from it are born within the initial unicorn team, and each member is willing to defend it like a fortress, the probability of success increases exponentially. And if this same team can be humble enough to always learn from others and approach every obstacle with a sense of humor, the success is almost guaranteed.
Learn more about Colectivo23: https://www.colectivo23.com/nosotros
We would like to thank the rest of Colectivo23’s founding team, Jimena Salinas, Valeria Tapia & Alfonso Orbegoso, who made all of this possible; and to La Victoria Lab & IDEO for their thought partnership and continuous support.
