Having the right team in place is crucial to the success of any corporate venture, but it takes more than one individual venture team to go from concept to a sustainable-revenue generating business. Why? Well, because building ventures is an iterative, dynamic process that requires different skill sets at different points in its lifecycle.
To succeed in the long-term, you’ll need to leverage the talent and expertise of creatives, entrepreneurs, stakeholders and even some external partners along the way. In essence, you’ll need to create a multi-team set-up to access the skills required at different stages in the development of your venture. As explained by Maxime Sureda, our Head of People, Operations & Finance:
“The secret of successful teams at Bundl is a combination of three things: An experienced serial entrepreneur in the lead to make crucial decisions and keep the pace, passionate topical experts in growth marketing, design, development & product and at least two corporate leaders to ensure corporate assets and resources are used to their fullest.”
While every venture is unique, in most cases, you’ll need a multi-team set-up that includes:
- A venture board: corporate sponsors that provide strategic advice
- An internal team: leads that take ownership and provide direction
- A venture team: developers, creatives and experts that execute ideas
- Ad-hoc expertise: experts that can step in and fill any skill gaps
Let’s take a closer look at each of these teams and how they can help you take your venture from scratch to scale and beyond.
The venture board
Setting up a venture board is one of the best ways to ensure the long-term success of your venture. In most cases, a venture board includes corporate stakeholders or sponsors who regularly meet with the venture team to provide strategic advice and guidance (e.g. on a monthly or quarterly basis).
Venture board profiles often include one or more of the following:
The input provided by a venture board is extremely valuable to venture teams because it keeps them plugged in to the broader corporate agenda. This in turn will increase their chances of:
- Getting the funding and resources they need to move forward
- Keeping their strategy and KPIs on track
- Making decisions with the full support of the mothership
In short, venture boards act as an added support layer around the team — linking the venture to the parent company and helping them leverage corporate assets quickly and efficiently.
The internal team
The role of the internal team is mainly to take ownership of different parts of the venture, including quality, strategy, recruitment, the roadmap and the execution of various tasks. Profiles that are typically included in an internal team include:
In some cases, they can take on a targeted leadership role with titles like venture lead, product lead or marketing lead. As the name suggests, these profiles make key decisions in specific areas helping to guide the venture team as they execute various tasks.
The venture team
Venture teams take charge of the everyday execution of various tasks under the guidance of the venture board and the internal team. The tricky part is, you’ll need two separate venture teams, one for the venture creation phase and one for the venture growth phase.
For example, during the first few months of building a new venture, your focus will be to bring your new concept to life (i.e. venture creation). This will most likely involve building an MVP, identifying your target audience and creating your first marketing campaigns. You’ll need a team that’s creative, loves to ideate and knows how to effectively validate new value propositions.
During this phase, venture teams typically include:
Now, fast forward to the venture growth stage, when you’ve proven your product-market fit and are ready to take your venture to the next level. At that point, you’ll need an extra boost of entrepreneurship, ready to take charge during your launch and scale phases. These are profiles with experience in venture growth that can hit the ground running and take ownership of the venture’s strategy, finances and growth milestones moving forward.
These profiles are best hired once you found your product-market fit and the direction of the venture is set. That’s when it’s time to tap them in and let them unleash their entrepreneurial talents to scale the venture and make real business impact.
Ad-hoc expertise
Ad-hoc experts are external partners that can step in and provide support in any areas you might be lacking. Here are just a few examples:
Ad hoc experts can be brought in to do anything from building a new PR campaign, to app development, to helping your team create a new algorithm from scratch. Although they’re only with you for part of the journey, their contributions can play an essential role in the long-term success of your venture.
The key to multi-team success? Open communication
When you consider the different sets of expertise needed at different points in the venture building process, a multi-team approach makes sense. The problem is you run the risk of losing vital information.
The key to making this multi-team approach work, is setting up a structured line of communication. Here’s what that could potentially look like:
This feedback loop is ideal because it keeps everyone on your venture squad connected, from your venture board to your ad hoc experts, ensuring none of your valuable insights are lost.
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Ready to scale your venture? We can help you build an actionable, automated strategy that leverages your unique corporate assets, to reach that next growth milestone.
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