The Venture Clienting Playbook
Fabian Dudek, co-founder of GlassDollar, on why venture clienting became a core pillar of corporate venturing, with data from 66,424 proofs of concept.
With Fabian Dudek
From The Corporate Venturing Podcast, brought to you by Open Road Ventures
4 things this conversation gets into
- 01Choosing between build, buy, partner or invest
- 02What 66,424 proofs of concept say about success rates
- 03Starter, growing, pro: diagnosing your maturity
- 04Getting through IT and procurement without losing momentum
Fabian Dudek is co-founder and CEO of GlassDollar, pioneers of Venture Clienting, also known as innovation procurement. He has helped corporates indirectly tap into over 55 billion euros of external innovation funding.
Davide Ritorto is a management engineer from Italy with an international MBA, currently working at Lamborghini. He is what some call an intrapreneur, passionate about open innovation and corporate venturing, and driven by curiosity about how things work and how to make them work even better. Through Open Road Ventures he sets out to inspire and inform other innovators, intrapreneurs and dreamers.
He founded Open Road Ventures as a weekly publication on open innovation and corporate venturing, and The Corporate Venturing Podcast grew out of it. He also mentors startups at Motor Valley Accelerator and sits on the Open Innovation Advisory Board at UC Berkeley Haas.
The Corporate Venturing Podcast is made by Open Road Ventures. The Bundl Venture Club is a partner of the show.
Read the full show notes
🎙️ Welcome to a new episode of The Corporate Venturing Podcast!
How can corporates buy innovation at startup speed, and amplify their R&D budgets by tapping into billions of euros of external capital? Today, I sit down with Fabian Dudek, co-founder and CEO of GlassDollar, pioneers of Venture Clienting (aka innovation procurement). We unpack why this model has emerged as a core pillar of corporate venturing, explore hard data from GlassDollar’s 2025 Impact Study, and dive into practical frameworks and real-world lessons.
In this episode, Fabian shares his perspective on:
🧭 Macro-trends fueling Venture Clienting — economic pressure, accelerating tech cycles, and the limits of in-house R&D
⚙️ The Corporate Venturing Toolbox matrix — how to choose between build, buy, partner, or invest
📊 Surprising insights from 66,424 PoCs — success rates, time-to-first value, ROI, and why many teams still overlook these metrics
📈 Maturity stages: Starter, Growing, Pro — the concrete signals to self-diagnose your stage and the #1 shift to scale your PoC program
🛠️ Lean PoC governance — fail-fast loops, cost-control, and cross-functional alignment with IT and procurement
📐 KPIs that matter — measuring true strategic impact vs. vanity metrics
🌍 Bridging startup agility with corporate process rigor — breaking through IT and procurement bottlenecks
🚀 Benchmarks from Siemens & Samsung — how leading corporates leverage €20–60 bn of VC funding through startup partnerships versus their internal R&D
💡 Startups vs. traditional suppliers — why innovation procurement demands a different playbook
🔮 The future of Venture Clienting — policy levers, AI-driven analytics, and emerging tech frontiers
Plus, we close with Fabian’s most rewarding moments building GlassDollar, and how he’s helped corporates indirectly tap into over €55 bn of external innovation funding.
Resources:
• Corporate Venturing Matrix mentioned by Fabian
• Open Road Ventures Newsletter
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