#10 - The Venture Clienting Playbook w/ Fabian Dudek (Co-Founder & CEO at Glassdollar)
🎙️ 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…
🎙️ 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
🎧 Follow the podcast for more grounded stories and actionable insights from inside the world of Open Innovation and Corporate Venturing.
