Being Amadeus's Eyes and Ears

Being Amadeus’s Eyes and Ears

May 14, 2024

Interviewed by Nicolas Sauvage on May 26, 2022

It may not be mandatory that a CVC professional focusing on travel innovations go vagabonding around the world, but in Marta Pinho’s case, it certainly didn’t hurt. Marta, senior investment manager at Amadeus Ventures, joined Corporate Venturing Insider and told host and TDK Ventures President Nicolas Sauvage how her “gap year” in Asia and South America helped solidify her outlook.

Financial Foundation

Marta’s path to CVC started in her homeland right after college with the venerable Portugal Venture, where she learned the ins and outs of the startup deal workflow, from generation through negotiation and closing to portfolio management.

“I was looking at e-commerce, digital, biotech, and energy, so we had a broad area of investment,” she said. “That was an amazing experience for someone so young and inexperienced.“

With a solid foundation built over five years of increasing responsibilities with the prominent financial VC firm, Marta took a year to travel. In addition to satisfying her wanderlust, she took the opportunity to explore the startup ecosystem as it plays out in diverse geographies. Back in Europe, she joined a rocket internet startup intent on expanding its operations through inorganic growth. It provided the ideal opportunity for Marta “to leverage the skills that I had developed in financial VC and transfer them to the M&A side,” she said.

Her immersion into M&A continued with Scout 24, a leading German used car platform. Marta worked on identifying and acquiring businesses and technologies that could benefit the consumer side of the business, a role that eventually expanded to other strategic initiatives.

Composing Amadeus’s Approach

With a firm grasp of both venture capital and the startup environment and driven by a love for travel, Marta started putting it all together in late 2018 when she joined Amadeus Ventures, the CVC arm of the Spanish multinational providing software for global tourism businesses.

“Amadeus is present in more than 190 countries. We have more than 400 airlines and more than a million hotel properties as customers,” she said. “This can be very relevant for a startup willing to come into this industry and address this market.”

Founded in 2014 as the Amadeus Startup Investment Program, Amadeus Ventures began by investing in early-stage startups “sitting at the crossroads of technology and travel,” Marta explained. “As a corporate investor, we have put a strong focus on strategic value. We ask, ‘How can we, through this investment, generate strategic value for the corporation and for the startup?”

Under her direction, Marta said Amadeus Ventures pursues two main objectives:

1. Aggressively seeking out the parent company’s “next growth opportunity with significant market size and where Amadeus can accelerate…that opportunity with the potential to become an Amadeus business line.”
2. “Supporting the ecosystem of partners that are closer to our existing solutions and portfolio. It’s more about investment opportunities or startups that are (adjacent)r to what Amadeus is doing, where we see immediate collaboration and learning opportunities.”

Aligning the two objectives was made easier early in Marta’s tenure when Amadeus Ventures built greater flexibility into its approval process. Until 2019, the CVC arm presented all intended investments to a committee comprised of the parent company CEO and direct reports. But, as the executive committee approved the vast majority of the CVC’s recommendations, it proved to be an unnecessary step.

“We had a very high conversion rate, and even the ones that were not approved performed very well financially,” Marta elaborated. “So we separated approvals. For growth opportunities, we still go to the ExCom because we’re talking about more strategic investments…that the ExCom values and wants to be part of. But for ecosystem investments, instead of going to the ExCom, we would go to the investment committee, which is a level lower in company governance, so we have a more agile process.”

Setting the Investment Criteria Tempo

Marta said Series A opportunities hit the sweet spot at Amadeus Ventures “because, as a corporate investor, we’re looking to invest in companies at a stage where we believe we can add the most value. We look for companies that already have a product, at least a few customers, and some early traction.”

These prerequisites enable her team to best explore areas for working together. That might mean simply introducing entrepreneurs to Amadeus’s customers or going as far as integrating portfolio companies’ solutions into an Amadeus product.

But there’s more than one way to advance the mothership’s mission through startup relationships, Marta reminded the audience. Though she might not invest in companies outside Series A, “we may still see opportunities to collaborate.”

Beyond the funding stage, Pino said she gives bonus points to startups whose leadership brings experience in launching businesses.

“In our space, we love serial entrepreneurs that already have track records for creating successful companies,” she said. “Experience in the travel industry is a plus, but not a must. Experience gives us confidence that founders are aware of the complexities in the industry and are prepared to address the challenges.”

All CVCs seek strategic alignment in their portfolio companies, but Marta said Amadeus Ventures expands the definition of alignment. She wants to invest in startups that not only share a common vision but also a global commitment and scope.

“Amadeus has such a global footprint that we need partners with the capability to go global,” she explained. “Otherwise, it’s much harder to have a niche-specific collaboration.”

Adagio: Playing through Slow Times

Amadeus Ventures proved instrumental in helping the parent company survive the Covid pandemic that brought tourism to a virtual standstill.

As the parent corporation business units’ “eyes and ears,” Amadeus Ventures translates its monthly meetings with dozens of startups into business insights by “connecting all these dots and bringing them the bigger picture of the trends and what’s happening outside of Amadeus,” Marta explained.

“That was particularly important during the pandemic, especially the early days,” she said. “Everyone was trying to understand what was happening, how it was impacting the industry, the players. My connection and level of engagement with the business units increased considerably, not only because of the new startups that we were meeting but also because the existing startups in our network were coming back because they had pivoted to address these new challenges.”

She said the pandemic initiated or accelerated several trends that will define the travel and tourism industry for some time: touchless check-in and digitization; outdoor recreation; hybrid and mobile work, and more.

Amadeus Ventures’ structure streamlines the sharing of these insights throughout the organization.

“Each of us within the ventures team looks into different verticals,” Marta noted. “That allows us to develop good relationships with our counterparts in the business units — typically the head of strategy. One of the objectives is sharing in both directions. It’s very important to understand their strategy, what their priorities are, and especially how ventures can feed into that. That makes our lives much easier when looking for investment opportunities and screening startups.”

The venture team shares its observations of individual companies that might warrant an investment and market and industry movements that could prove actionable at the corporate level.

Board Service

Marta said that when investing along its growth track Amadeus Ventures takes a lead role and may negotiate for a seat on portfolio companies’ boards of directors. The team is often content with board observer status, which is almost always the case for ecosystem investments undertaken with multiple co-investors.

“I know that many CVCs have someone from the venture capital team sitting in the board observer seat,” she said. “We do some of that, as well, but we typically have someone from a higher level of the business unit taking that role. We believe it is an important channel to maximize and generate strategic value. This person would have deep knowledge in the specific industry the startup is working in.”

Amadeus’s board representative can then leverage this understanding not only to assist the startup but also to identify areas in which to deepen the relationship through collaboration. Amadeus Ventures prepares the mothership’s business unit representatives for portfolio board service through a few meetings that cover their obligations and responsibilities. Once the relationship begins, the venture team remains in constant contact through its portfolio management role.

While placing business unit representatives rather than CVC professionals in the role of board observer is unusual in the industry, Martas said all the entrepreneurs have been receptive and the approach gives Amadeus an advantage.