Venture is a long game, not a corporate rotation. Funds move slow. It take over 15 years for these portfolios to mature. 
Welcome to a new year of Corporate Venturing Insider. After a brief holiday hiatus, the series returns with a conversation that marks a leadership transition for the global corporate venture capital community.
This week, Nicolas Sauvage, President of TDK Ventures, was appointed Chair of the Global Corporate Venturing (GCV) Leadership Society — an international network of corporate venture leaders advancing best practices in startup investing. The announcement coincides with the release of GCV’s World of Corporate Venturing 2026 report, which highlights a shift in the market: corporate venture groups are increasingly acting as long-term partners in scaling transformational technologies. In his new role, Sauvage will also co-chair GCV’s annual summit in Monterey alongside Michelle Gonzalez of Microsoft’s M12.
On his first day back from the holidays, Sauvage sat down with Arvind Purushotham, Head of Citi Ventures and outgoing co-chair of the GCV Leadership Society, for a wide-ranging conversation on how corporate venture capital has evolved — and what the next phase demands from its leaders.
Purushotham has helped guide the GCV community through cycles of expansion, correction, and reinvention. Sauvage, stepping into the role, was not looking for a ceremonial handoff. He wanted hard-earned lessons: what truly matters when building, running, and sustaining a corporate venture program at scale.
What followed was less a baton pass than a candid field guide for corporate investors navigating a more mature — and more demanding — CVC landscape.
Corporate Venturing Comes of Age
When Purushotham left Menlo Ventures to help launch Citi Ventures in 2010, corporate venture capital was still a niche experiment. Fifteen years later, the contrast is stark.
“It’s a much more mature practice,” he says. “A number of companies understand why they need to do it.”
What was once a loosely defined corporate “hobby” has evolved into a global industry, with thousands of corporations across sectors actively investing in startups. Today, roughly one-fifth of all startup funding rounds include a corporate backer — clear evidence that CVC has moved beyond novelty and into the mainstream.
The Case for Corporate Venturing
The maturation of corporate venturing reflects a deeper structural reality: no industry is insulated from technological disruption.
“Every industry has now recognised the importance of what strategic investing brings to their corporations,” Purushotham says.
Across finance, manufacturing, healthcare, and consumer markets, venture investing has become how incumbents engage disruption early — rather than reacting after the fact. For today’s executives, the question is no longer whether they can afford a CVC unit, but whether they can afford not to have one. These teams increasingly serve as the corporation’s eyes and ears, tracking emerging technologies and translating them into strategic advantage.
To unlock that advantage, leadership support is essential. Reporting lines matter less than real sponsorship and integration with business units.
“It should sit in a place where it has the ability to engage with all the different businesses… it should operate at a strategic level,” Purushotham says.
At Citi Ventures, that model delivered more than financial returns. Over 100 portfolio companies formed commercial partnerships with Citi’s business units, generating an estimated $200 million in enterprise value, according to a recent GCV article.
Those collaborations — not exits alone — defined success.
Measuring the Return of a Fund
Modern corporate venture capital operates under a dual mandate: strategic impact and financial returns. But the two unfold on very different clocks.
“Look, we exist for strategic purposes and for strategic impact,” Purushotham explains. “Over the years, we’ve gotten good at measuring strategic impact using different metrics because not all strategic impact can be measured in dollars or cents.”
That impact shows up in partnerships, product innovation, customer access, and operational efficiencies — wins that compound into long-term enterprise advantage. The lesson, he argues, is to track strategic KPIs alongside financial ones, knowing that venture returns follow much longer timelines.
Time is the central tension. Venture capital operates on 10–15 year cycles. Corporations run on quarters.
“Funds move slow,” Purushotham reminds executives. “It takes a long period of time for these portfolios to mature.”
He illustrated that gap with a personal example: a fund he worked on 15 years ago at Menlo Ventures is still active today, holding investments from early A and B rounds.
Nicolas Sauvage echoed the point from his own experience at TDK Ventures.
“I confess I totally miscalculated when I started TDK Ventures. I thought getting returns would take five to seven years for a fund. Typically, that is two tours of duty for a corporate employee,” he says. “I’m realizing it is not seven, it’s actually 15 years. It committed me for 15 years because it takes time to return these first three funds.”
Training Talent: Venture Is an Apprenticeship
With venture operating on decade-long timelines, the next challenge for corporate venturing is not just returning capital — but training the people who will do it next. According to GCV’s World of Corporate Venturing 2026 report, the ecosystem now includes more than 3,000 corporate venture units. The question is how to develop the next 3,000 leaders capable of running them.
The answer, both Sauvage and Purushotham argue, lies in apprenticeship.
“Venture capital is an apprenticeship business,” Purushotam says. “You learn by doing and seeing patterns over time.”
Unlike traditional corporate roles, venture cannot be mastered in a rotation or a short tour of duty. It requires repeated exposure to decisions, failures, and long investment cycles that teach judgment as much as process.
As CVC has matured, so has its talent model. Early programs were often staffed by rotating executives or part-time leaders. Today, successful CVC units rely on dedicated professionals with venture expertise, founder credibility, and deep ties to the startup ecosystem. Without that foundation, corporate venture groups struggle to compete for top deals or deliver strategic impact.
Institutions now play a critical role in accelerating that learning curve. Programs like the Kauffman Fellows and the GCV Institute have become training grounds for the next generation of venture professionals, offering not just education but community.
In 2025, Corporate Venturing Insider featured Tammi Smorynski, a 25-year Intel Capital veteran, who shared how she was leading board-level training for junior CVC investors through the GCV Institute.
Training the next 3,000 CVC leaders, in other words, will require venture to come together as a community — sharing lessons, setting standards, and treating venture not as a rotation, but as a craft.
