Nagraj Kashyap, head of Microsoft Ventures and former head of Qualcomm Ventures, discusses his approach to hiring and training venture capital talent.
Opinion
Kashyap: Corporate VC is a better training ground than traditional VC
“And I think that's why I think corporate VC is a great training ground. You cannot necessarily do the things I'm talking about in a normal financial VC environment, but in the corporate VC environment, you can do these things”
Opinion
Kashyap: Corporate VCs foster greater diversity than traditional VC firms
“Historically, it's been very, very hard to see how there's sort of just a fundamental lack of diversity in the way it is, and I sort of trace it back to a little bit of the inflexibility with the VC model, and the financial VC model, and why I think corporate …”
Insight
Kashyap: Developing young VCs requires letting them write small checks early
“The lessons I've learned which have worked well is, you hire what you think are the best, smartest people, you give them responsibility very early on, and you give them responsibility by letting them essentially write small checks, make small investments”
Insight
Kashyap: Letting junior VCs make small mistakes prevents bigger errors later
“If a newly minted VC wants to write a small check, and you think that's a mistake, many times you'll say, why don't you go ahead and do it? And what happens is, If it turns out it didn't work out, they will never again do it again.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kashyap: Corporate VCs lack fixed check sizes and ownership targets
“In the corporate VC environment, we don't have constraints of, we have to write a check of X million dollars. We have to get 20% ownership. We only, only can invest in a sector that the LPs gave us money for.”
Prediction Held up
Kashyap: Corporate VC share will grow to 35% over 5-10 years
“Now, I don't have a crystal ball, but there was a recent report, actually just very topical, released, commissioned by Telstra, that came out just a couple of days back, which said that they see corporate VC going from 25% to 35%, I think, over the next five t…”