Corporate Development
topic on 5 shows · 9 statements across 6 episodes
Founder's Journal 
Lenny's Podcast 
Top Founders 
the a16z Podcast 
20VC
9 statements about Corporate Development, every show
Lowenhar: Founders Must Negotiate with Corp Dev Asynchronously or Lose
“Second, they are way better at negotiating than you. So, any time dealing with a superior negotiator, the only thing you can do to try and even the scales is move the negotiation async. So founders repeat after me. I'm talking to you directly now. You will say…”
Founders only have three jobs: selling, corp dev, and fundraising
“I believe that founders have three jobs. Sell, corporate development, fundraising. That's what you need to do in life, right?”
Pujji: Inbound corp dev interest should be founders' lowest priority
“There's some guy in corp dev and private, that's their job. Their job is to know who you are. It doesn't really mean all that much. And the flip of it is there's nothing down downside about building a relationship with them, but it's towards the bottom of your…”
Choi: Companies doing only acquihires do not need senior corp dev lead
“Talent is a great way to do M&A, but in that case, you probably don't need like one dedicated senior head of corp dev.”
McGurk: Pre-product startups under a year old should avoid corporate development
“And, you know, the meme was out there that, as Sonal mentioned, that you know, don't engage with the corp dev. And we agree with that at certain points in a company's life. If you're less than a year old if you're really kind of pre-product that we generally a…”
Loftus: Extreme M&A anecdotes distort public perception of corporate development
“I mean, honestly, I think that one of the challenges is, is that the situations that corporate development teams are involved in tend to be sort of very high stress, very, very high emotion. And so sort of people have a lot of stories that bounce around the ma…”
McGurk: Founders should only share competitor-safe information with corporate development teams
“You know, you should treat that as the type of information that you would tell anyone that you would tell an investor that you would, you know, use on a sales call that, you know, frankly, that you would tell a competitor. So you don't want to give out the ver…”
McGurk: Founders should build corporate relationships concurrently with 3 to 4 targets
“If you're talking to one, I mean, you should have a plan in place and not to put a time sink into it, but you should be thorough about it. No, not, it's not 10, but it's not one. So it's picking that, You know, to the top of the top, top group that you're most…”
Loftus: Startups should ignore Paul Graham and talk to corp dev early
“And so I would say first, I disagree with the premise that the title of the blog post gives, which is that you should never talk to corporate development. I think the second premise, which is you shouldn't do that because you should be focused on building your…”