Byld presents Genesis: a new way of doing Corporate Venture Building

Today is a very special day for Byld. Almost 7 years later, we celebrate our big next step. Welcome, Byld Genesis.

Looking back to the beginnings, when we launched Byld in 2017, we had multiple hypotheses, but two things were crystal clear to us:

1. That it was not going to be easy and we would have to preach a lot about a model that did not exist at that time.

2. That we were here to invest, not for the fees. That taking risks was a fundamental part of our model. And therefore, we wanted to be partners -and not providers- of our corporate partners.

It was not going to be easy

And boy, it was not. We spent hours and hours thinking about the right arguments to show corporate executives the benefits of launching new businesses as a means of diversification. Fortunately, and after hundreds of meetings with more than 300 corporations, we can assure the evolution and maturity of the innovation, strategy, and new business departments of a significant percentage of these companies.

We won't deny it was tough, and many times we felt like preachers in the desert. At that time, most corporations were not prepared... However, some brave ones understood the model and trusted our methodology. "Brave" because it is not easy to give the green light to “There is an opportunity in logistics, let's look for businesses there. Don't worry, in 7 months we will have something interesting and validated.”

Well, after more than 6 years in this business, we have demonstrated that it works. So much so that today, we are lucky enough to call companies like Sanitas, Telefónica, Porsche, or Eroski (among many others on our website, there you have all the logos :)).

But... what about those who do see the benefits, but due to fear of starting without having identified the business, due to their risk profile, or even due to legal requirements, do not fit to start from scratch? Do they have no place in our model? "In a blacksmith’s house, a wooden knife," they say. And so it is. We have breakfast with customer development and snack with empathy maps for our projects, but we have not always applied it to ourselves. We have not been able to listen to the needs of these corporations and build a corporate venture building model that aligned with them.

Until now.

Taking the risk was crucial

Having ‘skin in the game’ is extremely important for us. This has been and will always be a core aspect of our business model. In every corporate venture building project, we rack our brains to find ways to maximize our “upside”, aligning incentives and assuming that this is about living miserably (albeit well-managed ;P) until the moment of truth. Under our current model, we take on significant risk: we invest alongside our corporate partners and we are partners, not providers. But we want to do more.

We have always known that there would come a time when, to scale the model and increase the chances of success of our portfolio, it would be essential to have access to capital, to take on greater risks and, at the same time, reduce our risk by having more control.

The last sentence may seem counterintuitive, but you would agree that in corporate venture building there are many additional risk factors besides the usual ones in entrepreneurship (market, business, team…) simply because there is such a complex entity in the equation (politics, timelines, changes in priorities, appointments, incentives…) as a corporation.

That moment has arrived

As I mentioned above, over these 6 years we have been fortunate to learn a lot. And, as they say, one learns as much (or more) from mistakes as from successes. We could say that in these years:

❌ We have lost enormous opportunities. Many projects that were ready could not see the light due to changes in the corporate direction outside our control.

❌ We have a value proposition that was only possible to develop with a small percentage of corporations that have a series of very complex characteristics (maturity level, corporate structures pursuing the creation of new businesses, some comfort with risk and uncertainty…); excluding a large number of corporates or, in other words, leaving us with a very small available market.

❌ We have a self-sufficient structure that does not allow us to incorporate external partners into the ventures until after they have been launched and are in the market, which leaves out new partners for each project.

✅ We have a method to find, validate, and launch new companies with reduced risk in a few months.

✅ We have a deep knowledge of the areas of opportunity or strategic territories relevant to many corporations. The naturally transversal nature of diversification means that what can be strategic for an infrastructure company can also be for a logistics company. All this time has allowed us to collect the