The VentureFuel Visionaries

Thoughts: 5 years from now, grocery stores will be half the size and entirely stocked with fresh products served by subject matter experts (the baker, the monger, the butcher). The back half of the store will be mini-fulfillment centers with autonomous robots packing personalized orders of your non-emotional staples and customizing your outputs based on Gen AI and personalized dietary preferences. In a way, future technology and innovations will allow you to return to the grocery store your grandparents enjoyed. How else will Silicon Valley Culture Disrupt the Food Business? Tune in to this special interview with the Supermarket Guru Phil Lempert in the latest installment of The VentureFuel Visionaries podcast. 

At our 2024 Rogue Women event earlier this spring, Danielle Cohn, Founding Partner and CEO of The Wave Ventures, hosted a panel discussion with executives from corporate companies. The panel included Limor Schafman, Director of Operations and Programs at LG NOVA, a division of LG Electronics that collaborates with startups to develop businesses; Lizzie Naylor, Global Platform Manager for Start Path, Mastercard's acclaimed startup engagement program; and our own Shira Averbuch, Vice President of Innovation and Partnerships at VentureFuel. Find out how these executives are partnering enterprise organizations with startups to drive growth and create new markets, together.

Last week, we had an 'Ask Me Anything' session with Danielle Cohn, CEO and Founding Partner of Wave Ventures, on Building an Innovation Ecosystem for Enterprise Organizations. The discussion centers on Danielle’s leadership in a top Fortune 30 innovation function. Danielle shared insights on founding an award-winning startup platform and emphasized creating innovation spaces in large organizations and nurturing startup engagement.

A fireside chat originally recorded at our 2024 Rogue Women event earlier this spring, The theme Advocacy Access and Acceleration features a wonderful discussion with Charlotte Newman, Global Head of underrepresented founder and investor startup business development. Charlotte is a global business development leader for Amazon Web Services, and a former entrepreneur who leads the AWS startup strategy to engage and accelerate underrepresented founders and investors. During this conversation, moderated by rogue women fellow, Aina Fadina, they talk about how AWS is reshaping the innovation ecosystem by providing founders with the resources and networks needed to succeed.

Avra van der Zee is the COO of Elemental Excelerator, a global climate technology accelerator started in Honolulu with over 150 portfolio companies that have received over $8B in follow-on funding. We talk about using entrepreneurship for social change, catalytic capital, how to scale new technologies and the role of corporates in solving the climate challenge and the economic benefit of societal impact – including great case studies of United Airlines and Amazon.

Philipp has over two decades of expertise catalyzing the evolution of Fortune 500s, like Deloitte and Vontier, to drive transformative impact. We discuss Corporate Venturing and its various iterations, from Accelerators to Venture Studios to Pilots to Partnerships to Hackathons, and why insights from this work not only inform strategic decisions but can make future growth like “selling ice cream on the beach.”

Originally recorded at our 2024 Rogue Women event earlier this spring, Kathleen Carbone, Principal, Director of Advisory, and a Senior Family Advisor at Parcion Private Wealth, led a panel discussion featuring founders from three startup companies. On the panel were Jamie Norwood & Cynthia Plotch, the dynamic duo behind FemTech startup Stix, Isoken Igbinedion, Founder and CEO of Parfait, an AI-powered startup disrupting the $13 billion custom wig industry, and Kathryn Harrison, Founder and CEO of Magpie, the world's first AI powered inventory and sales management system for collectible sellers. Hear how these founders went from overlooked during the hype to steady and soaring during a downturn.

Originally recorded at our 2024 Rogue Women event earlier this spring, La Keisha Landrum Pierre, General Partner & Co-Founder of Emmeline Ventures shares insights from her journey in venture capital, featured in the documentary "Show Her the Money." She talks about how the film is helping to rewrite the narrative on women and fundraising. Before starting at Emmeline Ventures, La Keisha was the MD at NLA Ventures. Prior to that, she was the CEO at Sahara Reporters and co-Founder of Sahara Reporters’ Civic Media Lab, in partnership with MacArthur Foundation and Omidyar Network and others.

On today’s show we have Kyle Basler-Reeder, who designed and leads ExxonMobil’s corporate-wide Open Innovation program. We discuss how the exponential growth of PHDs and startups enables Exxon to tap into external resources for Exploration, Acceleration and to solve stubborn problems. We talk about the importance of problem definition, declaring your “Innovation Ambition” and how to create organizational ambidexterity. How “Venture Clienting” attracts the best startups and new solutions by becoming a first-client and scaling what works.

To celebrate our 200th episode, we put host Fred Schonenberg in the guest chair to find out what his biggest unlock, the best corporate innovation models, his favorite episodes, the best startups on the show and how the guests have evolved his thinking around innovation. From Venture Studios to Venture Capital to Venture Partners. From Sonic Branding to Darth Vadar. From Voice Cloning to Generative AI. From Mastercard to TDK Ventures to Pepsi to Comcast. Shira Averbuch, VP of Innovation, who produced the first several episode of the show moderates this fun retrospective.

Catherine Gray is a Producer, Keynote Speaker, Author, and the Founder of She Angel Investors. She's dedicated her career to empowering female entrepreneurs and addressing the underfunding of women in venture capital. We discuss her documentary "Show Her the Money," her TED Talk "Fund Women, Save the World," and her vision for the future of gender diversity and inclusion in the venture capital landscape. With women receiving less than 2% of venture capital the opportunity is immense for both impact and returns.

Ken Evans is the Managing Director of the Accelerator Program for Emerging Tech Startups at Tampa Bay Innovation Center. With a background in venture-backed startups and Fortune 50 companies, Ken is key player in Tampa Bay's tech ecosystem, co-founding the region's first full-time coworking space and leading initiatives to support local startups. Our conversation centers around their new Climate Tech Accelerator and the importance of Revenue First Innovation, taking a “Moneyball approach” vs. the Power Law Unicorn Hunters, why we need to evolve from petri dish science experiments to solving real world problems, and why most accelerators are promotional lipstick vs. creating true product-market-fit with tangible outcomes.

Maria Rodriguez is the Executive Director of the Valiente Fund, a donor and funder collaborative addressing the lack of investment of philanthropic funds for Latine leaders, organizations, and communities. They just launched the Valiente Accelerator to support emerging Latine groups with grants and operational capacity to accelerate their growth. We discuss why critical moments demand innovation, the need to scale bold solutions, the power of microecosystems, the value of starting before you are ready and how to change systems through collaboration.

Join us as we honor the 2023 Visionary and Venture of the Year. Nominated and voted on by their peers, these are the change agents embracing new opportunities to drive outsized results. They are intent on blazing new paths, discovering inventive solutions, and powering the future. Visionary of the Year: Marty Guay, Vice President of Business Development, Stanley Black & Decker With over three decades experience as a corporate innovator, Marty Guay has spent the past six years working with startups, academia, venture capital and global corporations to create business value opportunities for Stanley Black & Decker, a worldwide leader in Tools and Outdoor. At Stanley Black & Decker, Guay is responsible for the inception of the company’s accelerator program where he successfully connects startups with technological and commercial relationships inside the organization and throughout global ecosystems. Guay sits on the advisory boards of multiple startups and serves as a board member of the state of Connecticut Governor’s Workforce Council and as a liaison to the Business Roundtable. In addition to these roles, Guay also oversees the company’s global philanthropy program that is focused on closing the skilled trades gap through its Grow the Trades program. Venture of the Year: Inworld AI, represented by Co-founder, Kylan Gibbs Inworld AI, led by a team of conversational AI pioneers and experts, uses advanced AI to build interactive characters whose personalities, thoughts, memories, and behaviors are designed to emulate social human interaction. Founded in 2021, Inworld is a recent graduate of the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Generative AI Accelerator run in partnership with VentureFuel. Last month, Inworld announced a multi-year partnership with Microsoft to develop AI toolsets to assist and empower creators in dialogue, story, and quest design. Kylan Gibbs has a background in turning advanced AI into products that naturally interact with humans. He came from DeepMind, where he led products for Conversational AI and Generative Models. Prior, Kylan worked on enterprise Machine Learning projects at Bain & Company. Kylan studied at the University of Cambridge and McGill University.

Disruptor, Founder, Envisioneer Mike Pell leads The Microsoft Garage in NYC, the company’s worldwide innovation program. Mike Invented PDF and Acrobat at Adobe and has been granted over 20 US Patents. We talk about why going fast is the only way to protect your business, the evolution of ai Co-Pilots, the art of hacking, the ROI of Innovation, why you can’t sit on the sideline as the pace of business accelerates, the Microsoft Garage Growth Framework and Mike’s new book Visualizing Business.

Sokwoo Rhee is the EVP at LG Electronics and the Head of LG's North America Innovation Center, LG Nova. From serving as a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the Whitehouse to leading groundbreaking IoT and smart city initiatives, Sokwoo brings a wealth of experience driving innovation forward. Today, we discuss why external innovation is important for a $60B+ revenue company, how to justify external innovation to internal stakeholders, and why growth and disruption insurance go hand in hand. We also dive into the LG Nova Commercial Accelerator Program.

MassRobotics is the largest independent robotics hub that accelerates robotics innovation and adoption, and they are launching their first Accelerator program, led by Director Marita McGinn. The unique, equity-free program combines funding, mentorship, and a collaborative community. We talk about the future of robotics, from Cobots to Ag Tech, as well as how equity-free accelerators enable a wider breadth of solutions to commercialize.

On today’s show, I am honored to have Pedro Antonio Guerrero, CEO of Guerrero - an executive advancement company at the intersection of media, professional networks, and executive search. Pedro specializes in executive advancement and corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives – utilizing Guerrero Search and Guerrero Media to deliver on his mission. We talk about the intersection of diversity and innovation, why diverse perspective drives growth, and how to create pipelines through networks unfamiliar to your own.

This is quite simply a master class in collaborative innovation to solve meaningful challenges. Dr. Simon is a practicing cardiologist, the President of Academic & External Affairs and Chief Scientific Officer for the University Hospitals Health System (UH). We discuss the unique non-profit, for-profit model of The Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Centre’s Therapeutics Accelerator. The Accelerator is a first-of-its-kind, transatlantic initiative to identify, fund and advance breakthrough academic discoveries to deliver new treatments for the 400 million people worldwide who suffer from rare diseases.

On today’s show we have Andrew Merinoff. Andrew is the founder of Dispact Ventures, which is disrupting industries with impact investing. What started off as a small fund to assist his close friends and confidants eventually grew into a 16-venture portfolio. Andrew is also a seasoned entrepreneur and the Co-founder and CEO of Chinola Liqueur. With a passion for building companies, particularly in the Wine & Spirits space, Andrew has made a mark through innovation. We talk about SPVs, impact investing, the future of wine & spirits and innovating in traditional, established industries.