Corporate Venture Building
New companies, built alongside established ones.
GCV Labs works with corporates to create ventures outside the core business: commercialising IP and data, entering adjacent markets, and establishing spinouts with their own team, brand and product.
The problem
Most corporate innovation does not produce companies.
The constraint is rarely a shortage of ideas. It is the absence of a vehicle capable of taking one to market.
A new venture needs different economics, different hiring, different risk tolerance and different governance from the business that sponsors it. When it is run as a project inside the core, it competes for resource against operations that already generate revenue, and it loses.
We provide the vehicle: a team that creates companies for a living, applying the same process to a corporate venture as to our own.
Innovation without a delivery vehicle
Workshops, labs and accelerator programmes produce ideas. Very few produce operating companies, because the organisation has no structure designed to run one.
IP and data that never reach a market
Assets built for internal use often have external value. Realising it requires a product, a brand, a commercial model and a team the core business cannot easily provide.
Opportunities outside the core
Adjacent markets rarely survive internal prioritisation. A separate venture removes the competition for attention and resource.
Structure
Inside, outside or joint.
The right structure depends on how close the venture is to the core, how it will be funded, and how independent it needs to be to succeed.
Inside
Built within the business
The venture is created as a division or brand of the parent. Fastest to start, easiest to integrate, most exposed to internal priorities.
Outside
Built as a separate company
A new entity with its own cap table, team and governance. Clearer incentives, easier to raise external capital into, slower to establish.
Joint
Built as a joint venture
The corporate contributes market access, IP or data; GCV Labs contributes the build. Ownership and control are agreed at the outset.
How we engage
From opportunity to operating venture.
01
Opportunity definition
We work with the leadership team to identify where the organisation's assets, data or market position create a venture opportunity.
02
Evaluation
The opportunity is validated with customers outside the organisation, sized, and modelled as a standalone business.
03
Structure and governance
Entity, ownership, board, decision rights and the relationship to the parent are agreed before anything is built.
04
Build and launch
The venture enters the seven-stage process with a dedicated team, its own brand and its own product.
05
Growth or spinout
The venture is scaled, held, or separated from the parent depending on what the evidence and the strategy support.
In practice
A spinout we built.
Quva was created inside Growth Capital Ventures and spun out as a separate brand operating as a division of the business, with its own product and market.