Venadar, derived from the contraction of “Venture – Radar”, was the brainchild of Mark Kaiser in 2005. Mark, a seasoned entrepreneur and a former public company CEO, recognized that large companies struggled with growth and innovation. His insight was that entrepreneurs were good at creating and innovating, while large corporations were good at scaling—so bringing them together in collaborative relationships could accelerate growth. In Venadar he created the capability of looking at the future through an “entrepreneurial lens” for the purposes of identifying, targeting, acquiring, and scaling new technologies, products, services and skillsets through partnerships, investments and acquisitions.

Keith Cowan, a former C-level officer responsible for strategy and corporate development at Sprint, BellSouth Corporation, and Genuine Parts Company, acquired Venadar and became Venadar’s CEO in 2019.

Keith had mostly focused on large transformational joint ventures and acquisitions through his career (with an aggregate transactional value of well over $500 billion), but he saw the Venadar capabilities as something that was always missing from his playbook — a unique “bridge” and “gap filler” between corporate strategy and corporate development that could drive a series of ongoing investments in growth and innovation for the benefit of both business units and the corporate parent company.

Keith also envisioned that these capabilities, in addition to serving F500 companies, might be of extraordinary benefit to private equity firms and their sponsored companies.

The Venadar team now fills an undeniable gap in the business services market — the huge void between the strategic work of large consulting firms and the transactional services of large investment banks — by accelerating the execution of mission critical partnerships and acquisitions delivering innovation and growth.

Since 2005, Venadar has successfully helped over 45 Fortune 500, private equity backed, and special purpose acquisition companies, along with countless other businesses across dozens of industries, transform, expand and innovate their services and products to generate significant revenue growth.