Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions about our business.
01
You have worked with so many Fortune 500 companies, why have I never heard of you before?
Our work with clients is often confidential, as it results in partnerships, investments, and acquisitions that drive new innovations. Because of that we have historically used word of mouth recommendations as our primary form of marketing. As we have adapted to the changing dynamics of the industry and listened to the needs of our client partners and the start-up community, we’ve recognized that our services can reach beyond the traditional corporations. Venadar now supports mid-size and start-up companies, as well as PE firms, corporate and financial VCs, and private investors.
02
How long do your assignments take and how much do they cost?
Every project is different. Most of our traditional projects are 8 -10 weeks. With some clients we have had multi-year projects while others could be completed in 4-6 weeks. We are significantly less expensive than traditional consulting companies because we are there to make your strategies immediately actionable through development initiatives — vs creating more work for your team or inundating you with pieces of analysis.
Sometimes a partnership makes more sense than an acquisition. Other times, our clients decide to “make” versus “buy.” To maintain the objectivity of our advice, we weight our fees more heavily towards a monthly retainer, although we also can include a modest transaction success fee as part of our compensation. Our clients recognize the potential conflict posed by the investment banking model’s reliance on transaction fees.
03
What kinds of innovation initiatives do you work on?
As innovation can be defined differently across companies, we focus on your growth opportunity areas and filling capability gaps related to efficiency, sustaining optimizations, and new market creating innovations. Regardless of the type of innovation you seek, Venadar’s methodology can be applied to address underlying technologies, business process, new products, emerging channels, new markets, and other parts of your ecosystem.
04
Isn’t it better to work with a company that focuses only on my industry?
Over our past fifteen years, our professionals have worked in most industries. Nonetheless, in many cases, we bring in external resources at our cost to make sure we understand the dynamics of an industry if we haven’t worked in it before or we need to be refreshed. However, what really makes our process so valuable is that we look both inside and outside your industry for solutions. We often find that innovations and solutions developed for a completely different segment may be easily adaptable to new use cases. It also means we can bring fresh, unbiased perspectives to your challenges.
05
What do you mean by ‘external innovation’?
While most companies have internal innovation teams working on new or improved products, technologies, and processes, the track records in terms of resource utilization, speed to market , and success rate of these internal teams is poor. External innovation means looking outside the organization for companies that have demonstrable solutions to the opportunities or problems the internal groups are exploring. By looking to partner with these external sources, a company can cut off the time, reduce the risk, and ultimately save money and instead invest in scaling an idea that has already proven its worth.
What Makes Us Different...
We provide objective assessments of desirability and the probability of a deal
We are deal agnostic and honest brokers
We create a bridge between your operating units, M&A, and Corporate Development
We are deal agnostic and honest brokers
We create a bridge between your operating units, M&A, and Corporate Development
Frequently Asked Questions
06
What resources do you use? I already use Pitchbook and CB Insights......
Our secret sauce is our people, networks, and resources. Venadar leverages industry and syndicated resources, a global network of experts, proprietary sources, and over 15 years of experience building ecosystems across technologies. Importantly, we curate the information and interpret it for you—putting it into context and defining the relevance for you. You often get our expert opinion for the annual price of just one of these data subscriptions.
07
Can’t I do this in-house?
Yes, of course, but likely with vastly different results and speed. We find that in-house units can be subjected to internal biases and hierarchical politics. Often they are consumed by current operations and by the deals and transactions already in process. Likewise, searching for the next opportunities requires diligence and focus. Unfortunately, it’s hard to generate the best outcomes while engaging simultaneously in both processes. With Venadar, you can avoid serendipity’s role in your target selection by deploying a comprehensive, regimented search process that does the heavy lifting for you. We also tend to have access to unconventional sources of innovation and target companies. A frequent comment from our clients is that Venadar “always find things that we hadn’t seen before.”
08
What do your deliverables look like? Is it just a list of companies?
We tailor our deliverables to the needs of the client. In most cases it includes a broad view (landscape) of the opportunity area populated by companies that are operating in that space and influenced by insights on how the opportunity area is evolving. We provide an analysis and evaluation of individual companies based on a list of attributes selected by our clients and given our collective years of business and corporate development experience, we go to the next level and suggest the possible key elements in the relationship that you should pursue to achieve your objectives. As part of our Outreach services, we contact the company targets anonymously to align on their objectives leading to a “warm” introduction for the initial partnership discussions.
09
Tell me a little bit about your team.
We are a band of seasoned professionals—all of us have experience working in senior positions in strategy, corporate development, business development, finance, marketing and/or operations at small, mid-size, and Fortune 500 companies. You will not be passed off to new graduates who learn more from you than you learn from them. What sets us apart is our collaborative approach to working with our clients and each other.
10
Don’t investment banks provide this kind of service?
Investment banks typically get more excited about the “sell side” and generating those large transaction fees. When they do address the “buy side” they often rely on companies being shopped in the open market. Venadar’s clients receive tremendous value from our development of a proprietary database of opportunities to monitor over time and pursue when the time is right. Major sources of growth may never appear on your radar due to limited scope and time—or they may not be actively looking for investment. The Venadar in-market teams see beyond the traditional databases into unmeasured channels and unmonitored networks.
11
How do you make recommendations for partnerships or investments?
Through pipeline development of potential partners across various industry ecosystems and curating bespoke groupings of targets who have the “best-fit” to your strategy, Venadar collaborates with our clients to deliver strategic growth. Ensuring that our solutions and recommendations align with the strategy of the company is a fundamental tenant of how we operate.
