Nationwide Ventures

Welcome to Impact TV, a corporate venture video series in collaboration with the Kaufman Fellows. I'm Jack Crawford, a founding managing partner at CERECAP Impact Venture Capital. And alongside my colleague, Pat Bumpus, and my Kaufman Fellow co chair, Alessandro Santo, we're thrilled to welcome to the show Josh Valiquia, principal at Nationwide Ventures. Josh, how are doing today?

Doing well. Thank you so much for the time. Pleasure to be a part of this and, you know, share a little bit about the CBC world. And it sounds like, you know, we've got a growing universe of these, episodes for all folks to learn.

So, alright, be honest with this. Are you a little sleep deprived? I understand you have a new baby in the family, and I remember, I've got three kids my myself. Those early days were were pretty tough.

Uh-huh. Trying to figure out how to balance work and and sleep and all that stuff. How are you doing? You hanging in there?

Hanging in there. You know, it feels like I'm getting a bit more founder empathy. It's it's one of those things we're kind of, you know, building the plane as as we're flying it, learning as we're going, making a lot of mistakes, but keeping everyone alive. So, so far, so good.

We're having fun, and, a lot of credit to my wife. She was really keeping everything together. Yeah. That's that's the same thing at at our house.

She did everything. You know? It's just I just felt like a support system. And for a while, the kids just felt like a third arm on her body.

I was like, hey. When do I get to be a dad? But we figured that out over time. So let's talk about your professional journey.

We've done about 50 of these episodes on Impact TV. A number of different people have gone from kind of investment banking into venture. And you went from investment banking into corporate venture. Can you just talk a little bit about the investment banking experience and maybe how it influenced investment decisions or process or portfolio management?

Yeah. Yeah. I think it has influenced in a couple of different ways. You know, some of which I think are quite beneficial and others, I think, are kind of, you know, exercises in unlearning some of the things that you've learned in banking.

But, you know, ultimately, I think, you know, where benefit where the benefits come from are you see all these different business models across the various life cycles, whether it's, you know, kind of mid to late stage capital raising, obviously, exiting through m and a or IPOs. But at the end of the day, I think what's most beneficial is, you know, you live and breathe financial modeling for years on end. And at the end of the day, you know, that's kind of the language of how, you know, the business kind of is the output.

Right? So you understand what the assumptions are, which drive the business, which drive the revenue, and then therefore the output and the, you know, EBITDA. So in this case, you know, kind of retracting it slightly. You know, when you're looking at the models of the founders, I mean, look.

You know, all these models are gonna take you left, right, up, down, not necessarily, you know, going to be correct, but it helps you understand how they think and where they're going and and how they think they're gonna get there. And to me, on you know, kind of unpacking how they think is really important is is a part of kind of the DNA of the business and where it's gonna go and and how you can kinda partner with that founder and kind of help them get to that place. So I think, you know, the investment banking background is really helpful kind of influencing that.

But I do think, some of the unlearnings are you know, these are very immature businesses, and you have to treat them as such. And, you know, you can't necessarily hold them to the fire if they're gonna miss, you know, quarterly growth. You know, that's it's it's just not how it works in this world. But, but it's been an interesting thing that it certainly has influenced how I've I've looked at businesses and interact with founders.

Yeah. I appreciate your perspective. That's interesting because it's more than just being a spreadsheet jockey applied to startups, you're really talking about the team elements. So, yeah, that's valuable.

Okay. So Nationwide Ventures, most people are familiar with Nationwide. But why don't you just sort of at the 40,000 foot level? You know, who is Nationwide?

Let's just start at the sort of the corporate level, the the mothership level. And and then and then maybe tell us a little bit about how Nationwide Ventures is sort of, you know, partnering and investing with startups. Absolutely. So Nationwide is, you know, top 10 insurance carrier in The US.

We're slightly different than some of the other large names that you're probably familiar with. You've seen commercials for in the fact that we're kind of a diversified platform. And, you know, what that means is, you know, we have the the P and C side of the house, which is, you know, what you're seeing commercials for, home, auto, commercial, all things like that. But in addition to that, and you'll probably have seen some of the patent meaning commercials about Nationwide Financial, they don't necessarily reveal what products that we have on that side of the house, but that side includes life insurance, annuities, retirement solutions, all the type of kind of wealth preservation elements that kind of come with, you know, you're you're protecting your home and auto with insurance.

And on the other side, you're protecting and preserving kind of your life and wealth over time. So we have kind of both sides of the equation, which can be somewhat rare in the world of insurance where folks have kind of specialized on one side of the house or the other. But that is who Nationwide is and how it kind of informs how we think about the world and the types of investments we wanna make. But, you know, I'll kind of pause there on, you know, kind of who Nationwide is.

We're we're headquartered in Columbus, Ohio with, you know, offices in New York, Des Moines, Scottsdale, and a couple of locations. But that's kind of, you know, who Nationwide is at at core. And then and then sort of let's let's, piggyback comments, around how is Nationwide Ventures sort of partnering and investing in startups to sort of support what is a very large large organization, large company working on a lot of different sort of industry sectors and initiatives for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, I would say that we're a, you know, medium sized team.

So there's eight of us on the team, and the breakdown is about split half of the folks focusing on PNC, which is kinda where I live, and then the other four focusing a little bit more on NF or Nationwide Financial. So that kind of helps us at least narrow the, you know, the breadth of what we're focusing on and helps us get a little bit deeper on the various kind of topic areas we're focused on. So, you know, how we end up serving Nationwide across the the two kind of larger organizations is, you know, it's a combination of mutual relationships, particularly those folks that, you know, have worked in CBC understand that, you know, this is extracurricular work for the, you know, business employees to look at startups, to consider new technologies, to keep up with trends, to run POCs, to run, you know, a process with, you know, a number of different vendors that maybe we're bringing to the forefront.

So, you know, a, it's it's about finding the right champions who are interested in this type of work, and we're always extraordinarily happy when we find them. But b, you know, there's also kind of more organized quarterly type updates that we'll have with, you know, business leaders across particular verticals, whether it's mobility as we're thinking about, you know, PLCL auto. It certainly could be on the life annuity side. It can be on the cyber side, actuarial.

So, you know, ultimately, we like to have some type of structured I wouldn't call it reporting, but let let's say, you know, lifting up, you know, information or bubbling up, you know, trends that we're seeing, companies that are interesting, founders that we'll bring in and have them speak directly to these leaders so they can just see and hear what we're seeing and hearing. And, ultimately, they can flag what's important or interesting to them and, you know, how they're thinking about the next, you know, twelve, twenty four, thirty six months and allow us to marry what we're seeing in the market with maybe what they're thinking about into the future and trying to bring those two things together.

And this is Nationwide Ventures interacting with the various business units to understand kind of the areas of interest as it relates to mobility or cybersecurity or, you know, some of the other areas that you're focused on, enterprise infrastructure and property tech and the future of work. Is that right? You're sort of that's the way in which you collaborate with the business units? Yes.

That's that's one of the key ways that we do it. It's super helpful because, you may know our strategy is creating, from a from a venture perspective, looking at, building a corporate intelligence platform by doing interviews like the one you and I are doing now and understanding sort of what are your areas of interest by industry sector, by stage, so that we end up elevating our investing IQ as a seed and early stage investor. And then bringing you more industry relevant deal flow.

So at the end of the day, that's how we're thinking about things. We're obviously spending a lot of time talking about how AI effectively is applied to security or finance or digital health or some of these other areas. How are you finding that AI is shaping your view on the investment themes that you mentioned? Yeah.

No. It's it's a great question. And, you know, I would say, you know, one of the kind of retorts people have about insurance is well, I guess, broadly speaking, FIs. If, you know, banking is, you know, ten years behind the curve in technology, insurance is ten years behind banking.

So we we tend to be laggards as it pertains to technology adoption. But, you know, I think that's for a couple good reasons. I mean, one, it's, you know, a highly highly regulated market. So, you know, AI, at least historically, as you kinda think about the the black boxes of, you know, neural networking and machine learning, it was something that, you know, really couldn't even be applicable in some circumstances where you're applying to the DOI for a new insurance product and you have to, in clear terms, explain how it works.

And if it's AI is deriving x y z price, it's, you know, simply not gonna be allowable within within the Department of Insurance for Admitted Solutions. So on one hand, you know, we're going to be a little bit behind from our user perspective one way or the other just as we kind of get up the curve there. But I do think there's a tremendous excitement and energy around it as well. You know, Nationwide had a a press release within the last couple of months talking about, you know, a billion plus dollar budget that will be applied to AI projects, you know, across the organization, whether it's, you know, individual workflows, automations across various lines of business, contemplations and POCs of, you know, workbenches across underwriting, claims, first notice of loss, all these different ways that insurance can be sped up and and ultimately can be more beneficial for the policyholders themselves.

Because at the end of the day, unfortunately, you know, insurance is also kind of infamous for low NPS because the only time you're ever interacting with your insurer is when something goes wrong. So you're you're already a little upset before you get on the phone. But, we think that AI potentially could help bridge the gap by improving customer service, improving how we're able to underwrite in the first place, and, you know, deliver a better experience for everyone, whether it's a personal line, a commercial line, or, you know, a wealth product on the other side of the fence.

So it's certainly something that we're spending a lot of time on, like I said, with that press release in particular. But, you know, as you think about the venture team as well, we're certainly looking at point solutions, you know, as as small as AI assisted filing for new insurance products, you know, to to things that are more broad. Like I was saying with underwriting workbench, how do we think about automating and expediting underwriting so we can get, you know, essentially more policies, you know, bound and and shipped?

So it's it's definitely an enterprise wide mindset that we're working on. And, you know, every day, it's it's kind of a a new journey as to what are the new tools, how are we using them, how are we going kind of top down. And I I'd like to think that Nationwide Ventures is part of the spearhead as we're thinking about the tools that are out there and how we're using them and how we're helping stand up POCs across the organization. So it's it's certainly exciting.

It's it's exciting for Nationwide. Extremely helpful feedback and and market insight. I think, you know, we have some portfolio companies that may be relevant to you. So I'll have a sidebar with you at some point and talk about some of those portfolio But thanks for that market insight.

That's really helpful. As people sort of learn more about what's happening in the insurance industry and look at the sort of the macro elements that might impact your industry sector focus, I'm curious, is weather an issue? Is natural disasters across the country around the world an issue? Is it or is wartime an issue?

Are there some macro factors that sort of directly influence sort of your thinking about where where to invest and how best to support, you know, the the the, you know, the corporate that you work for? Sure. No. Absolutely.

And, you know, I I think weather is certainly a a macro that is something we're thinking about all the time. You know, even on a personal level, you know, Indiana, which is, of course, you know, South Of Ohio is having tornadoes. That wind came up. It literally ripped a window off of my house, and the scroll got into our house almost Christmas vacation style.

This happened a couple of days ago. But, you know, then the first thing is, okay. Do I call my insurer? How do I handle this?

What is this weather doing that's impacting, you know, kind of my day to day life? And so, you know, one of the theses that I spent time on with some of my colleagues was understanding and thinking more deeply about the impact of wildfire on the ability to insure, whether that's, you know, on the West Coast or as it's kind of moving more inland as we've all seen how those trade or essentially how these trends are moving. So, you know, for for Nationwide where, you know, it's top of mind to protect kind of assets, lives, and livelihoods, you know, how do we best do that?

And in the case of a wildfire or just, you know, extreme weather kind of writ large, you know, we like to think of it almost kind of as a mosaic of things. It's it's not going to be better underwriting individually. It's not going to be better, you know, geographic positioning or, you know, risk dispersion over an area. It's it's a combination of new technologies that are gonna help you better underwrite.

It's probably a manifestation of, you know, physical reinforcements, things that can help potentially reduce premium with know, in in partnership with your insurance. And, you know, other, you know, crazier technologies like, you know, a company that we haven't invested in, but I I I do think is really wild and interesting. BurnBot, which is based out of California, which essentially is is helping, you know, reinforce the health of forests around, you know, communities and, you know, minimizing available fuel for wildfires to not only ignite, but to grow and spread.

So there's all types of things, both physical and on the technology layer, that are helping mitigate some of these things and helping insurers better serve policyholders and, you know, increase their security on, you know, their livelihood and their assets. So it's it's a very important topic, and it's very top of mind within Nationwide. No doubt about it. So we've talked a little bit about industry sectors.

Maybe you could just talk about stage and typical check size that you're targeting. Yeah. So, you know, we've got about 40 portfolio companies today. We were founded back in 2016, so it's been been about a decade.

And so, you know, averaging about four investments a year or so. And I would say if you look at the the histogram of our 40 investments, a would historically be where we primarily have gotten involved. But I would say we've started to do more on the seed level as well. You know, it's just, I think, the maturity of of the market, what a seed is today, you know, an a might have been five years ago.

Right? So as you kinda think about where we we were where we're positioned, I'd say c through b is kinda where our sweet spot is. I will I will say we don't issue terms. We we don't lead, and we don't take board seats.

So think of us as your co investor of choice. You know, we're not here to be a sharp elbow that's gonna take a deal from you or or take the cap the the cap table space. I would say think of us when you're looking for a strategic partner within insurance or within financial services that you think can be beneficial to the business or we can be you know, or the flip side of business or the the business can be beneficial to Nationwide. And so from a check perspective, on the seed level, think of us as half 1,000,000 to a million and a half.

At the a, two to three. And at the b and beyond, we can go to five to 20. So we can be flexible in being, you know, a meaningful capital partner throughout the life cycle of businesses. But I would say, you know, a to b is definitely where we like to spend our time.

It it would be an outlier for us to do a CED pre IPO type round. And then how do you communicate value to the syndicate that you're participating in or to the founder as it relates to your ability to add value beyond capital? What we're seeing is a lot of corporates are embracing pilot projects with startups. Some of them are launching accelerators.

Some are making curated introductions or working on co development efforts, providing channel support access to customers. Is there any I mean, there's a little bit of a industry validation if Nationwide gets involved in a in a company that that certainly supports the credibility of that start up, but as as a brand because you got such a credible brand. Other things that you're sort of typically focused on when you when you think about adding value beyond capital? Yeah.

So I'll answer it in in two ways. So I guess I'll first answer the kind of flavors of of how we can be helpful, and then I'll kind of move on to how do we typically see ourselves being helpful as it pertains to, you know, investment rounds, before or after. So, you know, many times, I typically like to ask ask the founder, you know, how would you like to work with Nationwide? And, you know, from there, then it's my job to shepherd them, you know, through the tens of thousands of employees that is nationwide because it's a it can be a very, you know, complex and large organization, and knowing the right person, you know, it can can make all the difference.

But, you know, inevitably, that looks like is maybe it's distribution through through our networks. It could be coproduct creation. If you are an insurance oriented, you know, MGA or full stack carrier, it could look like a capacity relationship. We could stand up upfront or a captive.

You know, anything kind of within the technical insurance world, have the capabilities to help startups do. But, you know, in addition to that, it's, of course, access to our kind of broad networks across the other large carriers, which can have certainly, you know, turn into customer relationships as well as access to the, you the SMEs that are, you know, across all the different lines of business because we cover essentially every single type of insurance outside of health insurance.

So whatever they're looking for, we probably have an expert, if not if not many. And then lastly, of course, you know, the customer relationship, which, you know, for most start ups is is maybe what they're always seeking or the ideal outcome. And that's something that we absolutely try to angle for every single time whenever we're making an investment. And, you know, as as it pertains to kind of how we're adding that value, I think, you know, you asked a great question because a lot of CVCs, you know, can sometimes or I think CVC at large can have a negative connotation and and reputation, which is unfortunate because I think when done right, CVC is one of the most powerful forms of capital.

And, you know, how we try to add value is, you know, candidly, in my opinion, it's best when we get to know a company at least a year ahead of their next capital raise because it gives me time to, a, get to know the business, get to know the founder, understand, you know, how could we potentially work with this person. Do we wanna work with this person? You know, after having several interactions, not just one dot, but, you know, several dots that become a line. And, you know, ultimately, that gives me an opportunity to socialize them across a a variety of individuals in the business, different lines of business, see where real opportunity is starting to emerge.

Because at the end of the day, as I'm sure you know from all of these, you know, CVC interviews that you've done, mean, I the sales cycle of large enterprises tends to be long. The the sales cycle within FIs in particular is extraordinarily long. And I I tried to be very candid and forthright saying, you know, post investment, we're looking at twelve to thirty six months for something to, like, truly occur. You know, a POC may happen between that, but a POC to a contract is, you know, a whole another gulf that you need to to to get over.

So, ultimately, for us, in a perfect world, I'm getting to know them six to twelve months in advance. We're socializing them across the business. They're seeing where they could potentially have, you know, a customer relationship or other types of relationships. And, you know, then we're both invigorated together.

It's it's a mutual interest in wanting to do something and knowing and being forthright that it's going to take time, but but we're excited because, you know, businesses, startups take ten, fifteen, twenty years to to really come to fruition. So, you know, waiting two years out of 20 is, you know, maybe not so long after all. What percentage of the investments that you make actually end up having a commercial deal, as well as the investment? Yeah.

It's it's a great question. So I would say, you know, at investment, you know, a 100% of the opportunities have some strategic angle as we do them. And then from there, you know, maybe 30% never actually get there. 30% may run through a POC or initial contract and then kind of spin off in some way, and then 30% will engage in a longer term relationship that is lasting and whether it's a customer relationship, capacity, distribution, etcetera, but it's an ongoing multiyear relationship.

Yeah. That's interesting. I I mean, we've seen, jeez, anywhere from not much of any commercial relationship. It's just an independent corporate investment arm operating more like a VC to some groups.

I think it was Northrop Grumman. 80% of the investments they make come out with a side by side commercial agreement. Do you have a business unit sponsorship required as you make investments, or are you operating more independently? I wouldn't I wouldn't call it a sponsorship.

You know, it's not as black and white as that. It's you know, typically, you know, we've developed relationships across the various lines of business, and we can say, you know, x y z, and I have had a handful of conversations. We've, know, introduced the company to them. There you know, there's legitimate interest in potentially chasing something down here knowing that it's not gonna happen in, you know, tomorrow.

But, you know, as we're underwriting, you know, we we typically try to find at least one, if not two or three, opportunities that are strategic. The more shots on goal, the better, as as you can imagine. Right? And it's just a probability game.

So, anytime we're considering it, we don't necessarily have a corporate champion or sponsor who's gonna come to IC and talk about it. It's it's more so just documented that we have had those conversations, and we believe that there's something to be done. You mentioned that you're almost always or always following lead investment from someone else? Is it I'm I'm envisioning most of the time that's a traditional financial focused VC, or are you finding yourselves more and more following the lead investment of a CVC?

It's it's a great question. We've definitely done both, but I would say, by and large, it's typically, you know, a traditional institutional VC that's setting the terms. And, you know, one of the things that were where we said is, you know, as we mentioned, kinda whether it's warranted or not, that kind of negative connotation around CVCs. So, you know, in our view, to make sure that, you know, we're all aligned in, you know, creating the the greatest kind of capital appreciation for everyone on the cap table, founders included, that, you know, we find that the market is just more accepting of institutional lead.

So we favor that, you know, where possible. Yeah. And then are you managing the m and a activities at Nationwide? How how acquisitive is Nationwide as a corporate?

We're finding more and more that either M and A and CVC are sort of tucked under the same sort of eight person team, or in some cases, no, corporate development is completely separate from the early stage investment strategy of the of the corporate venture? How does it work within Nationwide? Yeah. So we're under the same umbrella.

So Eric Ross manages both the venture team as well as the corporate development team and sits on top of both. I think in aggregate, maybe the team is 15 folks. Like I said, there's eight of us, or, I guess, seven of us on on the VC team if you include Eric, eight. And then I think there's maybe a handful or a little bit more on the, m and a side.

So I would say when we invest, we do not invest to acquire. It's not really the mandate that we're that we're envisioning. So and and we're, you know, we're getting forthright with founders, whereas, you know, if you're taking a check from Nationwide, don't assume that in twenty four months we're gonna turn around and buy you. But I will say just kind of on a on a writ large basis, Nationwide has been quite acquisitive over the last twelve to eighteen months.

There's, you know, a number of, you know, publicly available press releases about some of the deal activity that's that's been done on Nationwide's side on the acquisition side as as well as the divestiture side. So Eric has certainly been busy across, you know, the investments we're making as well as the acquisitions and divestitures that they're making. So you got your corporate venture activity. You got corp dev handling that.

Are you also making LP commitments into VC funds? We are. There's one gal in the team who's responsible for that, and I would say she's quite busy on that side as well. We or she will make anywhere from, you know, zero to three net new, fund investments per year.

And it's it's been a pretty successful, I would say, endeavor. We've met a bunch of great GPs. They've shared some best practices. They're sharing deal flow.

They're they're sharing kind of some they're bubbling up some of the same research that they're, you know, finding in very specific verticals that maybe we're not spending as much time in, cyber being a perfect example given, you know, how technical of a sector that really is. So, you know, she has found, I think, lot of success investing in some of those more kind of vertically oriented funds that are still in the early stage. So let's call them, you know, seed and a, as well as, you know, even a click earlier that are more focused on, you know, Intrutech and Fintech, which are kind of precede seed, which are, you know, doing the legwork, finding businesses that we're not seeing, bringing them to the forefront, telling us what they like, what they don't like, and, you know, helping, you know, essentially establish some of that really early stage pipeline that you can really only get if you're on the ground in, you know, San Francisco, New York City, something like that.

As she looks at new relationships, is it primarily driven by enthusiasm for a new industry sector and finding managers in that particular industry sector? Is it driven by geography, or is it more just a capability of the management team with a solid track record that are likely to produce quality deal flow? Yeah. No.

It's it's a great question. It kinda touches on a little bit of everything. So she has done some investments that are specific to a geography as well as specific to a vertical. She's also done some that are just more oriented around helping us with pipeline.

And then there's just some deals that yeah. Just a phenomenal GP that had a great track record in doing something that, you know, appeared to be differentiated. And so it's it's a little bit of a mixed bag. And at the end of the day, she's done a really nice job aggregating, I think, a pool of very high quality managers that have, you know, done, I think, a nice job on behalf of Nationwide.

Awesome. We've talked a little bit about trends in industry sectors. Let's talk a little bit about trends as it relates to corporate venture capital specifically. I mean, one of the things that we're seeing is some corporate venture groups are establishing an independent brand separate from sort of their corporate parent.

Some are certainly going from passive roles at the series C and series D, where they were just providing sort of follow on financing of a lead financial VC to earlier in the financing food chain, operating like you are from seed to sort of a and b. And then some are even taking board roles now or at least, you know, consistently taking board observer roles. Those are some of the things we're seeing. Any other trends that you would highlight or anything else that you think is interesting as as corporate venture sort of evolves to become, you know, a major part of the overall sort of, you know, venture capital investing ecosystem?

I mean, it's been pretty amazing. What what's your sense? Yeah. No.

I think you're a 100% right. You're you're seeing an evolution of of all these corporates kind of, in some cases, looking a little bit more institutional. In in other in other ways, you know, I think, you know, growing even stronger kind of in that strategic corporate kind of lens. But, you know, one thing that I think is interesting that kind of highlights a little bit more of the, you know, transition into more of an institutional look is that the multistrategy look.

You know, you're starting to see some of these corporates that began, to your point, in, you know, c through b that are now launching, you know, opportunity funds or growth vehicles that are sitting on that kind of b to pre IPO that tend to be larger. And, you know, ultimately, it's it's some of that same idea of, oh, hey. We missed x, you know, at the seed in the a. We really liked them, and they grew outside of this vehicle.

We can't we can't chase it, or we can't chase them getting any type of meaningful ownership. So, you know, they've gone back to the well, convinced, you know, the mothership to, you know, grant them a larger vehicle to take, ownership in those types of businesses. So I think, you know, you're almost seeing a mirror of, you know, what institutional was doing over the last ten years is now kind of coming a little bit into the CBC world because I think it does make sense, you know, particularly in in a strategic concept where, you know, most of these seed and series a companies are years away from really being able to work for with with large enterprises.

I mean, that's just kind of the reality of it. So it almost feels like it's an it's a more natural fit to be investing at the BCD. But, you know, staying ahead of the business, think, is also important in staying at the forefront of technology to share those learnings. But then I think from a financial perspective, to be able to take advantage of those learnings as as they've actually matured into a real business and and one that's going to, you know, continue to grow quite large or even IPO to take advantage of kind of that their financial upside of kind of the earned financial upside of the work that you've done on the early side to understand where it's going and knowing the companies and knowing the management teams.

So I think that's been an interesting kind of evolution of CVC that, you know, mirrors a little bit more of a look of institutional, but I think really does make a lot of sense, you know, if you've been working in the early stage for, you know, years and kind of developed that muscle tissue. Do you think the industry is well, you've been around for ten years now. Do you think the new entrants into the market are using it as a visibility campaign to interesting innovation that may be relevant to their business units?

How do you think they're new entrants that have come in over the last five years on the corporate venture side? Because I think it's I think GCV maybe it was GCV or somebody else that said it's like 30% to 40% of all venture backed deals are now coming from corporate investment. I mean, that's a pretty sizable amount of the venture ecosystem. So some of that is sort of, to your point, maybe visibility to innovation and then maybe taking advantage of of the financial return opportunity at the early stage.

Is that kinda how you view it? What what would you add or edit with regard to what I just said? You know, it's it's it's a great question. You know, I think what's driving some of that growth, I think, ultimately, certainly is is the r and d piece, the innovation piece.

And, you know, there there was there's just the reality that, you know, on a kind of the pre COVID right into COVID basis, the returns were eye popping. I mean, there was a reason why there was an absolute flood of, you know, institutional endowment and otherwise LP capital into the space. You know, everyone's kind of chasing that alpha. So, you the corporates just tend to move a little bit slower.

You've you've got other, you know, kind of approvals to kind of go through, so it may still be somewhat reflexive on that, that there is this opportunity to create, you know, a large financial return out of a very small group of people and a relatively small check comparable to, you know, the revenue and the incomes of these large enterprises. But, you know, I I do think there is something special about having boots on the ground, particularly in large geographies, that the enterprise certainly wouldn't typically be working in.

So, you know, whether it's, you know, a JetBlue Ventures in the Valley or Goodyear or Xerox or whatever the case may be, you know, having people in a different geo who are seeing and hearing different things and are just ultimately involved in a different environment writ large, I think are going to just bring back a different type of learning versus, you know, an r and d lab that's sitting in, you know, Atlanta, Georgia, whatever the case may be for Coca Cola. Right? So I think there's something special to that, and maybe the the organizations are catching on to that.

I mean, it also could just be, you know, a bit a of a FOMO situation. If your if your competitor or competitors are all doing it, then you probably feel like you have you have to do it too. And as it grows, that just may be a natural symptom of it. I think that's certainly part of it for sure.

I think some of the new entrants from I'd say 50% of the calls that I've done recently or other other interviews of new entrants into the corporate venture space. A lot of discussion about defense tech, robotics, humanoids. Those areas relevant to Nationwide, or are those a little bit separate from from sort of the industry sectors that you're targeting? Sure.

So from, you know, from a defense perspective, definitely a little far afield. That being said, I have started to see, you know, satellite insurance companies. Because, I mean, obviously, as, you know, Starlink is going up and many of these other kind of space oriented companies, which, you know, I think defense and space are somewhat interconnected. But there's, you know, new insurance that is popping up associated with these new technologies, which I think, you know, poses a really interesting question, whether it's autonomous vehicles or it's humanoids or it's satellites or it's, you know, AI models in and coding, you know, who owns the risk at the end of the day?

Right? And and then where's the risk transfer occurring from an insurance perspective? It's it's hard to say who actually owns the risk. Is it the model writer?

Is it the person who told the humanoid to do x, y, z? Is it, you know, the the maker of the hardware because it was faulty and it wasn't able to grip the pot of coffee which then fell and burnt someone? You know, the the questions kind of unravel over time. And it it's a really interesting question from an insurance perspective.

You know, these are the things of the future, we do need to think about the risks associated with them and who's who's ultimately, you know, going to to to bear that risk. So I I think it's really interesting from an insurance perspective to think about these these new innovations. Yeah. I do too.

That that is interesting. Okay. We've made it, Josh. We've made it to the rapid fire portion of the program.

I got a couple of last couple of questions for you. Favorite podcast or industry publication? I mean, a lot there's a lot of discussion about acquired and all in and, obviously, doom scrolling LinkedIn. I could, you know, I I could do it for hours.

There is a lot of interesting stuff on there. You gotta be careful about how much time you spend on it. But favorite favorite pod podcast or industry publication? So, you know, from a pure entertainment perspective, I do like All In.

It's it's a weekly listen of mine. But I will say and it's also a very popular one that most folks probably have heard of. But if they hadn't, it's called Founders by David Senra, where he does you know, I'd call it short form versus long form podcast. So let's call it, like, hour to an hour and a half, where he's covering, you know, entrepreneurs that have done something successfully for at least fifteen plus years.

So they're they're not flashes in the pan, and it's across you know, it's every industry you can imagine, whether it's Coco Chanel, whether it's, you know, JPMorgan, whether it's Elon Musk. It's it's, you know, both new, recent, as well as old. And I think all of the stories are, a, very interesting, but it's it's something you can learn from. And and there's commonalities across all of the various founding stories and, essentially, the characters that drive them and what drives them, what motivates them, and drives them ultimately or or what earns them the the success at the end of the day.

I think it's it's just always amazing to me to hear those stories, how these folks have changed the world, the products they've created, and ultimately how the similarities may still exist whether, you know, it's Enzo Ferrari from eighty years ago or it's Elon Musk who's taking us to Mars tomorrow. You know, it's I I think it's for someone who's in the technology space, whether you're a venture capitalist or you're a founder yourself, think it's a great podcast to listen to. It's very inspiring.

Founder sounds great. Okay. And then one, I'll finish with a personal question. You may know that I had a thought leadership project that I did as part of my time in the Kaufman Fellows program.

And, I ended up writing a book on strategic planning for life and Kaufman was kind enough to distribute it out at at one of their their summits. And part of the book basically talks about how we launch our days. How would the morning routine that sort of allows you to bring your A game to not only sort of life, but also the work that you do? I guess your mornings are a little chaotic these days with a new baby at home.

But anything you do in particular to sort of kick start your day to bring your sort of a game to, to life into work? Yeah. Well, you know, there's nothing quite like chasing a toddler at 07:30 in the morning at full speed trying to get their diaper changed to get the the synapses firing. But but, you know, realistically, you know, outside of that, I really do enjoy taking, you know, whether it's, you know, a ten or fifteen minute shower, just a hot shower, kinda gets the brain moving, get thinking.

You know, it's a quiet space. You can kind of, you know, close your eyes and just kind of meditate almost on on the day and what's to come, the meetings that are, you know, forthcoming, you know, the deliverables that might be on your table, or, you know, maybe some of the the deep dives that you're doing thematically on, you know, whether it's new technology or vertical. I find it's a it's a cleansing exercise. It's a little bit energizing as well because it it gives you the clarity on, you know, kind of what you wanna do and how you're gonna do it.

So one one of my favorite parts of the day for sure. Thanks for sharing that. I've the I was reading some stuff on longevity about the power of, not only watch showers but saunas and how this has got to be part of a routine. So I'm I'm currently trying to lobby with my wife about buying a, sauna for her home.

We'll see if I'm successful. On behalf of the team at SerraCap Impact Venture Capital and the Coffin fellows, thanks to Josh Balicki for spending a little bit of time with us. Jack, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for the time.

That's a wrap.