Monthly Archives: August 2021

BERLIN – Mercedes-Benz chief technology officer Sajjad Khan will leave the brand to create a tech venture capital fund, the company said in a statement.

Khan, who is leaving at his own request, will leave on September 1.

The automaker said Khan’s replacement Magnus Östberg will take overall responsibility for the MB.OS vehicle operating system as director of software, effective September 1.

Khan, a Automotive news Europe Eurostar 2019, was responsible for the CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Sharing / Services, Electric) organization of the car manufacturer. He was also the main force behind the company’s MBUX user interface software and heavily involved in the development of the hyperscreen touchscreen for the flagship Mercedes EQS sedan.

“Sajjad Khan has decisively advanced digitization at Mercedes-Benz and has significantly shaped the product portfolio,” Daimler Supervisory Board Chairman Bernd Pischetsrieder said in the statement. “With MBUX, he created a system that sets a new benchmark in the automotive industry.”

From 2011 to 2015, Khan worked for BMW, where he eventually became Vice President, responsible for the Connected Drive system worldwide. He took responsibility for Digital Vehicle and Mobility as Vice President of Daimler in 2015, starting as CTO of CASE in 2017.

Östberg began his career in the automotive industry with technical and software consultancy firm Mecel, then held managerial positions at Delphi in Germany and the United States, focusing on vehicle software, l infotainment and telematics.

Most recently, the Swedish-born executive was vice president of software platform and systems at supplier Aptiv in the United States.

“With MB.OS we have made a clear strategic decision for the future of Mercedes-Benz: to apply our own software platform for our vehicles, for which we are currently creating a specific software station to bring together responsibility for all developments. associated. tasks, ”Daimler CEO Ola Kaellenius said in the statement.

“Magnus Östberg is a perfect fit for this role and I look forward to working with him very much.”

Mercedes also announced that R&D activities will be realigned as part of the company’s all-electric development and merged into the department of Markus Schäfer, Mercedes COO and member of Daimler’s board of directors for group research.

Khan’s sudden departure was greeted as a surprise in the business press, with the German trade publication Handlesblatt calling Khan a “pioneer” and noting that his sudden departure comes amid massive restructuring.

Kaellenius’ statement acknowledged that Khan had laid the groundwork for MB.OS with his “technological expertise, strategic foresight and an excellent team,” and noted that Mercedes would serve as an angel investor in his new venture.

IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / August 23, 2021 / The last quarter was a historic one for venture capital activity, the largest ever measured in dollars invested. With this momentum starting in Q3 2021, deal flow is increasing, and among law firms experiencing a slight increase in start-up deals is Michelman & Robinson, LLP, who just appointed Harpreet Walia as president of emerging companies and venture capital.

Walia is based at M&R’s Los Angeles office, although he also maintains a significant presence in the Bay Area. With extensive experience working with start-up and emerging growth clients, particularly those in the tech industry, Walia is “now poised to gain even more foothold in Silicon Beach, Silicon Valley and beyond.” , according to Sanford Michelman, president of M&R.

Commenting on her new role, Walia said, “My new designation reflects M&R’s focus on emerging companies, which is well placed given that deals above $ 100 million have reached an all-time high, as are middle market transactions in the technology sector. He goes on to say, “M&R has a strong corporate transactional practice in both California and New York and an ideal base for managing the lifecycle of emerging businesses, which often begins even before the company is founded. That being said, we are certainly the beneficiaries of the surge of activity seen in tech hubs around the world, the growing nature of seed capital funding, and more robust exit opportunities from the private market.

Stephen Weiss, who leads the M&R transactions team, adds: “Harpreet is an accomplished business strategist, whose work on behalf of tech start-ups is bolstered by his network of investor relations and advisors across the world. Combine that with his extraordinary skills in managing cross-border transactions, including those originating from India, and it is no wonder that he was named the very first President of Emerging Companies and Venture Capital in the world. cabinet. ‘

About Michelman & Robinson, srl

M&R is a national law firm headquartered in Los Angeles, with additional offices in Orange County (California), San Francisco, Chicago and New York. The firm represents clients in a multitude of areas, such as complex litigation and class actions and employment, business and securities, regulation, white collar criminals, cybersecurity, privacy, real estate and bankruptcies. They do this for individuals and entities across industries including advertising and digital media, banking and financial services, cannabis, capital markets, hospitality, insurance, music and entertainment, retail and clothing and sports. For more information, please visit www.mrllp.com.

For more information, contact:
Paul Zimmerman
MICHELMAN & ROBINSON
424.365.6100
[email protected]

THE SOURCE: Michelman & Robinson

See the source version on accesswire.com:
https://www.accesswire.com/660753/Michelman-Robinson-Announces-First-Ever-Emerging-Companies-Venture-Capital-Chair

We are in an era of the startup gold rush where small businesses are growing at an unprecedented rate due to the rapid cycle of innovation and the exponential adoption of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) on the market. the market. According to the full list of unicorn businesses released by CB Insights, there were over 700 unicorns worldwide as of July 2021. Former popular unicorns include Airbnb, Facebook, and Google – now big companies themselves.

To fuel startup growth, venture capital activity exploded to new highs in Q2’21, with global funding surging 157% from Q2’20. Over the next decade, the term unicorn will likely be replaced by decacorne (a company valued at over $ 10 billion) and eventually by hectocorn (a company valued at over $ 100 billion). In fact, SpaceX and Stripe are two recent examples of startups that have already achieved Hectocorn status as private companies.

A key broader market-level impact driven by startups is that they create technologies that change the mindset of customers. The same customers then expect a similar level of technological development and speed of innovation from large companies. This is generally difficult to achieve for a large company. As startups grow so well, large companies need to reinvent themselves to stay competitive and attract customers. To achieve this, companies adopt various innovation models to improve R&D and production capacities. The behind-the-scenes innovation model has only worked for a few companies in the United States consistently for decades, such as Apple. Most businesses struggle to find the next big disruption internally. They mainly refine the product (or at best penetrate adjacent markets) that gave them the initial success. There are several reasons for the lack of sustained innovation in large companies, the most important being the reward mechanism linked only to success instead of failure being worn as a badge, lack of risk-taking, risk-taking. decision involved in hierarchy and state of mind. of the workforce being like that of the employees rather than that of the independent founders. Therefore, big companies lose their way because they thought too much inside the walls compared to the outside, which is the easiest way to innovate.

To solve this problem, companies are increasingly looking outside for sources of innovation. Hence, they adopt strategies such as venture capital investment and open door innovation. Let’s take a look at these models of innovation that companies use to expand their business horizons.

One of the common strategies adopted by companies is the open innovation policy. It involves developing internal and external ideas to drive business innovation. To do this, companies organize an in-house innovation team or hire a new team experienced in leading such innovation projects. But there are hardly any examples of companies that have made this strategy successful in driving the engine of business innovation. There are several reasons for this. New ideas, once prototyped, typically do not receive the same level of resources and attention as existing income-generating business units. Moreover, the transfer of the nascent product line to integrate them into an established product group for the next phase of growth is often faced with the syndrome of the non-invented here. For these reasons, scaling newly developed ideas into a large corporation has proven to be an insurmountable challenge.

Another notable innovation model is the Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) strategy. It is a growing trend for companies to start their own HVAC or outsource this effort to a company that offers venture capital as a service. Companies are realizing that doing their own CVC does not produce the desired strategic or financial returns. With the exception of a handful of CVCs who have been seeking venture capital for over a decade, CVC’s financial performance ends up being below par. This is mainly due to two factors: the poor quality of the flow of investment transactions and the often missed balance between the management of strategic and financial returns. Even though the CVC has access to high-quality transactions, it is usually too late to generate oversized venture-type returns. These issues with the CVC model have created a trend in which companies are increasingly partnering with an outside firm for the venture capital as a service (VCaaS) model. This VCaaS model gives them access to a first-rate transaction flow at all stages of the startup’s lifecycle while generating strategic feedback. The company that provides venture capital as a service can drive the investment strategy while keeping financial and strategic needs in mind. In addition to fostering agility in decision-making, this strategy also provides excellent exposure to internal product teams to external innovation. This broadens the horizons of internal executives in terms of speed and innovation of startups.

A growing need in the business world is to access the innovation of startups in technological hubs such as Silicon Valley. Companies want to know more about new technologies as well as new business models emerging in these hotspots of innovation. For this, companies often think of setting up innovation outposts in Silicon Valley. The venture capital-as-a-service model responds very well to this need by providing a team of seasoned investors who have the breadth and depth of the Silicon Valley network. Another really cool thing about VCaaS is that companies benefit from the wisdom and guidance of the VCaaS team. Dupont and several other companies have adopted this model to find AI startups.

One piece of evidence to support the evolution of the CVC space and the need for a venture capital-as-a-service model is that companies are launching or creating a fully stand-alone CVC – a term that j ‘would invent as SCVC. These SCVCs are often set up with a name unrelated to the parent company to represent a complete sense of disengagement from the latter. Siemens Next47, Schneider Electric’s SE Ventures, Alphabet’s GV and Gradient Ventures and Cisco’s Decibel are recent examples of such independent venture capital firms formed as a result of this trend. All of these venture capital firms are only backed by their respective companies, but do not even have the reference to the company in their name. These venture capital firms have their own management company and staff, capable of making independent governance decisions. But, unlike a typical venture capital firm, these SCVCs can leverage a firm’s resources as needed – its engineering expertise, customers, go-to-market capabilities, etc.

In summary, businesses must adapt to rapidly changing market conditions, consumer demands, and technology trends to remain relevant. The rate of adoption of new products has increased, putting pressure on a company’s speed of innovation. It has been proven that companies often struggle to increase their turnover by focusing solely on internal innovation. Therefore, they adopt various external innovation strategies such as Open Innovation, Corporate Venture Capital, and venture capital as a service. With these strategies, companies can better adopt their start-up counterparts and drive much-needed innovation agility.

• Binance.US has become a crucial business unit for Binance, functioning as the nominally independent and regulatory abiding arm of the exchange.
• But questions about its independence plagued a recent fundraiser before the IPO, according to the New York Times.
• A Binance spokesperson told The Times that another round of fundraising for Binance.US is slated for soon and that IPO plans are still on track.
• See more stories on the Insider business page.

Binance’s talks with venture capitalists to raise at least $ 100 million collapsed this year after fears CEO Changpeng Zhao might own too much of the U.S. crypto exchange division, New York report says Times.

Initially created to appease suspicious US regulators, Binance.US has become a crucial business unit for Binance, functioning as the nominally independent and pro-regulatory arm of the exchange. As Binance.US grew, Binance hired several former senior regulators, including installing former currency controller Brian Brooks as CEO.

But how independent is Binance.US? The issue plagued a recent fundraiser that included venture capitalists like GreatPoint Ventures, according to the Times.

Brooks has reportedly offered GreatPoint a $ 100 million fundraiser to prelude a possible Binance.US IPO. He reassured potential investors that Binance’s US division is independent from the rest of the company and will fully comply with US regulations. This meant adhering to strict protections against money laundering and know your customer.

But two factors scared GreatPoint off, according to Ray Lane, its managing partner, who spoke to The Times. The first was a DOJ-IRS investigation into possible money laundering and tax evasion violations. And second, Zhao’s stake in the so-called independent company – around 90% of Binance.US.

“How could we feel comfortable that this is an independent company using the same technology? Lane told The Times.

Brooks resigned from Binance.US in August, citing “differences in strategic direction.”

A Binance spokesperson told The Times that another round of fundraising for Binance.US is slated for soon and that IPO plans are still on track.

A general partner of a London-based venture capital firm is concerned about continued levels of investment in food delivery and taxi applications.

Manuel Silva Martinez, who is the general partner of Mouro Capital, believes that on-demand grocery delivery is the new wave of “human laziness”, after meal delivery apps and taxi apps.

Corporate-backed grocery businesses have already raised more than $ 10 billion so far in 2021, according to Pitchbook data, eclipsing the $ 7 billion raised by these companies last year. However, it can be argued that these jobs are part of the “service economy”, according to Manuel.

He further comments: “One could indeed argue that VCs finance business models that create a ‘bondage economy’, but this is different from saying that the causes of such bondage are VCs.

“VCs are rational asset managers, and so if servant models emerge, it is because there is a significant demand for them, as recent success stories show. 10 Minute grocery startups are the new wave of “human laziness”, after meal delivery apps, taxi apps and the like. These show how people’s daily activities have been granulated, integrated into an app and served by a new population of workers and other examples can be found in the media and content industry and in e-commerce.

“Venture capital firms have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in these companies over the past few years, with the pace not slowing down in 2021 alone. In fact, AppJobs experts say the odd-job economy is about to jump 300% in three years – and the long-term effects of the Covid pandemic mean it is unlikely to slow down. . “

Manuel says that this working model also creates challenges regarding the quality of work and employment.

He explains: “The ‘service economy’ model – which goes far beyond the odd-job economy – creates undeniable challenges in a wide range of issues, in quality of work and in employment, from job stability and mental health, to environmental issues associated with the consumer. desire for convenience.

“But there is a larger question here: who is to blame for creating an economy where technology allows a ‘ruling class’ of price and convenience-sensitive consumers to command a ‘subclass’ of servants with the swipe of an application or a press for a “like”? The public sector and regulators should probably take some responsibility, as should the companies providing these services, especially in educating consumers about the impact of their purchasing decisions.

“Of course, we cannot ignore that VCs fund many of these companies, with their investment and governance rights attached. As such, VCs must take into account the larger context in which the companies in which they invest thrive, and consider the wider implications alongside the potential profits when investing in these types of companies ”.