Company venture capital – the example of Thomson-CSF Ventures

In 1986, when Alain Gomez, Chairman and Managing Director of Thomson CSF (which has since become THALES) entrusted Jean-Michel Barbier with fifty million dollars to create Thomson-CSF Ventures, the corporate venture capital business was only just getting started in Europe. His fourteen-year experience allowed him to analyse the paradoxes of this business, which consist of convincing the start-up companies, the bearers of new technology, that they are capable of making commercial exchanges with a big industrial group without being overshadowed in a partnership. If this is the case, the investor should nevertheless know how to take the side of the small enterprise “against” the big corporation. Helping ex-employees of a company bring techniques or skills previously learnt in that company into their newly created companies, is also part of the task of the big groups. This, however, often represents a schism, which should receive external help. Finally, Jean-Michel Barbier, who today is head of TechFund Europe, analyses the role of pump-priming money that should give true entrepreneurial assistance as well as financial logic, something that traditional venture capital companies cannot always offer.