Minh Tran: Introducing Venture Capital as a Service

In this episode, Sabine VdL interviews Minh Tran, founding partner of Mandalore Partners (and also her co-founder at Alchemy Crew) about the world of Venture Capital Funds. He has worked in the Corporate VC world for 30 years, most recently in financial services, and founded Mandalore Partners 10 years ago. KEY TAKEAWAYS When you are a Corporate Venturer you have two models, one is to invest in VC outside – that’s not really a corporate venture, but you have that option, the second is to create your own team internally, for many reasons, this model hasn’t worked in the long run. I came up with a third model: externalizing corporate venture funds to reach out to startups with both financial interests and strategic alignment with corporates. This is Venture Capital as a Service. Resilience comes from lateral thinking, too, when investing. You can enter the market of your core industry, but you can also reach out to new industries that can impact your core industry. If you’re a retailer, you invest in your core business, but FinTech could disrupt retail finance, so you could reach out to FinTech ventures, not just retail. So you’re prepared for disruption. SIDE – Source, Invest, Develop, Exit. Each step of our process has been optimized. Source is the ability to source better than a corporation; we combine public data (Crunchbase) with private data (corporate assignments) to compile a list of startups. We then invest like a VC. We develop a portfolio management plan like a VC, but I do things differently, more hands-on than VCs. Then Exit, again I use VC techniques to exit at some point with or without the corporate.  Like any VC I look at if the market is growing, how the product would fit in the market, what is the business model/plan, and what is the team? I also look at a fifth element: The leverage we can access from the corporation. This could help accelerate the startup or its valuation. BEST MOMENTS ‘The Mandalore Partners name came from a planet from Star Wars because I wanted to look to the future, and I found out it was a good name to have because it was about mobility, globality, tech, and now The Mandalorian TV series.’ ‘There’s a bad reputation to having a corporate venture fund in the market that has the same name as your corporation, this is why externalizing VC activities and having a different name is attracting more startups to our fund while also providing the returns the corporates want.’ ‘When we talk to corporates when they’re looking to InsurTech, and they want to be exposed to another tech, an external model can help you assess the new industries you seek where you have, or you don’t have expertise.’ ‘I focus a lot of work on where to invest to have the best impact tools and platforms.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Minh is the Managing Partner of Mandalore Partners, which seeks to create an innovative framework that enables early-stage firm investors to achieve scale exposure to a range of traditional, alternative, and tech venture capital assets. In addition to his experience as a founding team member at AXA Ventures, Minh was also an integral part of several other VC firms, including Nokia Ventures, Bertelsmann Ventures, and Truffle Capital. ABOUT THE HOST Sabine VanderLinden is a corporate strategist turned entrepreneur and the CEO of Alchemy Crew Ventures. She leads venture-client labs that help Fortune 500 companies adopt and scale cutting-edge technologies from global tech ventures. A builder of accelerators, investor, and co-editor of the bestseller The INSURTECH Book, Sabine is known for asking the uncomfortable questions—about AI governance, risk, and trust. On Scouting for Growth, she decodes how real growth happens—where capital, collaboration, and courage meet. If this episode sparked your thinking, follow Sabine VanderLinden on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for more insights. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the podcast, reach out to the team at [email protected]