The Basic Setup: Team, Budget, Leadership Support

The Basic Setup: Team, Budget, Leadership Support‍

1. Team: One person can be enough (at the start)

You don’t need a full department to begin but you do need at least one person who owns it.

Look for someone who:

• Wants to make Venture Clienting work
• Sees it as a career opportunity, not a side task
• Is excited about startups and innovation
• Has a strong internal network, the more people they know, the easier it will be to find problems and allies

This person is the glue holding it all together, identifying problems, engaging stakeholders, managing PoCs, and reporting results. It’s a big role, but it’s doable if you start small.

2. Budget: You don’t need millions, but you do need something

To run Venture Clienting, you’ll need:

• Budget for your team member(s)
• Some tooling (for tracking PoCs, sharing results, startup sourcing)
• Startup scouting budget, ideally from a professional source. There’s a big difference between a startup list created by a student using Google and a tailored scouting result from a specialist.
• PoC execution budget, so you can actually run trials or short-term contracts with startups

Tip: You don’t need it all up front. Even a small “starter budget” can go a long way if you focus on proving impact quickly.

3. Leadership Support: A little goes a long way

Is it required? Not always.

Is it helpful? Absolutely.

If your initiative is endorsed by someone from the leadership team, it will:

• Give you credibility
• Help unlock doors
• Speed up procurement, legal, and IT buy-in
• Show the company this isn’t “just another project”

Even better: if your first PoC solves a real problem for someone close to leadership (or even a C-level assistant), that person might become your program sponsor.

But don’t worry if you don’t have top-level buy-in yet. If you can show that Venture Clienting works - quickly and clearly - leadership support usually follows.