The golden rules of Venture Clienting

The golden rules of Venture Clienting

Venture Clienting sounds simple: find a startup, run a PoC, get results. But doing it well and making it stick takes some real insider know-how. Here are the Golden Rules to guide your journey:

Start Smart, Not Big

• Do your first PoCs with people you trust
• Begin with friendly internal allies. People in your network are more likely to say yes, take risks with you, and help push things forward.
• Pick easy wins first
• Focus on process improvements or painkillers that are easy to test and quick to implement. Don’t start with the company’s biggest, most complex challenge. You need to prove the model before you scale it.
• Choose strategic partners for early PoCsSome teams are especially helpful early on:
  • Procurement: they’ll help you figure out how to buy from startups fast.
  • IT: they’re crucial for integrating and implementing startup tech later.
  • Legal: they approve contracts and NDAs.
  • Works Council (if you have one): needed if PoCs involve employee data.
  • C-level or their assistants: a senior executive can become a sponsor if you solve one of their problems early on.

IT is Your Best Friend (Treat Them Like It)

• Involve IT from Day 1
• Implementation = impact. And implementation needs IT. The earlier you loop them in, the more likely they’ll support you. Bring them startup security documents, architecture info, and show them you take their concerns seriously.
• Speak their language
• Ask about APIs, hosting, data security, and integration effort. Show you’re not just the “cool startup person”, you get the realities of enterprise IT.

Build Trust, Then Scale

• Earn credibility before asking for budget
• Once you’ve shown 3 working PoCs, you can scale. Until then, keep it lean, fast, and humble. Success speaks louder than ambition.
• Be a translator
• Your job is to connect startup speed with corporate processes. That means translating tech into value, and making startup benefits clear to your stakeholders.

Always Start With a Problem

• No problem = no PoC
• Venture Clienting starts with a real, validated problem. Don’t chase shiny startups, chase solutions to pain points that people in your company actually care about.

Create Buzz, Then Qualify Like a Pro

Once you’ve completed your first 3 successful PoCs, it’s time to go wide.

Tell everyone. Internally, externally, at the coffee machine, everywhere. This is your moment to create awareness and momentum across the organization.

Why? Because the more people know about Venture Clienting, the more problem leads you’ll get, and the more departments will want your help. That’s great!

BUT… 🛑

At some point, you’ll hit the limits of your capacity, and that’s when you need to get selective.

Start qualifying problem leads, and fast. Here’s how to do it smartly:

The goal isn’t to say no to people, it’s to channel your limited capacity toward the biggest wins. That’s how you scale without chaos.