The Dilemna of a Venture Catalyst

By Sarath Srinivasan

Recently a fellow venture catalyst and I were having a discussion on the real meaning and intent of a Venture Catalyst. The debate revolved around on what we must and must not do for a client. What does a client truly value in a Venture Catalyst? How should a Venture Catalyst add value?

To answer this we must look at the Milagrow vision – "We are Venture Catalysts. We nurture ideas and enable enterprises to attain ethical, sustainable and profitable growth."

We must work with clients to add value in a sustainable manner. A quick way to test whether we are engaging the client in a sustainable manner, at any point of time is to perform a thought experiment. If we have been carrying out a host of activities and we decide to stop those activities at some point in time - will the organisation have benefited in the long run? If the answer is yes then you are on the right track, if the answer is no then we need to rethink our role in the organisation.

Initially in any organisation there is an inertia that we need to overcome. We will need to push more from our side and do more ourselves and less through the client teams. But as we move forward we must consciously take the effort to ensure that we are operating through the client and that our efforts are resulting in real on-the-ground change in the organisation. If the effort comes solely from our side without client ownership then our though experiment will clearly tell us that there was no sustainable change in the organisation. And thus the growth that gets enabled by the change falters.