Attention Start-ups: Big Corporations Want to Work With You
How young businesses can develop relationships with companies such as Nike and Pepsi.
Illustration by Harry Campbell
“We have achieved as much in the last eight or nine months as in the previous four years.”
Earlier this year, Kathryn Sheaffer made her daily commute to the Palo Alto, California, offices of Waze, a start-up that makes a social-navigation app. From her seat at a long communal table next to Waze CEO Noam Bardin, she made phone calls, reviewed mockups of the app, and participated in marathon brainstorming sessions.
Sheaffer, however, isn't an employee of Waze. She is senior associate brand manager at Stride Gum, which is owned by Mondelez International, the company formerly known as Kraft Foods. She was one of more than two dozen Mondelez managers from brands such as Trident and Oreo who spent a week embedded inside select mobile-technology start-ups as part of Mobile Futures, Mondelez's three-month accelerator program.
Mondelez's goal was to impart some entrepreneurial thinking to executives while at the same time getting to know promising tech companies that could further Mondelez's efforts to amp up its mobile marketing campaigns.
For young companies like Waze, the program represents a big shift in how early-stage start-ups interact and deal with big corporations. No more stiff and awkward meetings, communicating through ad agencies, or trying to guess what big brands might actually want before building products for them.
Mondelez's managers gave the start-ups involved in the program input and feedback on their technology and promised to be an early customer. "Having direct access, we were able to get in their head about what they would like to see in a perfect world," says Bardin. "That's been very powerful for us."
Mondelez is among a number of corporations--including Nike, Microsoft, American Express, and PepsiCo--that have created accelerators, investment funds, and other programs aimed at start-ups. For small companies, it's a chance to receive funding while building a relationship with a potential major client. Most of these programs are run through an open application process, links to which can usually be found through the corporation's website.
