Companies learned long ago that startups operate at the leading edge of technology. Engaging them early through corporate venturing (accelerators, incubators, venture arms, etc.) can be a great way to learn about emerging technologies, explore potential solutions, and seed strategic options. The field of view for this activity has generally been toward long-term, 3rd horizon, opportunities. It can take years for a startup to develop viable, deployable solutions.
At the same time, the market shifts and capabilities corporations looked to venturing to help them address also generally evolved over long timeframes. Both the corporate need and the venture solution conveniently converged far in the future. If a company patiently followed the right startups over time, if could take advantage of their solutions right when future needs became critical. Such has long been the logic behind venturing.
But the economics of innovation are changing. The rise of artificial intelligence coupled with more swiftly changing markets and business models is creating a new landscape where corporate strategic needs for new (largely technology-enabled) capabilities are advancing much faster. At the same time, the time it takes startups to develop truly market-ready solutions is collapsing—from years to a handful of months. It’s a new reality that creates an opportunity to shift how corporations think about and approach corporate venturing.
Venturing will always be a great way to position for long-horizon needs. But as the importance of emerging technologies arrives faster for corporations—and the supply of market-ready venture solutions speeds up, venturing is becoming one of the fastest paths to near-term capability acquisition. There is thus a powerful opportunity in this moment to expand Venturing’s field of view to include the first horizon. Incumbents that expand Venturing’s aperture will find they can move faster and realize benefits earlier.
Rethinking the Opportunity for Venturing
For most of its history, corporate venturing made sense precisely because time was the dominant constraint. Startups needed years to mature and markets evolved slowly enough that patient observation was a rational approach. Venturing served as an early-warning system and a portfolio of future options—useful, but deliberately distant from the core business.
That underlying logic is now breaking.
Three forces are converging to compress the distance between venture activity and operational relevance.
First, the startup production function has changed. Modern technology stacks—AI foundation models, APIs, cloud infrastructure, no-code tools—allow startups to assemble production-grade solutions without inventing everything from scratch. Legal AI startup, Harvey, went from launch to ~$10M in ARR—and significant market acceptance—in around 12 months. And AI-native startups broadly, reports CommonFund, now generally require just 20 months to reach $30M of ARR, where as traditional SaaS startups needed 5 years. Thus, what once required years of bespoke development can now reach enterprise-ready pilots in months. In many domains, “zero-to-production” is no longer aspirational; it is routine.
Second, corporate absorptive infrastructure has caught up. Many incumbents now have repeatable mechanisms for sourcing, piloting, and scaling external solutions: venture client units, standardized security and procurement pathways, and clearer ownership models for integration. The hurdles that once made it difficult to productively engage startups are coming down.
Third—and most importantly—corporate needs themselves are arriving faster. AI-enabled capabilities reshape cost structures, customer experiences, and business models on compressed timelines. Waiting years for internal builds is often not viable, yet internal teams remain constrained by legacy systems, regulatory burden, and competing priorities. In practice, startups are increasingly the fastest path to capability acquisition—even for near-term needs.
The implication is that venturing can no longer be just about optionality; it needs also to be about execution velocity.
When startups can deliver usable solutions quickly, and when strategic needs emerge faster, venturing shifts from a peripheral, horizon-three activity into a first-horizon solution. It becomes a way to buy time, not just buy options—to close capability gaps before they metastasize into competitive disadvantages.
This does not diminish the traditional role of corporate venturing. Long-horizon exploration still matters. But it does require a re-architecture of intent. Programs designed exclusively for distant futures will systematically miss opportunities that are actionable now. Conversely, incumbents that deliberately expand the aperture of venturing—explicitly targeting first-horizon problems—can unlock earlier value, accelerate learning, and reduce strategic slack.
The deeper shift is conceptual. In a world where technology advances faster than organizations can adapt, the central challenge is no longer access to innovation—it is absorption. Corporate venturing, properly reframed, is not just a window into the future. It is a mechanism for continuously leveraging ready-made capabilities today.
The companies that recognize this will stop treating venturing as a patient, observational activity at the edge of the enterprise. They will treat it as part of the operating system—one of the fastest ways to translate emerging technology into real, near-term advantage.
And in today’s environment, speed itself has become a source of value.
Expanding Corporate Venturing’s Role
Making this shift isn’t just about thinking differently; it’s about making some structural changes. Doing so requires:
- Tighter integration between venturing teams and operating leaders
- Clearer articulation of near-term capability needs
- Faster pathways from engagement to deployment
- Governance models that allow startups to be treated as solution partners, not distant experiments
There is big opportunity today to expand Venturing’s field of view to include the first horizon. Incumbents that expand the aperture of venturing in this way will find they can move faster and realize benefits earlier.