Members of the panel had extensive experiences in facilitating conversations and establishing relationships between startups and large corporations. Those included were Brady Forrest, vice president of hardware incubator Highway1; C. Todd Lombardo, innovation architect at Constant Contact; Elliot Lewis, the chief security architect for Dell Software Group; Paul Swartz, a business development manager at American Airlines; Carrie Walsh, managing director at Silicon Valley Bank; and Sneha Menon, startup adviser at PayPal’s Startup BluePrint. It’s one of the major pitfalls that startups have a tendency to to run into, according to the panelists. There’s this misperception that startups always have to please the corporation with which they decide to partner; however, panelists argue that if you’ve got a startup with an idea that’s already attracting attention and interest from other parties, there’s no need for you to completely change the vision of your startup or product to fit in with the goals of the larger corporation. And, oftentimes, startups are faced with opposing directives from multiple large entities; the safe bet, in these cases, is to believe in your initial vision. Listen to what else the panelist had to say during the panel on “Corporations Embracing Startup Communities”. Here’s the video:
