1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Seong Kim, Corporate Strategy & Development at Chegg Inc. (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do some examples. What have you been up to in the last few years that illustrates some of this framework thinking?

Seong Kim: The most recent acquisition that we just announced was just over a week ago. It was the largest acquisition we’ve ever done in language learning. As a company that has its humble roots as a textbook business that had embarked on a massive transition to digital, all of that has been highlighted by the fact that we bet on the inevitable – the move towards digital learning and the need for democratized access to on-demand, affordable, self-guided contact as a companion to the learner.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Seksom Suriyapa, Partner at Upfront Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s take this example that you started with. Who drives acquisition? Is it product leaders or corp dev? How do you find about this company that you ended up considering an OEM deal with that led to an acquisition?

Seksom Suriyapa: In a very perfect world, I advise that product leaders should drive an acquisition. The world is never perfect. One of the challenges on the sell side is to understand who is driving the acquisition. It’s a moving target and you get passed around a lot. In the case of Twitter specifically, it’s always the product leader who is the decider. Corp dev is there as a collaborator and driver of the deal.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Seong Kim, Corporate Strategy & Development at Chegg Inc. (Part 1)

Seong Kim, Corporate Strategy & Development for Chegg Inc. discusses exit strategy within EdTech.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with a little bit of introduction. What path have you pursued in the industry? Then we’ll get into some specific topics.

Seong Kim: I’ve been working in Corporate Strategy & Development for the past six and a half years. To me, it’s important to articulate my role in that way because the strategy part must lead the development part. The characteristic that most differentiates what I do now versus what I did prior is the strategy part.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Seksom Suriyapa, Partner at Upfront Ventures (Part 1)

Seksom Suriyapa, Partner at Upfront Ventures, and formerly Head of Corp Dev at Twitter, SuccessFactors, and McAfee and Akamai discusses exit strategy from the buy-side perspective at length.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you talk a little bit about your background in corp dev doing acquisitions from the buy side from various significant companies before you switched to the venture side.

Catching Up On Readings: Top Strategic Tech Trends 2022

This eBook from Gartner looks at the top 12 strategic technology trends and why they are valuable in delivering growth, digitization, and efficiency. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

Building a Mid-Market Cyber Security Company from Utah: Peter Bookman, CEO of Guard Dog (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: In that funnel, you’re leading with audits?

Peter Bookman: Often. When you know the consultants are saying, “It’s $25,000 to come in and take my laptop and walk through your halls. I’m going to connect to your network and produce a report that you’re going to do something with.” The report is going to create a risk profile without a score.

If you happen to be doing that, we can come and, for a fraction of the cost, we can provide that same information and also semi real-time. You can get that same visibility and one more important thing, which is the ability to interrupt an attempted exploit. Whether that’s us, MSP, or a CISO, that’s very dependent on the organization. Each one has its own preferred means of escalation and dealing with things.

559th Roundtable Recording on January 13, 2022

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:

Roundtable Recap: January 13 – Consumer Data Privacy Discussion

During this week’s roundtable, we had a wonderful discussion on a Consumer Data Privacy startup idea.

DaXlens

Krishna Katragadda from Dublin, California, pitched Daxlens, a company focused on giving consumers better control over their data.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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