Motorola Ventures was the global strategic venture capital investment arm of Motorola that actively invested in the early stage development of companies that had the potential to bring strategic value to Motorola and that, in turn, could accelerate access to new technologies, markets and talent. There was a strong commitment to Motorola Ventures from Motorola’s Senior Leadership Team but in times of crisis, such as the current one, there was little immediate impact that Motorola Ventures was capable of making to bolster short term results for the parent entity. Motorola Ventures had enthusiastically invested in a startup, Tilefile – however, a year later there was still no commitment from any of Motorola’s business units to deploy Tilefile’s technologies across any of Motorola’s product platforms. The Motorola Ventures management team wondered how best to manage and navigate Tilefile through the current environment within Motorola where the attention of the business was focused on the next quarter’s profitability. The case explores the roles and relationships of the three key parties: the startup (Tilefile), the CVC unit (Motorola Ventures), and the corporate entity (Motorola).
