If you’re a startup founder, you’re probably looking at Google in some way, maybe in terms of partnership or acquisition, but maybe some level of suspicion and fear. Will they compete with me? what if they decide to enter my niche? What will they announce in the next Google I/O keynote? The same might be true for your view of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc.
For many CEOs, competition with the tech giants an existential concern. But having Google (or the other FAANGs) in your corner, can also be a great asset. A relationship with Google can take many forms, which I will detail in this post as a guide for founders exploring their relationship with big tech.
In the past I’ve covered the rise of corporate venture capital and the growing number of Fortune 500 companies who are actively launching CVC arms or investing in startups/funds. But investing is only part of the picture. Companies like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple have a number of ways to engage startups, ranging from not-for-profit mentorship to lucrative commercial relationships and partnerships.
In this post, I’ll try to organise the various startup engagement and outreach programs at Google. I believe I am qualified to talk about this as I spent ~6 years at Google in strategic partnerships (commerce), as head of Campus London (Google’s first physical startup hub), Head of Google for Entrepreneurs Europe (now called Google for Startups) and eventually general partner for Google Ventures.
Funding, M&A, Commercial, Support
There are four general buckets for engaging with a corporate like Google:
Funding – this consists of cash investment for equity
- GV (formerly Google Ventures) – Started in 2009, GV is Alphabet’s venture capital fund, focused primarily on early stage in diverse fields: from life sciences and healthcare to robotics and entereprise tech. Notable portfolio companies include Uber, Slack, Jet.com, FlatIron Health, Kobalt Music Group and many others.
- CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) – Started in 2013, CapitalG is Alpahbet’s growth stage venture fund backed by Google (larger ticket size). Typically invest in series C and above, notable portfolio companies include Stripe, Lyft, Robinhood, UI Path, Snap, Duolingo and many more household names.
- Gradient Ventures – an early stage fund backed by Alphabet, investing exclusively in AI first companies.
- Google Assistant – relatively unknown, Google has put together a team dedicated to investing in early stage startups that are moving the voice and assistance ecosystem forward. The website lists a handful of portfolio companies.
- Google Corporate Development – Google may sometimes invest in a company from its balance sheet. This happened for example in the case of Magic Leap.
M&A – Acquisitions
This most likely involves a combination of an operational team (cloud, enterprise, commerce, etc) and the corporate development team, led by Don Harrison.
Notable acquisitions include Youtube and Nest, or more recently smart glasses manufacturer North or wearable tracker FitBit (under review).
Commercial – a data/tech/commercial partnership or client relationship
This is where it starts getting a bit more complicated. There are multiple arms at Googlee that might do commercial deals with startups and it would be ambitious to try to list them all. So I’ll focus on the main partnerships buckets and app stores.
Partnerships/ Commercial
Many of the partnerships I’ve experienced during my time at Google had to do with strategic content partnerships:
- Commerce – partnerships with online retailers around google shopping, google wallet, etc.
- Books/publishing/news – partnerships with publishers of all sizes
- Geo/Maps – partnerships around locations, public transport, traffic, etc.
- Search /Assistant – search partnerships are more of a ‘catch all’ bucket and can range from social content (like tweets) to stocks information etc. Anything you’d expect to see called out in a search results page or an activation of Google home.
- Marketing partnerships – Google curates agencies or companies who pass exams to become certified partners or resellers of Google marketing products.
Another big commercial area is Google Cloud for startups. In addition to the many services offered by Google Cloud directly (App Engine, Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Kubernetes, etc), startups targeting developers can list their extensions in the Google Cloud Marketplace, Firebase extensions and the G Suite marketplace.
Support
In this category there is a range of programs design to support founders and startups. New programs are launched on a regular basis, so it’s hard to create a definitive list.
The newly created Google for Startups, formerly known as Google for Entrepreneurs, is the umbrella organisation that coordinates the various startup support activities.
Google for Startups is Google’s initiative to help startups thrive across every corner of the world. We bring the best of Google’s products, connections, and best practices to enable startups to build something better.
Google for startups homepage
- Google Campus – Google launched a number of Campuses, physical hubs for startups, offering a combination of workspace, community, startup support programs and events. There are currently 7 owned and operated Google Campuses in London, Tel Aviv, Madrid, Warsaw, Seoul, Tokyo, Sao Paulo as well as a number of partner tech hubs in Numa in Paris, Factory in Berlin, Epicenter in Stockholm, TQ in Amsterdam, Dogpatch Labs in Dublin, etc. They offer free trainings, mentorship from Googlers, workshops (on fundraising, hiring, internationalisation, etc), a diverse range of events and international exchange programs between the hubs.
- Startup Cafe – each Campus offers a cafe for registered members (free) where founders get fast wifi and access to the Campus community and events.
- Google for Startups Residency – a 12-week cohort program focused around diversity (women founders, black founders etc), where successful applicants relocate to Campus for a 3 month program focused on leveraging Google products (i.e. Google Cloud or Google Compute). Each startup is assigned a Google mentor to help the startups focus on a key business challenge (i.e. how do we improve retention) and Google helps the startups with best practices (i.e. OKR setting, best practices for hiring, etc).
- Diversity is a key value at Google for startups – Applications are now open until August 2nd 2020 for a Women Founders immersion programme as well as a Black founders immersion programme.
- Google for startups accelerator – this is an extension of the startup residency program, targeting growth stage startups (post seed). Applications for various programs in Europe and Israel are open. The Accelerator programs are now fully remote and open to 10-12 startups per batch.
- Google Launchpad start (update: a contact from Google informed me that the “Launchpad” programme is now all under Google for Startups Accelerator) – a one week pre-incubation program for early stage startups focused on subjects including product strategy, UX and UI, technology, marketing, business development and presentation skills. This program is mainly led by the Developer Relations team. Successful applicants receive credits to work on Google platforms as well as workshops and mentorship support. Regional Google for startups accelerators (Africa, Brazil, India, etc..) are open.
- Google Startup Growth Lab – is a program for marketing leaders from B2C & B2SMB startups, aiming to accelerate their business. It’s a 6 months program consisting of educational workshops and ongoing 1:1 mentoring provided by industry experts.
- Helpful content – is another area of support at scale. Examples include:
- Google for startups live sessions – a series of streamed events designed to help founders survive and thrive during this period.
- Playbook for startups facing the Covid-19 challenge (pdf)
- Organising information about Google tools for startups – it’s a jungle out there!
- Google Cloud for Startups – is targeted at developers and offers a combination of free credits to get started as well as dedicated developer relations support, free digital workshops, certificate courses, etc. Think of it as the equivalent of AWS.
- Google Sand Hill Program – this program went through significant changes in recent years and now works closely with a select number of venture capital funds portfolio companies on how to best integrate with Google tools and products.
- Start on Android – is a suite of tools aimed at mobile app developers. Perks include early access to pre-launch features on the platform, UI/UX review by Google Play developer relations team and free credits on Cloud, Firebase, etc. Startups can also extend their mobile apps to interact with the Google Assistant.
Some of the various support programs aren’t specific to startups, but can also be leveraged by founders. Examples include:
- Google Digital Academy – best practices for running Google Ads campaigns, analytics, Udacity courses, developer programs, machine learning crash course, youtube best practices and much more. Open for all.
- The Digital Garage – choose your course, learn at your own pace and get a certificate in a number of free online courses around data, digital marketing and general business skills. Pre Covid-19 some of the courses were also available in physical locations. Primarily aimed at small businesses (vs. tech startups).
- Youtube creator spaces – state of the art physical studios for Youtube creators in London, Berlin, LA, New York, Paris, Rio and Tokyo. Primarily aimed at streamers and Youtube ‘influencers’.
Most of the support programs offered by Google are free and there’s a world of content out there.
In the next post in this series, I’ll dive deeper into the startup support at Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Snap.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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