Corporate Venture Partners

CVP selects corporate venture programs based on the durability of the parent company's commitment and the proximity of the CVC unit to R&D and business-unit budgets, not marketing promises. The firm prioritizes multinationals with multi-decade corporate venture histories where the C-suite views the venture arm as a strategic asset. Only programs that grant meaningful co-investment visibility and avoid forcing portfolio companies into exclusive commercial agreements pass CVP's filter.

Managing Partners Rob L. Goergen and Bob Zulkoski share investment-committee authority. Goergen's background spans corporate venture and operating roles, including prior connections to the Blyth, Inc. founding family, while Zulkoski brings institutional venture experience. The partnership structure is deliberately flat, with both principals listed on regulatory filings and involved in fund-level decisions.

Both. CVP's primary sleeve operates as a fund-of-funds, committing capital into select corporate venture capital vehicles. The secondary sleeve allows CVP and its LPs to invest directly alongside those underlying CVC funds in individual portfolio companies, effectively giving institutional investors the same co-investment rights that a large standalone LP would negotiate.

CVP operates as an institutional fund manager raising capital from third-party LPs, not a single-family office. While Managing Partner Rob Goergen's family background includes the founding of Blyth, Inc., the firm files with the SEC as an exempt reporting adviser and markets its funds to external institutional investors, pension funds, and family offices.

Through its underlying CVC relationships, CVP gains exposure from seed stage through growth equity. The precise stage mix depends on which corporate venture programs it backs in a given fund cycle. Early-stage exposure typically flows through corporate venture arms that sit close to university spinouts and R&D origination, while growth-stage co-investments often arise from later corporate strategic rounds.

CVP does not publish an explicit exclusion list, but the firm's observable mandate skews toward enterprise software, industrial technology, AI/ML applications, digital health, and mobility. It has no known exposure to consumer internet, consumer packaged goods, media, or speculative biotechnology. The underlying corporate venture programs CVP backs are almost exclusively tied to industrial and B2B parent companies.

Most venture fund-of-funds back independent venture firms competing on a level playing field for deal access. CVP backs corporate venture units that see deal flow through procurement channels, R&D partnerships, and customer relationships — sources that traditional Sand Hill Road firms rarely access on the same timeline. The trade-off is that CVC programs sometimes face strategic pressure from the parent corporation; CVP's due-diligence process is built to screen for programs that have structural independence from quarterly-earnings interference.