The past ten years are characterized by a strong growth in entrepreneurship and the accelerated creation of new businesses offering innovative products and services. The focus of this book is on startups and scaleups intending to scale their business through collaboration with corporates, primarily in the capacity of client or venture partner. No startup or scaleup can go-it-alone entirely and is required to collaborate with other partners to ensure growth. It is crucial for startups and scaleups to think beyond (corporate) venture capital financings and actively use a vast spectrum of corporate partnering arrangements to scale their business. This book thus takes an expansive approach and analyses corporate partnering transactions from a much broader perspective, covering several types of partnering models for collaboration between corporates and startups and scaleups, with a very strong focus on the perspective of the startups and scaleups while engaging in these types of transactions. ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Dessers, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Cresco, is one of the go-to lawyers of the Belgian venture capital scene. David assists entrepreneurs and companies in the design and execution of their plans during all stages of the private company lifecycle, including seed and venture capital funding, acquisitions and dispositions, as well as equity incentive, contracting and intellectual property needs. He frequently represents venture capital funds and corporates in structuring, negotiating and closing investments and divestments in high-growth companies. David furthermore advises clients regularly with respect to complex commercial transactions designed to protect and maximize the value of technology assets, including technology licenses and acquisitions, research and development collaborations, and corporate partnering transactions. He obtained his law degree at the universities of Antwerp and Leuven in Belgium. He also holds an LLM from the universities of Oxford, Hamburg and Rotterdam. David is recommended as leading lawyer by Chambers Global, Chambers Europe, Legal500 and IFLR1000 for Corporate and M&A, Banking, Finance and Capital Markets, and Information Technology. David has given workshops and seminars at leading corporates on a wide variety of topics, including corporate venturing transactions and alliances. He is an active speaker at incubation and acceleration organizations, such as imec.ventures, B-Hive.eu, Watt Factory, Tech Tour, Level Up and Antwerp Management School. David is a founding partner of Cresco, a premier Belgian law firm for entrepreneurs, companies and investors with market-leading capabilities and thorough experience in private equity and venture capital, emerging and growth companies, mergers and acquisitions, technology and innovation counseling, and complex corporate alliances and commercial agreements.

The enormous and sustained success of Silicon Valley has excited interest around the globe. Startup companies the world over are attempting to emulate its high tech businesses, and many governments are changing their institutions in order to foster Silicon Valleys of their own. What accounts for the Valley's leading edge in innovation and entrepreneurship? This book gives an answer by insiders, by prominent business leaders and academics from the heart of the Valley. They argue that what distinguishes the Valley is not its scientific advances or technological breakthroughs. Instead, its edge derives from a "habitat" or environment that is tuned to turn ideas into products and take them rapidly to market by creating new firms. This habitat includes supportive government regulations for new firm formation, leading research universities that interact with industry, an exceptionally talented and highly mobile work force, and experienced support services in such areas as finance, law, accounting, headhunting, and marketing, all specializing in helping new companies form and grow. Not least is a spirit of adventure and a willingness to take risks. The elements of this habitat are packed into a small geographic area. In it, networks of specialists form communities of practice within which ideas develop and circulate and from which new products and new firms emerge. Feedback processes are strongly at work: the successes of Valley firms strengthen the habitat, and the stronger it becomes, the more new, successful firms are created. Among industries, electronics came into the Valley first, followed by semiconductors, computers, software, and, in the 1990s, biotechnology, networking, and the Internet. This extraordinary ability to keep adding new industrial sectors itself affects the prospect for the Silicon Valley's future. What lies ahead? From within, the Valley faces serious challenges in defining a new generation of entrepreneurs, addressing a growing digital divide, and maintaining quality of life. At the same time, the Valley must redefine its global role with respect to other rising innovative regions worldwide. Nevertheless, the proven ability of its highly effective habitat suggests that in both innovation and entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley will maintain its edge.