How we work

Our team’s focus is on relationships with early-stage innovative companies across the world in our thematic areas of interest.
 

From our experience, successful engagements often start with companies that meet the following criteria:

For business-sponsored collaborations and investments:

• Well-rounded and experienced founding team
• Seed level and above, to Series B
• Clearly defined and validated solution
• Regulatory pathway completed or in progress
• In-line with the Philips focus areas
• While geographically agnostic; proximity to relevant Philips sites does support collaboration
  
  

For the Philips Health Technology Venture Fund:

• Series A/B stage
• Initial investment of $2 million – $5 million EUR/USD, reserves at twice initial investment
• We syndicate all deals
• Company maturity at early commercial stage
• Investment goal is to confirm product validation / value proposition and drive scale

Our preference is toward digital propositions through software, analytics and tech-enabled services. We are not currently investing in development-stage businesses.

There are different ways to create a relationship with Philips, depending on your solution and the requirement you have for growth. One of these ways is through our investment vehicles, whether direct or business sponsored, and another way is through a collaboration. 

This collaboration could be based on a commercial contract with Philips or our customers, the sharing or licensing of IP, co-development, joint venturing and more. It is the responsibility of Philips Ventures to investigate these options and work with both you and Philips to create these opportunities for engagement.

In our due diligence, we always validate if there is a fit both with the innovation needs of our customers as well as the areas in which Philips has the ambition to further build a presence.

This helps us to validate the opportunity to bring commercial opportunities to our businesses over the course of our investment period. Further, we look at the stand-alone value creation potential of the start-up, similar to what an institutional investor would do.

Our process and timeline for investments mirrors that of most financial investors, with an additional set of corporate functional diligence which is completed concurrent with the standard investment process.

For our digital health venture capital investments through Philips Health Technology Ventures, we intentionally avoid any strategic terms (e.g. acquisition rights or distribution rights). Our desired terms are designed to mirror financial investors, with straightforward investor rights and protections in place to allow us to manage the investments.

When Philips makes a direct investment, our priorities are the management of the investment and the ability for Philips to drive value for the company. We are active investors and believe we can leverage the expertise within Philips to drive value for our portfolio of start-ups, as part of the governance for those companies we invest in. In some cases, this is as a voting board member and in others it’s as a board observer.

We can lead investments, co-lead investments or follow a lead investor. What is critical is we want to syndicate all deals.

Yes, we actively work with a range of investors across the world who have similar investment philosophies and areas of focus to ours.

Philips Ventures believes strongly in being an active champion of the start-ups that we invest in and/or collaborate with.

Our investment leads work with your business to help you grow and scale, and provide guidance on business models, technical and commercial implementation, financing, team build and leadership and growth methodologies.

Our innovation leads orchestrate collaborations between your business and the various business units within Philips and act as the intermediary between the business/market and start-up, helping you navigate the organization.