When investing in a startup, the questions we often ask are about its growth. What happens to a startup after raising equity crowdfunding - like those on Mamacrowd - and finding funding?

The imperative is always one: growth. As is clear from Steve Blank's now famous definition, a startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, scalable and profitable business model.

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Growth, however, understood as an increase in the number of customers and consequent turnover, remains a firm point even for large companies and multinationals, which in recent years have realized that innovation is increasingly a key element in their growth strategies, as we have already seen with regard to Vente Privee.
This is why more and more multinationals are investing in startups, either using them as suppliers, or acquiring some of them to make technologies and skills in-house.
Three recent examples appeared in EconomyUp magazine:

Bnp Paribas: in the French group's 2017-2020 investment plan, $3 billion will be allocated to digital technologies. As the CEO, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, said,"Professions are changing in both retail banking and investment banking. The big challenge for us is to work together with people who can manage the scale of this transformation."

Versace and Diesel: both companies, operating in the tech sector, have chosen to rely on Certilogo, which is no longer a startup - having been founded in 2006 - but falls into the category of scaleups, companies that operate in the innovative field, but is already experiencing a phase of expansion and development. For scaleups any kind of strategic agreement with large companies is fundamental. In particular, Certilogo has created a platform for fashion houses to authenticate products by marking them with a unique identification code.

L'Oreal: The cosmetics giant has acquired some shares of the London-based incubator Founders Factory, and subsequently chosen 5 startups to grow that operate in the beauty tech sector.

Three choices that go in the direction of open innovation, and that confirm the tendency of companies to consider innovation as a fundamental tool for their growth strategy.