From Pilots to Portfolios: Comcast’s Integrated Corporate Growth Startup Strategy

Fred Schonenberg
Welcome to the VentureFuel Visionaries Podcast. Today, I’m excited to share a special fireside chat I was part of at the Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit. I sat down with two innovation leaders from Comcast: Laura Plunkett, VP of Startup Engagement and Head of Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs, and Marc Silberman, Partner at Comcast Ventures. 

Our session — From Pilots to Portfolios: Comcast’s Integrated Corporate Growth Startup Strategy — dives into how Comcast is combining startup pilots through LIFT Labs with strategic investments via Comcast Ventures to build a unified approach to innovation, especially in fast-moving areas like AI.

VentureFuel runs the LIFT Labs Enterprise Accelerator in collaboration with Comcast, helping identify and support enterprise-ready startups aligned with their strategic priorities. If you're building an AI-native startup and ready to work with global leaders, don’t miss their upcoming info session on Wednesday, July 23, from 12–1pm ET. You’ll learn how their equity-free, hands-on program connects AI-Native startups to high-impact decision-makers across Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Sky to accelerate the road to partnership. 

Now, let’s dive into the conversation.

Host
So we invited VentureFuel to join us at this year's GCVI Summit. Thank you very much, Fred, for being here and for bringing our friends from Comcast. Comcast obviously has had a great track run in CVC, and so we're really looking forward to having Laura and Marc on the stage today. So please welcome Fred and Laura and Marc to demonstrate the approach of Comcast and really the ways in which VentureFuel has supported that growth strategy. And by the way, there are some flyers on your table that we encourage you to look at. So please pick those up. And if you have any other questions, I'm sure Fred's going to be around today. Thanks.

Fred Schonenberg
Hey, everyone. You guys are getting close to lunch here. I'm really excited to have Marc and Laura join and share a little bit about their external innovation journey. I'm Fred. I'm the CEO of VentureFuel. We help large organizations commercialize innovation through startup partnerships. So like many of the folks here, our goal is to help you seize what's next now. We do that through repeatable frameworks that can help you either learn, test, build, or invest.

And I've been fortunate to get to work with Comcast since 2019, and I've seen firsthand their unique and integrated approach to external innovation. So I'm very excited to dig into things here. And I'm going to embarrass both of you to start here. So Laura is the VP of Startup Engagement and the head of Comcast NBCUniversal's LIFT Labs. It's basically Laura's the bridge between Comcast and the startup ecosystem to help identify opportunities that accelerate innovation to meet your growth goals. So here's some of the stats. In 2024 alone, LIFT Labs added 18 of the world's most innovative AI startups to its portfolio. Now has 42 companies with 46 active partnerships across Comcast NBCUniversal and Sky.

Marc is a partner at Comcast Ventures where he leads investments in AI and cybersecurity startups. Prior to that, Marc led corporate development at FirstMark Capital as well as operating roles at Clear and BuzzFeed. Just for perspective, Comcast Ventures has been investing for over 20 years, has 300-plus investments and over 86 exits. So very excited to talk about this with you all. Laura, could you start and maybe introduce people to LIFT Labs, what it is, and how it's unique?

Laura Plunkett
Yeah, absolutely. So thank you so much for having us, Fred. We are really excited to be here, and it's really great to see so many of you hanging in there with lunch outside. But LIFT Labs, you can consider us basically the corporate venture business development arm of Comcast Startup Engagement Function. So LIFT Labs sits alongside Comcast Ventures, obviously, and we also have another traditional accelerator model focused on sports technologies. 

But really what we are here to do is bring, in the last two and a half years, no surprise to anyone, incredible AI-native and AI-powered startups to our organization to increase revenue growth, increase operational efficiency, and really bring new technologies into the hands of our colleagues' everyday work experience.

Fred Schonenberg
Great. And Marc, can you kind of give a similar introduction to Comcast Ventures?

Marc Silberman
So Comcast Ventures, we are a pretty kind of classic corporate venture function. So we invest in a handful of categories that we think are kind of highly strategically relevant to Comcast's growth over the next three, five, ten years. The hope is to make some money, but equally as important, learn about new areas, new technologies to kind of help propel the company forward. 

Typically we're investing Series A, Series B can kind of go a little bit later as well. Usually $4 to $7 million investments. And the hope is that we can invest in a company, help them grow faster through Comcast being a design partner, sales channel, customer, all the above. And then, again, big focus on what we can learn from those investments moving forward.

Fred Schonenberg
Great. And Laura, can you talk a little bit about LIFT Labs and how it's evolved under your leadership? It's changed quite dramatically over the past couple of years. I would love to understand the thinking behind that, and then we'll tie back into how you all work together.

Laura Plunkett
Yeah, absolutely. So I took over the team, I think in late 2022 at this point, and LIFT Labs had had an incredible run as a very traditional early stage accelerator. But I think at the moment in the ecosystem, as well as at the moment at Comcast, bringing in super early stage startups kind of wasn't meeting either of those stakeholder needs. So we took a look at the whole model, kind of tore it down with Fred there to catch us just in case we burned it all down, and rethought how we would do this.

So number one, with technology changing so fast, we thought bringing in a batch of companies once per year, frankly, wasn't fast enough to understand what was going on. We increased that to two batches a year. And then the other thing that we did was strip away the sort of upfront investment in these companies, which really forced us to the earliest part of the value chain. So instead of working with mainly pre-seed companies that had raised less than $500,000, we're now working anywhere from seed to, frankly, Series C, with an average pre-program funding of around $14 million. But really, it doesn't matter about stage or pre-program funding to us. Really what we care about is this concept of enterprise readiness.

And so we need startups that are sort of ready to work with companies at our size with the opportunity to scale. And that's really, you could be pre-seed and fit that bill, and you can be Series C and not fit that bill. So that's kind of how we think about that. And this format has been, I think, really successful as demonstrated by the number of active partnerships that we have going on. And that is truly because of my incredible team who has an intimate knowledge of what business units are looking for in any given moment. And then that's kind of what drives our sourcing in the ecosystem.

Fred Schonenberg
One of the things I think is really smart about the approach, too, is it's not just about running pilots. A lot of people in this room have been doing this for a long time. And there's the startup petting zoo, where you see a bunch of startups and everyone sees it and gets excited and then goes back to their day job. This is about commercial pilots with the lens of, does this scale to MSAs across the business and drive real returns for Comcast? 

So I love that you guys are measuring that as one of the key KPIs. And then, Marc, can you talk about Comcast Ventures? How is it different from LIFT Labs? And how do you guys collaborate?

Marc Silberman
Yeah. So I think the major difference is we make direct investments, as I mentioned before. So typically, series A, series B startups in a handful of categories. But there's just naturally a lot of collaboration, given that we obviously spend a lot of time in AI as a ventures group. Laura and her team have dedicated quite a bit of their time to AI as well. So there's a lot of overlap in themes we're looking at, the kind of startups we're seeing in the ecosystem. And I think that really lends itself to a lot of collaboration. 

So selfishly for me, I get to leverage a lot of the thematic work that Laura and her team do to identify what's important to people at Comcast. They have really built a strong network of leaders internally who they can kind of tap into for different learnings and insights and understanding what's actually going to move the needle. So I get to take all of that and help use that to kind of do diligence on startups to kind of make direct investments as well. So that's kind of just one example of the collaboration.

And I know we'll talk a little bit later about some examples of how that collaboration has turned into kind of a company going through LIFT Labs, becoming part of the Comcast Ventures portfolio. And I think that's where you get a lot of kinds of really cool flywheel effects.

Laura Plunkett
Oh, see, would you say I make your job easier? I love that for me.

Marc Silberman
Definitely easier.

Fred Schonenberg
Well, I think what's interesting is you guys definitely make each other's jobs easier and the collaboration is really interesting. I think a lot of folks here have a more traditional CVC. And I'm curious, Marc, from your perspective, how do you keep those lanes clean between the CVC work and what Laura is doing? And I think some of it has to do with the stage and focus of your investments. But just curious, as you all think about this as another touchpoint into Comcast, how do you keep those lanes clean?

Marc Silberman
Yeah, definitely not perfect at the moment. There are definitely times where wires get crossed and someone at LIFT Labs may already be in touch with the company that Comcast Ventures has talked to a year ago or something like that. I do think having kind of the stage focus of us probably being a little bit earlier than where Lift Labs is going today helps kind of cut some of that, those crossed wire activities. I think some of it naturally is OK because it does show kind of the power of our company.

I think, especially in kind of enterprise AI, where the general sentiment is like companies are doing short POCs and nothing is turning into real kind of durable revenue, being able to talk about that we have this part of our company that is solely focused on helping startups cut through a lot of the big company jargon, and just like general kind of barricades that block kind of like real contracts from happening, is particularly powerful for me, as I'm kind of going out and pitching a startup, and why they should take our money specifically.

Fred Schonenberg
And Laura, kind of flipping the question, your background was very much in corporate venturing, so curious how Marc's work helps you and how you differentiate between the two.

Laura Plunkett
Yeah, I mean, I love, since our teams have kind of come under the same leadership, I think you can clearly see how we're making each other better and more efficient. I think what, and I think Marc is totally right, like we're not perfect and we're still sort of bumping into those boundaries since this is kind of a relatively new orientation. But one of the things that our team sort of doesn't have to focus on, which you all do, is thinking about financial returns, but as a proxy for rapid growth of a company. And so I think LIFT Labs can sort of fall in love with a founding team or an offering and sort of like hitch our wagon to that.

And then Marc will kind of help me sober up a little bit and be like, yeah, well, there's other people in the market that are growing much faster and we've seen these. So it helps LIFT Labs make the best decisions when we think about scalability, right? Because anybody can run around and do a small-scale proof of concept or a pilot, but really there's going to be fewer enduring AI native companies, I think, as we sort of move through this cycle. And the ones that are experiencing real growth as a demonstration of their ability to prove product market fit and traction, that's something we need to keep in mind and not just, we love these guys.

Marc Silberman
And like we're able to, although sometimes the wires do get crossed, but we're able to kind of catch it pretty early. So the Comcast Ventures team is pretty involved in just helping evaluate startups that are going through the funnel to join the LIFT Labs cohort. So we can provide kind of feedback. We've met this company, we've met five other companies doing the same thing. You probably should look at someone else, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there are some built in kinds of things into the process that help kind of alleviate any issues.

Laura Plunkett
And we can kind of like a soft landing. Maybe there's a company that you're interested in, but you're not really sure yet. And you can kind of be like, actually, maybe we could see if you could work with some of our colleagues across the business, and then that'll sort of prove out whether or not that could be the right fit.

Fred Schonenberg
I think one thing that's been interesting just as kind of doing the speed dating meetings here that I keep hearing from more traditional CVCs is, as the economy, maybe innovation feels more like a luxury, they're being asked, how do you try to tie into the strategy, the core business? What is that? And oftentimes they're investing adjacently and future focus. And I think what's interesting here on the LIFT Labs’ side is you start with business unit pain points. Right? So everything begins with that. Here's something the core business wants to solve for, and they're bought in before we even look at startups. 

And in the past, some of those solutions, Marc maybe would not have invested in because it didn't have a venture return, or the quick win wasn't what was interesting from an investable aspect. So I think you're solving one of the big problems in the industry right now, which is that validation of the role of external innovation. Can you talk about, I'd love to give AI credit for the title of this panel, but the pilot to portfolio came out. I plugged in the questions. I was like, what should we call this? Can you talk about an example maybe where something went through LIFT Labs and then became an investment and part of Comcast Ventures portfolio? 

Laura Plunkett
Do you want to take this one? 

Marc Silberman
Oh, you know where I'm going. Kind of the best example is a CV portfolio and LIFT Labs alum company called NLX, which is a tool for enterprises to build kind of conversational workflows, leveraging all different types of AI models and kind of customizations to make customer journeys more seamless. I guess, Laura, why don't you talk about kind of how NLX came into your world, and then I can kind of take the baton from there.

Laura Plunkett
Yeah. So they were actually a part of our first AI focused cohort back in the spring of 2023. Yep. And at that moment, you know, you recall there were, I think, out of the gate use cases that were really exciting for the general public, which was sort of creative. And then there was like a very obvious fit around customer care and customer experience and customer service applications when you think about natural language processing, etc. So they were, you know, that was a sort of burning use case from our business units perspective. 

And so it was very obvious that we were going to pull them in and they had early phenomenal traction with other incredible companies like, you know, Delta, for example. So they had that enterprise readiness that we typically look for. 

Fred Schonenberg
And I think right before you go in, Marc, one thing that's interesting there is their customer readiness, their enterprise readiness was in a different industry. And I think that's one of the powers of this is this was having success in the travel industry, but we saw the use case and what it could be and how it applied to you all and kind of brought that in. Sorry, Marc, go ahead.

Marc Silberman
Yeah. So I definitely kind of saw from the kind of sidelines how quickly NLX was kind of blossoming within Comcast in terms of people who were like all the way up to our CTOs organization and like very senior leaders who were talking about how kind of powerful this platform could be. So when the company kind of started thinking about their Series A round, it was kind of a natural conversation for us to kind of engage with.

And there were a bunch of reasons kind of outside of that we had. It was very selfishly helpful that we already had all this great validation internally from our leadership who have kind of really deeply vetted the technology. But just seeing this was kind of at the time a seed stage company that had very large commercial kind of partnerships with massive companies like Laura mentioned Delta, United Airlines was among their largest customers.

So combining the kind of validation that we already had internally with a company that was really punching above its weight from a sales and marketing perspective made it kind of a pretty easy decision to lean into their rounds. We wound up participating in that round, which was led by a fund called Circano out in Seattle. 

Fred Schonenberg
So one of the things that's interesting is startup partnerships with corporations sometimes don't go well.

Laura Plunkett
What do you mean?

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, I think everyone in this room can feel that pain sometimes. But according to Harvard Business Review, 70% of those partnerships failed due to misalignment in expectations and execution. I'm curious how you think about this as you structure LIFT Labs to kind of bring that number more realistic, knowing that some are not going to work out, but really aligning to the business goals and structuring the pilots.

Laura Plunkett
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it was our willingness to change. I think when you're in the game for as long as we have been, if you keep going with your existing model, like if nothing changes, nothing changes. And we noticed that there was a mismatch in value creation from the startup's perspective and certainly from the Comcast perspective. So I think humility is just sort of listening to your stakeholders and knowing that, hey, maybe we need to take a beat and switch things up. 

And so I love that our team is open to that. I love that VentureFuel was alongside us for that. And I think we try to do that all of the time. So we're always listening. So who knows? Actually, we've already made micro changes within the new format over the last two years based on things that we've done. So I think my thought process is just to be open to changing the model as market needs change. 

Fred Schonenberg
I think it's really, this is not just blowing smoke, but like really after every cohort, we're talking to the startup founders, what was good, what was bad, what could be better, as well as the business units, as well as the executive leadership. So it's constantly being tweaked and removing anything that is fluff, that isn't driving towards the strategic goal. And so I think there's really something there. 

One of the things you all mentioned is that you've both been at this for a while and Comcast overall, right? So Comcast has been investing for over 20 years, LIFT Labs, seven plus years. What do you guys attribute that success to? And Marc, maybe we'll start with you.

Marc Silberman
Yeah. I mean, I guess something I think is pretty fortunate to have is pretty steady leadership. So Comcast has been around for over 60 years. In many ways, it's a family business. So kind of a founding CEO, founder, Ralph Roberts, his son, Brian Roberts, is now the CEO of Comcast. So there's kind of very kind of stable leadership and a commitment to innovation from that perspective. And then that has really kind of lent itself to a belief in kind of investing in startups as a way to push innovation. And I think probably the same is true for the LIFT Labs. They've been around a little bit kind of shorter, a shorter timeframe, but I think there's probably some similarities there.

Laura Plunkett
Yeah.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah. And I think also the evolution of constantly testing and listening to the market internally and externally plays to that longevity as well. So we're down to the last minute for the other corporate ventures in the room. Is there one learning or piece of advice that you all have for them as they go back to their day jobs in maybe colder climates? And need to generate excitement. And Laura, why don't we start with you? Or Marc.

Laura Plunkett
Oh, did you say me?

Fred Schonenberg
Oh, yeah. Either one. You're both getting the question.

Laura Plunkett
Oh, OK. Yeah. I think my advice is, I think it's probably still the same, like enduring curiosity and humility. One of the things that I think that we do a lot is we can only know so much about so many different things. And so we rely on our colleagues a lot to co-diligence things and test things along with us. I think that that's really because we are respectful of their time and we give them credit. And we try to shine a light on our colleagues who take time to work with these startups. 

So for me, it's a little bit about that humility and making sure that you're sharing your appreciation with the people that are absolutely on this journey with you. And just acknowledging that none of these teams, I think, do well on their own. We can only do what we do because of our colleagues' support. And of course, the same goes for the startups.

Marc Silberman
So quick, just pushing on something Laura mentioned earlier, just testing and learning and iterating quickly. So whether that's within the LIFT Labs program or within Comcast Ventures, we do a lot of stuff to engage our business units internally. And if something's not resonating, not working, we're pretty quick to change it. So just keeping that mindset rather than just doing things just because you've always done them in the same way, I found it's pretty easy to fall into that trap. 

Fred Schonenberg
And I think it's learning, it's testing, and then investing in what works, really thinking about the scale-up opportunity. For anybody that wants any more information about how we do this, these are repeatable frameworks. There's info on the table. We have a booth out here. Happy to talk more. And please join me in thanking both Marc and Laura for their time today. Thank you all.

Thanks for listening to this special episode of the VentureFuel Visionaries podcast. If you found this episode valuable, subscribe and share it with your network. To learn more about Comcast’s innovation initiatives and the LIFT Labs Accelerator, visit lift.comcast.com/accelerator and follow @ComcastLift on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram.