[sabj]

Points not covered in this piece, but worth noting: (1) If a counterparty is interested in you, it can help accelerate valuable partnerships you care about (2) You may want someone to invest in you, not to buy you; or you may want them to invest in you in the future

Now, for CorpDev, a conversation about investment is always a sliding scale... n% (invest) <--> 100% (buy you). But whether it's from the corporate balance sheet or as a referral to the corporate VC arm, there can be value there, and value in the relationship building, depending on circumstances.

As with so much, the risk is not knowing what you want and getting carried along by the process -- lettings things "happen" to you. If you have a conversation with corpdev, you're trading some information and receiving some information. Is that ride worth the price of admission? You have to decide based on the circumstances. This piece has an edge that helps to provoke and draw attention to the themes (don't let others shape the narrative of your business engagement) and that's fine.

There are places and indicators that a CorpDev conversation is 200% M&A, and there are times when it has more BizDev dimensions. Many companies want to develop partnerships first to determine if a potential acquisition is accretive. And, those partnerships can actually be valuable to small companies, even if there have tricky strings that can trip you up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯