Mach49, the growth builder for global businesses, has announced the appointments of Kevin Ye and Chris Cusack as Managing Partners of the firm’s Venture Investing practice. The team of experienced venture capitalists at Mach49 will be expanding the company’s capacity to help corporations accelerate growth through venture capital, strategic partnerships, and venture acquisitions.
Since 2020, Ye and Cusack have designed and supported investment funds for some of the world’s largest corporations. “Our focus is on driving inorganic growth through well-coordinated partnership, investment, and acquisition strategies, and those capabilities are fully integrated at Mach49,” said Cusack.
Ye added: “The growth we have experienced in the past three years shows us that CVC should be a tool in every corporation’s toolkit. Companies are reaching out to us at unprecedented rates because they recognize that this is a great time to get in early on deals they may not have had access to before.”
The multifaceted strategy builds a bridge between the corporate and startup worlds that powers new forms of impact and collaboration. Mach49’s work has seen successes such as TDK Ventures, which collaborated closely with Mach49 to design and launch their first $50 million corporate venture fund in 2019.
Mach49 Founder and CEO Linda Yates said: “Corporate venture investing is a powerful way for corporations to have an outsized impact on global problems like climate change. Every corporate dollar that’s well invested unlocks ten more from other investors to do the important work needed in the world.”
Mach49, based in Silicon Valley with offices in Redwood City, Boston, London, and Amsterdam, has been partnering with global businesses since 2020 to build their growth engines through venture building, venture investing, venture transformation, strategic partnering, and targeted M&A.
Today, Mach49 continues to support TDK Ventures by supporting their venture capital discipline in all their early-stage investments in clean technology and advanced materials companies like Ascend Elements, AM Batteries, and Verdagy.
Mach49 has appointed Kevin Ye and Chris Cusack as Managing Partners of their Venture Investing practice, in response to the unprecedented demand from Global 1000 companies to accelerate corporate venture investment.
With the help of this experienced team of venture capitalists, Mach49 facilitates corporations to think and execute like top-performing VCs, helping them capitalize on their unique advantages — people, resources, knowledge, and customers — to create value and be on the right side of disruption.
The company has seen successes such as TDK Ventures, which collaborated closely with Mach49 to design and launch their first $50 million corporate venture fund in 2019, and has since had four exits in their Fund 1 portfolio, as well as an additional $300 million across two funds.
Nicolas Sauvage, President of TDK Ventures commented: “Mach49 helps us think about investments from a financial VC point of view, and this ultimately drives our corporate VC design and its execution to be trusted by the full VC ecosystem.”
Ye and Cusack, both of whom joined Mach49 as Venture Investing Partners, have been instrumental in Mach49’s work with clients including Goodyear Ventures, Halliburton Labs, Hines Global Venture Lab, Hypertherm Ventures, Vale Ventures, Zeon Ventures, and more.
The pair have previously been active investor and advisors for more than a decade and have served in various roles formerly at Village Capital. Ye holds degrees in bioengineering and corporate finance from the University of Pennsylvania, while Cusack holds a BS in economics and a BA in public policy from Duke University.
Mach49 is 100% focused on execution, helping their clients to disrupt existing markets and create new ones to drive meaningful growth. The company was founded by Linda Yates, author of The Unicorn Within: How Companies Can Create Game-Changing Ventures at Startup Speed, and was recently selected by Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Pink as one of “7 Startup Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read.”
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