Episode 319 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Peter Berg, Managing Partner at M12, Microsoft’s venture capital fund.

I’ve had lots of investors as guests on the podcast, but I was excited to interview Peter because I’ve never interviewed an investor from a CVC or a Corporate Venture Capital fund.

I’m not sure what the number is today, but according to a 2023 report about CVCs, it counts 1,100 active CVCs. Based on this scale, it is a very meaningful opportunity for entrepreneurs in terms of raising capital.

Thus, Peter and I pretty much get right into the details towards the beginning of our conversation about the world of CVCs… from what they are, differentiators, strategic advantages of raising capital from a CVC, how to evaluate a CVC, and other topics.

As previously stated, M12 is Microsoft’s VC fund. The firm invests in Seed, Series A, and Series B rounds of funding across different categories like Cloud Infrastructure, AI, Cybersecurity, Web 3 & Gaming, Vertical SaaS, and Developer Tools.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* How Peter landed a first name @peter handle on Twitter / X.com.

* A walk through Peter’s career including his investment into Square and the creation of Visa Ventures which scaled to a global organization and went on to invest in Stripe, LoopPay (a Boston startup that was acquired by Samsung), and many other companies.

* All the details on Peter’s area of focus at M12 and what he is targeting for investments.

* M12 portfolio company examples like Inworld and Typeface.

* His thoughts and opinions on the current state of the market for raising capital.

* And so much more.