Join us Dec. 1-3 in New Orleans for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
For Dave Fanger, building an in-house startup was labor of love.
“It was a nights and weekends passion of mine,” said Fanger, CEO of Swell, the impact investing platform owned by Newport Beach, California-based insurer Pacific Life. “We were looking for asset managers to acquire, but I didn’t see anything out there that was addressing the values I was looking for.”
For Fanger, finding partners who were committed to sustainability was important. So six years ago, he teamed up with a colleague and decided to launch Swell — but instead of creating a startup from scratch, he decided to do so from within Pacific Life. As venture capital funding becomes harder to come by, corporate-incubated startups may become more common. For Swell, maintaining the “separateness” of the startup entity is a critical driver of success.
More in Marketing
How Kind snack bars is using AI to curb creative, marketing costs at business ‘inflection point’
Adopting generative AI and synthetic audiences, Kind North America’s marketing overhaul is cutting creative time and shifting agencies into strategic partners.
As would-be buyers and critics circle, WPP’s siege mentality deepens
The London holding company is beset by challenges and critics. A bunker philosophy and pushback may be emerging in response.
‘We’re in a league of our own’: How X is planning to take over the World Cup, starting with Draw Day
The platform is using the tournament’s draw as an early proving ground for a broader strategy to reassert its creator content around live events.