Short excerpt from an Ozan Sonmez podcast (April 20, 2025) discussing corporate practices for investing in internal talent — through training, equity investments, and allowing employees to spin out new companies. Sonmez argues that enabling and investing in internal entrepreneurs refreshes organizational talent, attracts new hires, and can generate financial returns and stronger employer branding.
Chapters
And also on the investing side, we have worked with companies who invest into their internal capacity with trainings, education and programs, but also invest as equity investments to people who are spinning out companies from them, which is counterintuitive, but it also kind of refreshes the mindset and cycle of new talent. Some companies have a lot of talent. They've been sitting there for 10 years, 20 years, doing the same old stuff, and they're excited to do something. Letting them go out when you have a piece of the pie is not a bad idea because the people that are coming in, they will be filling that gap. And then you can have more fresh blood coming in. And all of a sudden, you're not only changing how your talent, infrastructure, talent, composure is becoming a little bit more younger, more agile, but also the experienced people are now out there building companies that could potentially return money on their investment. So that level of I want my talent to be able to go out and do something and I want to invest in them is also a beautiful employee branding tool.