Best Buy Capital

BEST BUY CAPITAL - Description and Overview

INVESTOR TYPE	Corporate Venture
STATUS	Alive

Best Buy Capital was launched by Best Buy Co., Inc. to serve as a corporate venture-capital arm to get in on the ground floor of emerging technologies.. Best Buy Capital focuses on two initiatives: the Core Fund and the Alpha Fund. Core emphasizes investment opportunities for existing business units, similar to the company's past investment in firms such as Web-video provider Mydeo. Alpha makes direct investments in early-stage companies that are developing emerging technologies or inventions considered disruptive to the marketplace.

In terms of investment criteria and goals for both funds, Best Buy Capital seeks to:

- Create a portfolio of option in emerging, disruptive technologies and innovations that impact consumers;
- Hedge against Best Buy's current mass-market oriented business which is largely dependent on traditional development patterns and cycles;
- Enhance Best Buy's brand value proposition to be the consumers' trusted advocate for innovations and disruptions;
- Enhance Best Buy's positioning in the ecosystem to be the partner of choice for emerging consumer innovations and technologies;
- Provide real-time, market based insights into emerging innovations and disruptions that could have an impact on Best Buy's current and near-term business; and
- Catalyze outside-in, market-based innovations and thinking through-out the enterprise

It is also referred to as BBY Capital. Best Buy Capital can be found on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bbycapital