A Oxygea, Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) vehicle with US$150 million to invest in startups focused on sustainability and digital transformation, that has a unique operation in Corporate Venture Capital and Venture Building,also presents an unprecedented model in the corporate context, created by the fund to promote its cultureThe Long-Term Incentive Program based on Tokens.
The initiative creates an investment portfolio accessible to employees to share value creation, that is the result of the investments the fund makes in startups, for example, some of the most common practices among Venture Capital players. In addition to the monthly salary and benefits, the corporate team at Oxygea also has access to variable compensation, converted into aPLR(Profit Sharing) based on business and individual results and onTokensallocated proportionally to the size of the contributions made by Oxygea
"This model was created to attract people with an entrepreneurial profile to our team", share with the participants the success and value creation of Oxygea alongside the invested startups, alinhando interesses e riscos através de um mecanismo ganha/ganha; perde/perde. In this way, we stimulate the appetite for investments, the agility in decision-making and the diligence with the available capital to invest, explains the Head of People, Rafaela Marques.
To exemplify in practice, let's suppose that an employee who receives R$10 thousand annually in variable compensation, you can choose to invest a certain % of this amount in the ILP (Long-Term Investment) model via Tokens. If the option is 20%, R$2 thousand are allocated to the ILP model –that can multiply or not, according to the success of the investments– and the remaining R$8 thousand is received through PLR, or ICP (Short-Term Investment). In Oxygea, the adherence compromises a significant percentage of the variable compensation of the leadership. For the team, participation is voluntary and can reach 20% of the variable compensation in the Tokens program. There are no position restrictions to participate in the program, but there is a validation ritual for the names to be nominated to participate by the board with predefined criteria
Just like the investment mechanisms of the fund, the Oxygea Token program emerged after a series of Benchmarkings conducted during the vehicle's design, that mapped critical success factors and also patterns among those who did not succeed in the CVC market, what, according to Artur Faria, CEO of Oxygea, it was fundamental to understand that, even operating a Corporate Venture Capital, a certain level of independence was necessary to make the investment operation more competitive
"We observed models that ended up losing flexibility and competitiveness due to the direct connection with the parent company", facing dilemmas in aligning incentives for risk-taking. Our Token model is now a major differentiator in the CVC market, where most still use the same compensation format as their 'mother ship', highlights the CEO of Oxygea
The proposal of Tokens is also an alternative to other forms of compensation that were discarded during the study with benchmarks, how the formation of societies, stock options, actions and others. The model used, what is an unprecedented creation was co-built by many hands by Oxygea along with its parent company, Braskem, and with the partner startup Distu, expert in the field,involving the People areas, Legal, Finance and Portfolio, also counting on the opening and contributions from the fund's Advisory Board. This project was a finalist for the Think Work Innovations Award 2024, competing in the 'Compensation and Benefits' category and awarded in the 'Innovation Partner' category
