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Don't fear. VC's do back studio companies. "Dead weight" on cap table does not scare top firms. After looking at 1,800 investments, Jim Moran at the Venture Studio Index should know. A constant concern with the startup studio model is that follow on VC's see a cap table with the founder too diluted to carry on and a studio that no longer is active with the company, effectively becoming dead weight on the cap table. It is one of the most common questions I get on LinkedIn and in my DM's as well. VC's obviously invest, or we would not have some of the major studio exits such as Snowflake, Moderna Therapeutics, Hims, Dollar Shave Club, or But this fear persists. With investors and potential founders. With good reason. Studio cap tables cause a physically visceral reaction from VCs. I've seen VC's recoil. Stop the conversation. And walk away. Full stop. Studio cap tables can be a non-starter for many follow on VC investors. But not all. Jim has pulled together a list of 800 investors that have participated, almost 200 that have led, and 33 firms that have led or invested in multiple rounds. Top firms too. Maybe you have heard of: Kleiner Perkins Founders Fund General Catalyst Greylock Foundry Group Jim Moran suggests the fear that VC's won't invest is over blown. It is. But studios still better have a good plan, network, and process for raising that next round. Because a lot of VCs are not ready to consider studio company cap tables today. Interested in a list of VC's that invest in studio portfolio companies? Comment 'SPBL'

Many companies use studios and ventures in their names and descriptions of services. The terms might not be new to you, but here is a quick summary of what a venture studio is here at Novy. A venture studio is a business that repeatedly forms and then builds new venture-scale companies with a combination of significant capital and highly experienced talent from the very beginning. Unlike most venture funds and accelerators, a studio: ➕ Provides systematic ideation and validation procedures, to rapidly filter and vet potential ventures from the beginning. For entrepreneurs, corporations, or researchers with potentially commercializable ideas or intellectual property, these procedures result in about 1% of them reaching formation. 📈 For that 1%, Novy co-founds companies from the beginning, and brings an experienced, curated team to start, grow, and operate for the first 2-3 years, and provides significant capital at founding and early growth, typically $1M (and sometimes more from matching investors). ♻ Most of the Novy team that works inside each company will eventually join another portfolio company within 18-30 months. The experience and knowledge within each company are captured and re-used quickly, reducing risk and increasing the odds of a successful outcome. 🛣 The key advantage of a venture studio is that it is designed to be repeatable, building and scaling new companies quickly, with better capital efficiency and less risk.

I just read the long article about venture studios. how do they Invest in the Idea stage of the business? and How they will act like co-founders for us is so cool. they will take a big chunk of the company course there reducing our risk. they will be involved in these companies from the start. so they knew the core of the company's mission and purpose. especially for founders they will attract new investments. look how crazy it is from the start, that someone is willing to share the Risk with us. some founders worked at some big tech and thought to solve some problems that they thought would be worth trying. After some meetings brainstorming the Idea, they concluded that there were many more great problems to solve. so they thought If we could solve all the problems at the same time it would be great. so think of this now they can control a big part of the company and at the same time they can solve the problems also. It's a win-win situation. From simple questions to making something is so great. Have you thought about the first principal method it helps many people to find or solve many problems. for me, it's like an obvious question.

Why work with a venture studio as a founder? Venture studios differ from traditional venture capital by coupling investment with hands-on support for founders. Studios are proving invaluable for founders in the current capital landscape for several reasons: 1. Active Partnership: Traditional venture capital often provides funding but remains uninvolved in the day-to-day operations of a startup. Venture studios bridge this gap by actively co-creating and partnering with founders. This hands-on involvement helps tackle complex challenges sooner and refine products more effectively. 2. Comprehensive Support: Unlike conventional investors, venture studios offer a full suite of seasoned resources, including engineers, designers, and operational experts. This integrated support ensures startups receive the guidance and expertise needed at every stage, from early idea development to institutional funding rounds. 3. Focused Engagement: Venture studios typically work with a select number of startups each year. This focused approach allows for deeper engagement and a more significant impact on each company's success. By concentrating their efforts, studios can provide tailored support and foster stronger relationships with founders. 4. Experience-Driven Growth: Founders benefit from the studio’s experience in launching and scaling successful companies. With a background in building successful businesses, the studio team brings valuable insights and proven strategies that can accelerate growth and navigate common pitfalls. What’s your take on venture studios vs. traditional VC? 🤔 Have you experienced the difference firsthand?

This will not go down well for most Venture studios 🤢 "Most Venture Studios are vultures" - A founder told me this today 💩 He's built a FinTech product and has gained solid momentum. I asked him about his experience and his is what he said: Venture Studio A: Wanted to take over the idea (ownership), and employ the founder as CEO in his own company. Venture Studio Two: Spent months learning about his product only to tell him "With full transparency, we are building something similar within the venture studio" What the actual F is going on here? I couldn't agree more with him, there are some serious vultures out there. I told him how at Hyper Lychee Labs, we have our own version of a venture studio where we don't do any of this B.S. We help early-stage ventures build their software products with our enterprise-grade team. We invest by writing off up to 50% of the total software build cost in exchange for a SAFE note instrument. Simple - Clean - No hidden equity - No B.S. board seat requirements He asked me about our criteria and this was my answer: 1) The founder is important - We have a few years on this planet and I want to ensure that I work with amazing people. 2) A good product idea 3) My team and I should be able to add some serious value to the venture, or else in a few months it'll be a disaster I was happy to hear that he liked our model and wished he had known about this a few years ago when he started on his journey. (Our venture studio didn't exist back then 😅 ) He offered to refer founders from his network who were at the early stage we typically look for. For me, this was validation that we're doing something right. ------------------------------------------------------------------- If you know any early-stage founders who are building something amazing, please connect them to us. We are actively looking for ventures to bring into our unique venture studio model.

You want to build your own corporate innovation studio and build your company's future revenue streams? Then this whitepaper is for you! We distilled all our learnings from our venture studios with DB Schenker JobRad | Deutschland Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken how to build successful new ventures.

I started my career in a Venture Studio - Rocket Internet. Despite being controversial, it created much of the early start-up ecosystem in Berlin and beyond. It created several unicorns and at least two generations of successful founders turned investors and business angels. So it feels full circle to - almost ten years later - release a white paper on Corporate Venture Studios, a model that MVP Factory pioneered in Germany. Corporates like DB Schenker, Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken, JobRad | Deutschland and Vonovia set up their own "Rocket Internets" in order to - broadly speaking - drive innovation and build new digital revenue streams. However the devil is in the detail and the targets and playbooks range from building subsidiaries outside the HQ to acting like a pre-seed investor maximizing portfolio size of minority bets. We are humbled to have been the execution partner for many corporate venture studios over the years and we distilled our observations and learnings in this white paper. Props to Moritz von Raczeck for structuring it all and making the push to publish this. Personally, I think that Corporate Venture Studios are here to stay and that - if executed right - it is a great addition to and synergetical for the innovation / investment portfolio next to internal business building and Corporate Venture Capital Funds ("CVCs"). Download link in the comments. And reach out if you want to learn more or discuss any of this!

Venture Studios Eat VCs..! Are you curious about Venture Studios and how they work? # Venture Studios are industry-specific "factories" that conceives ideas and solutions # The ideas and solutions are executed by Portfolio Companies of the Venture Studio # The Portfolio Companies are funded by a captive studio fund. This model has several benefits:- # Quicker Product-Market Fit (products and solutions pre-vetted by industry strategics) # Shorter cycle to getting paying customers (strategics buy, use, and make available the solutions to their end-use customers) # Time burn of executives in scouting for talent is avoided # Plus, the odds of a successful exit are higher With over 800 studios worldwide (and growing), half of which are in the U.S., it's worth exploring..! Click here (https://lnkd.in/gSNTNuiE) to learn more about on U.S. based Venture Studios and issues to navigate. #VentureStudios #Startups #Innovation

The coming generation of entrepreneurs, talent, and investors are more focused on solving real-world problems than ever before. The past few decades have given us an app for seemingly ever facet of our lives. We saw some of the brightest minds of our generation focused on optimizing ad clicks and developing mobile games. The catalyst for such innovation was, of course, a golden age of venture capital. Lines of code have no marginal cost of production and can produce gigantic winners. Catch a unicorn in your fund, and you could make a name for yourself. Startups' founding teams turned into multi-millionaires. But as that party comes to an end and a new era of innovators and brilliant minds takes shape, I believe the next few decades will look a lot less like Instagram and a lot more like the Industrial Revolution or the Space Race. Lines of code will work in tandem with hardware advancements, and the built world will lead the way in innovation, because it's what the planet needs, and it's also going to create massive amounts of value. Unlike the last few decades, there's no disjunction between what's good for civilization and what's good for businesses / individuals.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen started building their first microcomputer in Albuquerque before they moved the company to Bellevue, Wash., so they could be closer to the West Coast’s talent pool. Now, Roadrunner Venture Studios CEO Adam Hammer hopes he can persuade scientists, engineers, and deep-tech founders to come and build companies.  Roadrunner is the first venture studio spinoff of America’s Frontier Fund (AFF), the venture capital arm of the policy- and education-focused nonprofit funded by the likes of Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel. Roadrunner is the first of a series of studios AFF plans to scatter across the country, with the intention of helping scientists or researchers from national, university, or corporate laboratories get capital, recruiting help, and the resources they need to turn their work into viable commercial products. Behind it all is a mission to ensure that the U.S. continues to be dominant in innovation. Read more: https://lnkd.in/e8QN9kfa