My quick, unorganized thoughts on the venture studio model:
- I don’t really see the current model working (Current model = typically a seasoned entrepreneur comes up with an idea, and brings in an operating team to build it out.) Who, at least among aspiring entrepreneurs, wants to work on someone else’s idea, while taking minority founder shares? On the other side, if you have a specific vision in your head, can you let other founders build it and take your hands off? It’s like, I’m an artist, but I’m too busy to paint, so I’m going to hire an artist and have her draw my idea into an art?
- I think a better model is a “thesis studio” where teams get together to start multiple projects, but strictly staying within a specific vertical or industry. Pursuing several unrelated projects simultaneously is a random scattershot approach and is bound to fail IMO
- There should be a fair and flexible equity structure, where equity is distributed based on the value add, rather than hard capped at x% in a cookie cutter model
- If one idea seems to work, can you scrap all other projects and focus entire teams on that one idea? I think setting up a structure that allows such shift would be super helpful
- Don’t forget – if you build ONE highly profitable business, you CAN launch something that works pretty much like an “internal venture studio” within the enterprise (think Google’s project X). At the end of the day, the goal is to build ONE thing that works really well; if venture studio can be used as a way to find that one thing, by launching multiple (but related) projects and seeing what works well, I think that’s a completely fine approach