Venture Studios – including our own PX Ventures – are creating enhanced impact for clients with this unique model (read more about that here). It’s a full-service entrepreneurship solution in a box (or ventures-as-a-service), where an experienced venture team works at a sprint pace, while the core business functions as a VC. Essentially, studios help large enterprises compete with startups by becoming a startup. Fortune 500 firms are finding this model is where a corporation’s beta business gets the most traction.
7 Ways the Venture Studio Model Wins
The studio model is still new-ish-to-the-world, so we thought we’d share our take on the 7 ways the studio model is showing that it creates more success & creates less waste than your existing innovation efforts.
- External validation: the early-stage idea gets market validation of multiple types, most notably live customers in the marketplace but also access to outside investors, if necessary for optimal value creation.
- Exit optionality: decision-rights shift to the venture team, allowing exit optionality – the ability to pivot and exit where there is most value – whether that is inside the core business or out.
- Off-brand, off-platform: move startup-fast, and de-risk the pursuit of disruption by exploring in “stealth mode.”
- VC-inspired, without the VC risk: studio ventures are close enough to the core to ensure a strategic return to the mother organization and structured to create a financial return, soon. This is not unicorn-level returns with unicorn-level odds – the full support stack studios offer ventures increase their odds of success.
- Doing > Decks: the KPIs & milestones are not decks and presentations, they are metrics of user adoption, customer acquisition, first dollars in revenue, etc. The funding for a venture phase only goes as far as the next milestone (like a VC round) providing the confidence and ability to halt, spin-in, or spin-out.
- Joint investment + metrics: the venture team is deployed at cost, and earns upside dividends by achieving market success milestones as we go.
- Right talent, right permissions: awesome if internal folks can be part of the studio, if not, folks aren’t dragged along. The venture studio finds and places the right, best people responsible for the tasks at hand. The founding team has access to the studio’s full stack of support services, streamlining execution and ensuring pacing – bonus: you’re not piecemealing various vendors together (and overpaying) as you go.
