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Having the firsthand experience with a studio, I have to disagree. While the idea of a studio producing ton of ideas and scaling teams sounds promising it hinge

Having the firsthand experience with a studio, I have to disagree. While the idea of a studio producing ton of ideas and scaling teams sounds promising it hinges upon hidden variables which are intrinsic to the studio model and are often detrimental in the long run. Most of the successful startups are based on a pure, authentic vision of a founder who is absolutely convinced about their vision for the future. Unfortunately, this element doesn't exist in a studio environment, and the artificial placement of a "CEO" won't do this magic especially in the early stages. More often than not, this is an essential organic process because all of the other subcomponents such as product, hiring, culture etc. are determined by the CEO who is motivated by something other than metrics. Secondly, if a studio plans to work on something more complex than a tiktok for dogs kind of app, a certain level of domain expertise needs to be present. This goes back to the founder-CEO problem where the founding team has already established some curiosity and knowledge in the domain. Nonetheless, the article misses to pinpoint some very imperative limitations of the studio concept, I have outlined just few from my own experience.

meddlepal 6y ago
Define successful in your second paragraph? Are you only considering traditional VC unicorn-type startups successful or something else?
- inferense 6y ago
  Good question, I believe this would fit any innovative / product driven startup in general as opposed to a startup replicating an existing service / product (i.e web agency) Read this a while ago, before I observed the dichotomy myself. [1](https://a16z.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/ https://a16z.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/)
wslh 6y ago
> Most of the successful startups are based on a pure, authentic vision of a founder who is absolutely convinced about their vision for the future. This is true for the unicorn startup type: you don't create a Google, Facebook or Microsoft with a startup studio but there are many opportunities in other startup types. I would add the deep tech[1] concept that complements some of the weakness of the general startup studio. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_tech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_tech
tylermauthe 6y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head with the founder vision and passion being a key element which cannot be developed in a shop. Perhaps, rather than a studio, this is why we see incubators like YC; helping a ton of startups grow and finding funding for the best ideas. Maybe we will see a movement further down the chain: finding entrepreneurs or "proto-founders" - founders before they become founders - and coaching them on idea generation and developing their passions. I suppose an example of this was Thiel's scholarships and the various "founder schools" that we see. Innovation is hard to teach, but it's not impossible. Perhaps these trends will continue, and I wonder what we will call the organization format that this leads to. edit: formatting
naravara 6y ago
> Most of the successful startups are based on a pure, authentic vision of a founder who is absolutely convinced about their vision for the future. Is this that different from how film studios work? Many successful films are based on a pure, authentic vision of an auteur after all? I also don't know if your assertion is necessarily true either. I've been at a modestly successful startup and I have to say most of our early successes came from all the people around our Founder who pushed back against, and checked his more impetuous and self-destructive tendencies. I think the Founder story is, as often as not, an act of self-aggrandizing myth-making. In my company's case, our Founder's best skill was having a nose for talent, but his notions of how to build good software were wildly off-base. It is akin to the "Great Man" theory of history or even the auteurship theory around filmmaking that erases all the surrounding actors and the interplay of forces that drive the eventual outcome.
rtx 6y ago
They might be able to beat lifestyle startups.
kahuna_splicer 6y ago
I'd have to agree with this. It's difficult to imagine an Apple or Google coming out of a lab. At the end of the day, the vision needs to be held by one or two people who are capable of building a powerful product.

meddlepal 6y ago

Define successful in your second paragraph? Are you only considering traditional VC unicorn-type startups successful or something else?

inferense 6y ago
Good question, I believe this would fit any innovative / product driven startup in general as opposed to a startup replicating an existing service / product (i.e web agency) Read this a while ago, before I observed the dichotomy myself. [1](https://a16z.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/ https://a16z.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/)

wslh 6y ago

> Most of the successful startups are based on a pure, authentic vision of a founder who is absolutely convinced about their vision for the future. This is true for the unicorn startup type: you don't create a Google, Facebook or Microsoft with a startup studio but there are many opportunities in other startup types. I would add the deep tech[1] concept that complements some of the weakness of the general startup studio. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_tech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_tech

tylermauthe 6y ago

I think you've hit the nail on the head with the founder vision and passion being a key element which cannot be developed in a shop. Perhaps, rather than a studio, this is why we see incubators like YC; helping a ton of startups grow and finding funding for the best ideas. Maybe we will see a movement further down the chain: finding entrepreneurs or "proto-founders" - founders before they become founders - and coaching them on idea generation and developing their passions. I suppose an example of this was Thiel's scholarships and the various "founder schools" that we see. Innovation is hard to teach, but it's not impossible. Perhaps these trends will continue, and I wonder what we will call the organization format that this leads to. edit: formatting

naravara 6y ago

> Most of the successful startups are based on a pure, authentic vision of a founder who is absolutely convinced about their vision for the future. Is this that different from how film studios work? Many successful films are based on a pure, authentic vision of an auteur after all? I also don't know if your assertion is necessarily true either. I've been at a modestly successful startup and I have to say most of our early successes came from all the people around our Founder who pushed back against, and checked his more impetuous and self-destructive tendencies. I think the Founder story is, as often as not, an act of self-aggrandizing myth-making. In my company's case, our Founder's best skill was having a nose for talent, but his notions of how to build good software were wildly off-base. It is akin to the "Great Man" theory of history or even the auteurship theory around filmmaking that erases all the surrounding actors and the interplay of forces that drive the eventual outcome.

rtx 6y ago

They might be able to beat lifestyle startups.

kahuna_splicer 6y ago

I'd have to agree with this. It's difficult to imagine an Apple or Google coming out of a lab. At the end of the day, the vision needs to be held by one or two people who are capable of building a powerful product.