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I've been thinking about starting some kind of studio - not to work on other people's ideas [1], but to develop a few different concepts that I've been working

I've been thinking about starting some kind of studio - not to work on other people's ideas [1], but to develop a few different concepts that I've been working on for a few years, which are mostly proven (have very happy, paying customers) but now need dedicated teams for proper build-out and scale. The obvious response is that I should just pick the most promising one and focus on that, and put the others to one side. Reasons not to do that are: (1) all are quite important (addressing significant problems for important industries or consumer groups), but for different reasons, (2) I actually enjoy the working on different things - each has appeal for different reasons, (3) I'm an older founder with a family/mortgage, and see it as more prudent to spread my risk across a few different bets than go all in on one (which I've done before when I was younger), and (4) though the concepts are quite different in terms of industry/product functionality/technologies required, I can see some commonalities in the types of people that would be interested in working on these ideas (for the same reason that I like working on all of them), but also some differences in the fun-vs-importance/impact of each, and I feel like there's some advantage in being able to rotate team members from one project to another every few months, spending some time on the more fun things, and then some time on the more "important" projects - or whatever they prefer. But I'm still wrestling with the pros and cons of going this way vs just focusing on one thing. I'd be happy to hear thoughts from people as to whether this kind of thing could work, and what pros/cons I might not have considered. [1] Several years ago I worked as an employee for an agency/studio that did "we'll build your startup for you" kind of work (not for equity, just cash); we had some solid wins, but for the ones whose startups didn't work out it was hard to see all that money (usually founder savings) go to waste, and I would never want to do that again.

billybones 4y ago
I’ve done quite a bit of work in and around venture studios and without knowing who you are I’d suggest: -Do you think you can attract world class founders to work on them? Do you have the credibility to do so? (See the heuristics blank suggests in the OP link) -Can you provide sufficient capital in one of the worst environments for fundraising in recent memory? If the answer is yes to both of these, go for it! I think the failure mode for studios is “moderately successful person with moderate conviction in a bunch of ideas brings good-not-great people in to build them. Lot of motion, no progress” Whatever you do, it should be intense and excellent. If you feel like you can do that, the world needs a lot more good companies!
- tomhoward 4y ago
  Many thanks for this great answer. It hits on some of what I've been thinking over but raises other important considerations. Re your questions, the best answer is maybe - I'll only really know when I get more public about it, which I plan to do soon, but I have some promising signals. I'm well aware funding is a major issue at the moment, but some or maybe all the concepts are very relevant to "current things", and I'm happy to focus on what I can get funded in the short term and put the other concepts on the backburner till later. FWIW, I have a lot of conviction about all the ideas I have in mind - hence having already put a lot of time/money/learning into them over several years wanting to work on all of them rather than just one. I'd love to connect if you're interested to know more, share any more detailed input, perhaps be involved in some way. My email is in my bio and I can easily be found on LinkedIn, so feel free to get in touch.

billybones 4y ago

I’ve done quite a bit of work in and around venture studios and without knowing who you are I’d suggest: -Do you think you can attract world class founders to work on them? Do you have the credibility to do so? (See the heuristics blank suggests in the OP link) -Can you provide sufficient capital in one of the worst environments for fundraising in recent memory? If the answer is yes to both of these, go for it! I think the failure mode for studios is “moderately successful person with moderate conviction in a bunch of ideas brings good-not-great people in to build them. Lot of motion, no progress” Whatever you do, it should be intense and excellent. If you feel like you can do that, the world needs a lot more good companies!

tomhoward 4y ago
Many thanks for this great answer. It hits on some of what I've been thinking over but raises other important considerations. Re your questions, the best answer is maybe - I'll only really know when I get more public about it, which I plan to do soon, but I have some promising signals. I'm well aware funding is a major issue at the moment, but some or maybe all the concepts are very relevant to "current things", and I'm happy to focus on what I can get funded in the short term and put the other concepts on the backburner till later. FWIW, I have a lot of conviction about all the ideas I have in mind - hence having already put a lot of time/money/learning into them over several years wanting to work on all of them rather than just one. I'd love to connect if you're interested to know more, share any more detailed input, perhaps be involved in some way. My email is in my bio and I can easily be found on LinkedIn, so feel free to get in touch.