What is a Venture Studio? Some of you may already be familiar with the concept but seeing as the answer is foundational to what we do here at Exit Velocity, we want to explain how it can become your secret weapon for success.
A venture studio is a powerhouse that works alongside a number of startups and scaleups at the same time. Some venture studios start with ideas from within, essentially creating entirely new businesses. Others, like Exit Velocity, use expertise and experience to help existing founding teams to build, scale, and grow their companies into successful businesses.
There are a few key elements that differentiate a venture studio from other startup models like incubators or accelerators:
We’re in it for the long haul
As opposed to just being around in the infancy of a startup (incubator), or for a fixed period of time to help a business get to market (accelerator), a venture studio takes a hands on approach to each step of the startup lifecycle personally guiding their companies to success.
At Exit Velocity, we provide a wide range of support to our companies. Our long-term EVBuild™ program helps companies develop, launch, and scale their platform and products. For targeted assistance with building and executing sales and growth strategies there is EVGrowth™, and when you need to raise capital to fund your ideas and growth, there is EVCapital™. At all stages we work tirelessly alongside the founders to ensure the businesses ability to grow, scale, thrive, and ultimately exit.
We share the risk
Starting a business from scratch is a risky endeavor, and while it doesn’t help to focus on the negative, startups still have an average failure rate of about 90%. The upside of working with a venture studio is they share that risk while providing years of experience to help each business avoid the common mistakes made by many.
With Exit Velocity, instead of hemorrhaging money bringing on short term and expensive skills, our venture studio companies benefit from highly experienced partners who work side by side with the management team to help shoulder the burden of growing the business.
We provide personalized support
Unlike the typical cookie cutter fashion of accelerators, a venture studio provides more high-touch, personalized support to the companies they work with. Our team has more than 50 years combined experience as startup founders, angel investors, and corporate executives. We become interim members of the startup’s executive team, customizing the type of support provided based on the needs of each business. Instead of being one of many in a cohort, founders get one-to-one service from our passionate, and motivated team.
So now you get what a venture studio is and what sets it apart, let’s dive into who can benefit from working with Exit Velocity.
If you’re an investor, the answer is simple. A venture studio does all of the heavy lifting so you don’t have to. We get startups ready for investment by putting solid business fundamentals in place including their Go To Market strategy, product roadmap and a sales and growth plan. We help develop a scalable business model while showing them how to achieve Product Market Fit. When we present our companies to investors, they are fully vetted, prepared, and ready to scale. We de-risk your investment opportunity.
If you’re a founder, a venture studio will help take on some of the responsibilities needed to build your business, by providing a unique breadth of experience you wouldn’t find elsewhere. Founders who try to go it alone will spend an inordinate amount of time making mistakes during a period where cash flow is critical and every day counts. Plus raising capital can be an extremely distracting full-time job.
At Exit Velocity, we bring the experience and knowledge of having previously built and sold multiple companies. We quickly identify the pain points for our founding teams. From raising capital, and growing the sales organization, to acting as your CPO, or helping with hiring, we put in the hard work to support you in running your business.
If you’re an investor or founder who’s interested in seeing if Exit Velocity is a good fit for your business, please get in touch.