How to Build a Venture Studio: From the Unlearn Podcast

Ben Yoskovitz, Founding Partner at Highline Beta, joined Barry O'Reilly on the Unlearn Podcast to discuss venture studios.

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It’s a wide ranging conversation about venture studios, including corporate venture studios and other models for systematically building and funding startups.

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Key Highlights:

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  • Trend Towards More Startups: You always learn the most from failure. Over time you learn to focus on building things people want. Venture studios are a great vehicle for building a portfolio of ventures, increasing the frequency and volume of learning. 
  • Understanding the Inflection Points: When you start to see the same challenges over and over, you realize these are inflection points, opportunities to improve a process or system significantly. Big companies often struggle to work with entrepreneurial talent and founders that are building new businesses; ultimately they’re not speaking the same language. This was one of the inflection points in Highline Beta’s journey to finding a better way to create new companies through the venture studio model.
  • Scaling a Venture Studio: Venture studios are compelling but challenging businesses to build. You have to figure out the business model, people / talent management, systems for building ventures, fundraising and much more. As Ben notes, “Studios are meant to create shortcuts for founders. Not in a bad way, but give me the shortcut tools to validate faster, get to market faster, raise capital faster, recruit a team faster." 
  • Specialization in Venture Studios: The trend is moving to vertical venture studios that specialize in specific industries or markets. 

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