February 19, 2025
[Full Podcast transcript at end of page]
As founding partners of Highline Beta, we have spent countless hours with venture studio leaders, learning what works and what doesn't in the industry. Recently, we had a fascinating conversation with Kal Amin, who's doing remarkable things as Managing Director of 1848 Ventures.
In just seven months at the helm, Kal has already transformed their approach. They're planning to launch three new ventures in 2025 alone, matching what they accomplished in their first six years. Our chat with him revealed some powerful insights about scaling a corporate venture studio that we think are worth sharing.
Here are seven key lessons from his experience:
1848 Ventures, backed by Westfield Insurance, demonstrates the power of maintaining a consistent focus. While they could have pursued insurance-related products, they instead chose to concentrate on B2B solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. This clarity of purpose has remained unchanged since the studio's inception, providing a strong foundation for decision-making and growth.
As Amin emphasized, you can conduct research indefinitely, but real insights come from getting products into the market and in front of customers. 1848 Ventures maintains a structured process while remaining flexible enough to adapt based on market feedback. This balance between methodology and agility is crucial for success.
Unlike many venture-backed startups, corporate venture studios should focus on building sustainable businesses. 1848 Ventures sets clear expectations for their ventures to generate revenue early and achieve profitability within five to seven years. This approach helps maintain corporate support and demonstrates the studio's value to stakeholders.
Success requires people who are focused on building new businesses rather than using the studio as a stepping stone for corporate advancement. 1848 Ventures operates independently from its parent company, allowing team members to fully commit to the venture-building mission without concerning themselves with corporate politics or career paths within the larger organization.
1848 Ventures uses a scorecard methodology to evaluate ventures, considering factors like market size, customer demand, and willingness to pay. They've raised the bar for customer validation, requiring more proof points before moving ventures forward. This approach helps ensure resources are allocated to the most promising opportunities.
The studio model inherently involves risk, and not every venture will succeed. What matters is failing fast, learning from mistakes, and applying those insights to future ventures. 1848 Ventures creates an environment where failure is accepted as part of the journey, provided it leads to valuable learning that improves the studio's overall success rate.
1848 Ventures has doubled its engineering team in seven months and is expanding its go-to-market capabilities. They're also exploring how AI can enhance their venture-building process, from idea generation to prototype development. These investments in foundational capabilities help the studio launch more ventures more quickly.
The success of 1848 Ventures demonstrates the effectiveness of these principles. Their experience shows that corporate venture studios can be powerful engines of innovation and value creation when structured and operated thoughtfully. The key is maintaining strategic clarity while building strong operational capabilities and fostering an entrepreneurial culture that balances structure with flexibility.
Want to dive deeper into Kal's insights on building successful ventures? Our full conversation covers everything from their unique AI-first strategy to practical tips on when to bring in venture leaders.
Ben Yoskovitz 00:00
If you were providing advice to another company and they were looking at starting a corporate venture studio, what would be your piece of advice that you would give that corporate
Kal Amin 00:10
I want to break down a few areas I think are important. Number one, have a very clear mandate. You know, in everything that's changed within 1848 ventures, the mandate has stayed consistent since the beginning of 1840 adventure. So to me, the mandate is really important. I think that's clear. I think experimentation is also key. You're not gonna get it right the first time around. So have the flexibility, have the ability to experiment again, learn from those experiments quickly and adapt. I think that's an important part of the journey that we're on. Always Be Shipping, right? I mean, it's easy to say, but like at these early stages, I don't care if you're building your own individual startup or you're with an adventure studio model, you have to ship product. The more you ship, the more you will learn, the more you will learn, the better you will build companies. Last thing I would also say is that AI is fundamentally reshaping how businesses are built, right? So within the venture studio model, we are in a prime position to capitalize on that. So don't be afraid of what's coming. Embrace it. It may be messy, it may be challenging, it may be a whole new unknown. But embrace the change, and as the more you embrace it, I think the better the outcomes will be for you and your venture studio.
Ben Yoskovitz 01:27
Cal, thank you for being here. We're thrilled to have you talk to us about 1848 ventures and venture studios in general. I know you and I met a few months ago, and you had just joined 1848 as managing director. Now, Marcus and I were familiar with 1848 ventures before, because we had actually been working with the group on a couple of different ventures and operating models and different systems. And I have to say that 1848 Ventures is a fascinating venture studio. I really sort of was blown away at the time with with the model and remain, you know, super fascinated by it, which I know, I know we're gonna get into. But for one, you guys are backed by Westfield insurance, which is a large insurance company, but you don't actually have a mandate to build insurance related products. So I think the strategy behind that is, is super interesting, but you are specialized in a way, so you're doing b to b small business, building businesses for small business entities, leveraging AI in specific verticals. And we'll talk about that a little bit more as well. And I will say this, whenever people ask me what venture studios are out there that are interesting, doing cool things, I actually always genuinely say 1848 ventures because you're shipping companies, which sounds like it should be obvious, because that's the job of a venture studio, but it's not that easy to do, and you guys are actually doing it. So with that, I'd like to dig in right away. And first, I mean, you've only been there for eight, nine months, so What convinced you to join 1848 ventures as managing director.
Kal Amin 03:03
Yeah, that's great. Well, first and foremost, great to see you both again, Ben and Marcus look so I've actually been here about seven months, so still relatively early in the in the journey. And you're right, there's a lot of uniqueness to what we do at 1848 ventures, and I'm happy to dig into that today, but what really drew him here? So, you know kind of happened, I won't say by like chance. I'll call it serendipity. One of my investors in my previous startup was in the podcasting and audio space. Was a, you know, an advisor to 1848 ventures. And as I was exiting my previous startup after acquisition. You know, he had reached out and said, Hey, look, I think there's an opportunity here where I think a lot of what you've done in your career, I've been in the technology space for about 25 years, worked in some of the early stage companies, which turned out to be really large companies, have to dig into that, as you'd like, but really, you know, it's a great blend of my experience operating, growing and scaling companies with venture capital and within this venture studio model, it gives me a chance to really kind of flex a lot of what I've done over the course of my 25 years. But also it's a learning journey as well, the opportunity to really learn about venture learn about a venture studio model, and where I can apply a lot of what I've done and really bring that into the fold with what the team has done over the last six years.
Marcus Daniels 04:26
Yeah, and Kyle, I'll just add, I mean, Ben, and I would look at you being the triple threat. I mean, like you dimensioned. You had this great experience, you know, in corporate sides already, with Google Spotify. You've done your own startup before, but I wouldn't underestimate the power of the investor lens as well, which you brought, and you've been an active investor in the ecosystem for a long time. Out of those three elements, what do you think so far in the first seven months has really been additive to your new role?
Kal Amin 04:54
Yeah, it's great question. You know, I think where we've spent the last seven months, and we just actually came off of an off site, not too. Long ago, beginning of the year, it's really been about like reimagining what 1848 ventures can do as a venture studio, right? And over the course of the first six years of the studio, we've launched three ventures. We're gonna launch three this year, right? So we're gonna double up in 2025 what we've done over the first six years of the studio, and I kind of see it as an evolution, right? The team has spent in the early days establishing the venture studio model, really focusing on research, identifying the thesis, and really kind of curating what is now we believe the right opportunity for 1848 ventures. And I think, as Ben already alluded to, we are focused on really that small to medium sized business market where we are building AI powered solutions that support the growth of what we believe to be a really important part of the US economy, 44% of us, GDP, 70% of job creation. And not only is it really supporting the economy, it's also a really important part of the communities that these SMB serve. So we think it's really important to really, kind of create a clear understanding of where we're going after and what I've been able to do is really help support, like, really, like reimagining the operations in the first seven months. So this idea of moving with velocity and speed and launching high quality ventures that can scale independently is where we've spent most of our time. No,
Marcus Daniels 06:19
that's fantastic.
Ben Yoskovitz 06:20
Yeah, look, Cal, let me ask you this, you know, on the point of focusing on small business as a market, and and Westfield being an insurance company, and I know you, again, you've only been there for seven months, so you weren't there when this venture studio was created to start with. But how does this fit in strategically with everything that Westfield is doing, or maybe doing, you know, how do you at the end of the day, what does winning look like for the studio and Westfield on a whole?
Kal Amin 06:49
Yeah, great question. Yeah. Look, I think I'll start off by saying that the Westfield team has been nothing but supportive of the journey, you know, throughout, I think, the first six years, but also including the last seven months that I've been here, we've fully been empowered to really drive decisioning for the types of startups or ventures that we launch. You know, there is no real decision making in terms of the types of ventures that we launch within the Westfield organization that really sits with us. We do have, you know, what I'll call like a board that we work through, work with when it comes to investment, when it comes to funding, and we do, obviously, a quarterly kind of review of everything that the 1848 team is up to. I think there's two components to this. Number one, there is a strong focus on small to medium sized businesses within Westfield, and there's a strong focus on small to medium sized businesses at 1848 our number one priority at 1848 is to launch startups or ventures that support the small to medium sized business community, that can be independent, can be profitable and scalable, and if we do that again at scale, what that does is it provides another extension of customer conversations With the Westfield team. If you think about Westfield and insurance in general, it's really in this transfer of risk. And how do we help create a deeper relationship with small to medium sized customers across both our relationships as well as with the Westfield relationship? Could you double click a little bit on the venture board? Or just how big is that board? How are decisions made? Yeah, it's, it's relatively small. And for those who've, you know, had boards, you know, small boards are better than big boards, in my opinion, a little bit faster. The board is made up of, really, and it's, it's, I call it a board. It's really like an advisory group or a committee. We meet with that team on a quarterly basis at a minimum, where we review the progress of 1848, ventures, where we see opportunity really, kind of outlining our strategy and the direction we're taking with the organization. And I think that's been, it's been a really healthy relationship and very supportive. And I think we've been really able to create a mechanism where we can make decisions pretty quickly. And
Ben Yoskovitz 08:57
I know we work with a number of companies that, of course, have venture studios, but also other things. So they're doing internal innovation, for example. And some of that might be, you know, incremental, of course, but some of it might be a little bit further out that could intercept or bump into the studio model. A number of the companies we work with have CBCs, corporate venture capital groups, yeah. So, you know, for Westfield or for 1848 How do you think about, I think of it like other tools in the toolbox. You could build stuff, which is what you guys are doing today. You could buy stuff. You could partner with startups. You could spin things out. So how do you think about the tools in the toolbox around the other things you could be doing that could be maybe competitive to a studio model or a creative
Kal Amin 09:46
Well, I think it all starts with what I've said to the team in the short time that I've been here, is that we need to be successful with our core. And our core, at the moment, is really launching ventures through the studio model. Again. And why we're really betting on this idea of velocity creating quality Ventures is that allows us to then open up the aperture, potentially, maybe later this year or in the future, where we are thinking about, you know, potentially even looking at investment into other, you know, startups, looking at entrepreneurs, and bringing them to really kind of focus on their ideas. But it all starts with our core model, which is the venture studio model. We've invested a lot of time, energy and resource to build out this team, and we have, you know, over the course of six years, done a tremendous amount of research, we have a real strong focus on key verticals within the small to medium sized business community. And with that success, we do believe that there's a larger opportunity, right? But ultimately it has to tie back to our mandate, and that mandate is focused on small to medium sized businesses, which I consider to be not only an opportunity, but an obligation, given where the market is today, but also again, back to AI powered solutions that can really help us deepen those relationships with customers, both within 1848 as well as with
Marcus Daniels 10:57
Westfield, you've done a great A great job in acquiring and I think retaining talent. I'm curious a bit about the blend between external and internal talent. What's your viewpoint being in seven months in and just looking at that as a priority
Kal Amin 11:12
as well? Yeah, I hope it's okay to curse on this call, but we have the kick ass team.
Ben Yoskovitz 11:16
Oh, that's not actually. We never established whether it's okay to curse or not, but I don't even consider that earthing, by the way. Yeah, that's something much, much
Kal Amin 11:27
more fancy 17 podcast about our video cast, or it's PG 13, but it's corporate cursing. I like it. Yes, that our team is a kick ass team. And, you know, we just came, as I mentioned, we just had a our kickoff offset in January, down in Charleston, South Carolina, where we reestablish, know who we are, what we do, where we focus down to the brand that we've now. We've rebranded 1840 adventures as well. I saw that, yeah, and I think the team is very engaged. You know, we've brought a set of operating principles, where we are operating with what I call urgency with purpose. The only real constant is change. It's really learning by doing, and the team really represents all those values. And we're asking one more question. We're making sure we understand why we're going after a specific customer segment or a vertical. We're building products and services that we believe can really scale for those customers that we serve. So we've done a good job of really, not only retaining strong talent, but over the course of last seven months, also have, you know, supported or complemented that talent or that team with new individuals have joined as well. So it's been, it's been a combination of both, and I think that's healthy, right? Like having folks who've been here for a while, have the institutional knowledge, the experience can help us really navigate what's been built, but also bringing in new experiences that allow us to grow and upskill what we're trying to do across the organization and
Ben Yoskovitz 12:53
where in your process. Cal, you know, because, again, I use the word operating model, and you guys have a methodology for validating stuff, and you've already said a couple of times, spent a lot of time on research now trying to move into this execution phase three companies this year, which is significantly more than in the past, which is amazing, when in the process, do you look to bring in the operator for an actual business? So, you know, we could, we could spend hours just going through the whole methodology. But, you know, as you're validating something, when do you make that decision of, okay, this is a go. We're going to go build this business. And when do you bring in that CEO, founder, operator, to take it over and have their own team to execute?
Kal Amin 13:39
Yeah, it's, it's, again, a great question. And here's what I would say, it's like we it's all about experimentation, and we're not really rigid in that approach. Think historically, there has been a model of get it to a certain stage and then bring on that leader. We've also seen within our organization, where, for one of our ventures, take up.ai which is in the travel and hospitality space, part of the incubation team, or what we call our innovation engine, individuals from that team moved into the venture itself, and we've seen a lot of success there. So we actually look at our case by case basis at this point, if there's an opportunity where we have a strong leader who we believe can kind of, you know, come out of the innovation engine and go run the studio, or from the startup, we will bring them into that startup, but we're looking earlier and earlier to be honest. Yeah, I think that's the right way. And I my belief is, and I had observation which we're now kind of taking action against when I first arrived. And I think there's this pitfall of like product and engineering versus like industry expertise and go to market. I'm a big believer that industry expertise and go to market is probably more important at this stage than finding the best product person. Dare I say, given the world we live in now that product and engineering in some cases can be a commodity. Right? You know, we are certainly looking for the best engineers. We're still looking for the best product people, and we have many of them in our organization, so I'm not discrediting any of them, just to be clear, but we do believe that finding that leader who is has an industry understanding can cut through the red tape, understands the underlying dynamics of the specific vertical, and then understands how to really build a go to market strategy is critical. And the earlier you can do that, the better it will be for the venture. Is our belief, right? I like I like that a lot. I was just going to say, I've always been a proponent of bring the operator, Founder, CEO, whatever you want to call that person, bring them in earlier, into the into the journey, not, you know, post MVP, bring them in. Help them craft it. They understand the space. And we can, we could debate product a lot, I think. But yeah, at the end
Marcus Daniels 15:53
of the day you have a little bias. Then you can say it
Ben Yoskovitz 15:56
a little bias, but, but I was gonna say to me, can we build it? Is not the big is not. The real question is, can we sell it and scale it? Is really the biggest unknown. And I think a lot of studios I see get caught maybe in the process, the whole process of validation and research and bit that whole methodology, they try to systematize it to a point where it gets, you know, I'm just following tasks on a task list, and I it sounds to me, Cal, like you're you got in here and said, We just, we got to launch companies, and maybe we can be a little bit more flexible on methodology. Maybe we hire the CEO really early. Maybe it's really late. Maybe we build less. Maybe it sounds to me like you're trying to modify and loosen up the methodology and not getting caught in those
Kal Amin 16:48
weeds. Yeah, like we have, there's a standard template for how we operate. So there is a process, there is a structure. But I'm a big believer in like, learning by doing, right? And I think you can sit in a room and do research all day. You can do jobs to be done, type of work, you know. So you're blue in the face, unless you're in market with an MVP talking to a customer, understanding their needs, I'm not sure if you're going to be successful. So yes, we do have a process, you know. Credit again, to the innovation engine team. We have refined that process even further, where we are getting ideas faster, right, getting through prototyping and validation faster, and looking at opportunities to bring, you know, these ventures into market that much quicker. So it is, it is definitely a structured process. So it is repeatable, it is scalable, and it's something that every single individual within the team can use. But it doesn't have to be rigid. It has to be flexible enough based on what we learn, how quickly we want to pivot, and what decisions we want to make based on the information we're collecting from customers. So that's another one of our operating principles, or two of them are really around, like this idea of learning by doing and also of putting the customer first right, which not that it hasn't been a focus for us. We've kind of doubled down on that over the last seven months.
Marcus Daniels 18:03
Clearly, clearly, operating model is working well if you're scaling up to three ventures now. So I think portfolio construction is becoming maybe a bigger piece of your time and what you're thinking about putting on that investor lens. I'd love to learn a bit more of how you're thinking about that from blending in your past experience as being a, you know, a startup investor, but also understanding the corporate context.
Kal Amin 18:24
Yeah. So look, I think a couple things we we will, you know, if doubling, doubling the size of the portfolio is no small feat, so that's a really important part of what we want to do. Here's the mix. I think we still look at, you know, one of the things we say internally is we're not creating solutions to find a problem, right? We are really going deep to understand where, what problems we can solve, given the team, given the focus and the mandate, as we've talked about, but also what's available to us from a technology standpoint. So as we think about the portfolio for this year, it's it's a combination of multiple industries. I also think that in addition to like vertical focus, that horrors like horizontal opportunities, they're starting to present themselves so cutting across multiple industries, and when we think about small to medium sized businesses, one of the areas that I'm really focused on is this understanding of the profile of that SMB owner, right? And when we look at the SMB owner, what we've learned, and some of the insights we've picked up over the last seven months, is that, in addition to, you know, large part of our GDP and job creation, it's an aging population, right? So you're seeing that over 50% of SMB earners are over 55 plus. And we believe that there's a new entrepreneur coming in. There is a younger entrepreneur who is digitally savvy, very AI, curious. Some of them are skipping corporate altogether. Others are corporate refugees, as we like to call them. And there's an opportunity here where, well, we can build products and services for these types of entrepreneurs. Well, also. Supporting the existing owners, because they want technology. They want the technology to do the work for them. And we think that we've kind of hit this perfect time where we have an opportunity again to create companies that support these entrepreneurs and help them scale up faster, be more productive, be more efficient, and ultimately be more profitable, because that's the name of the game when you're talking about these small to medium sized businesses.
Marcus Daniels 20:24
Yeah, from our experience, one of the biggest challenges we see getting into kind of year two and portfolio construction is, when are you going to have those all the other moments where you're really putting down a venture that's beloved to the to the innovation team, and how did, how does talent get recycled? And, you know, picks up all these other, you know, psychological and also real operational challenges within the group itself. So I'd love to get, we'd love to get a perspective of just how you would approach some of these challenges, because when you're going fast and you're going beyond the core even faster now, so yeah, well, one of the things that I've said to the team is like, we do need to make decisions faster, right? And I think
Kal Amin 21:03
it will, in my opinion, a bad decision is better than no decision, given some of the kind of stages we're at. And ultimately, you know, we have created back to our process. One of the things that we've implemented is what we call a scorecard. We have, like, a scorecard methodology where we like rank against like, market size, market opportunity, you know, is this, is this a product that the customer really wants? Is this a product the customer will actually pay for, even if they want it all the way down? Is it actually, you know, gaining the market traction? But we have an opportunity here, and I think we have made some decisions along the way where we've killed some things pretty early in the venture loop process. We're also seeing success. So as you think about portfolio construction, one of our ventures, we're excited to see the next stage from seed into series A and that we think that's an opportunity in 25 but as new ventures come up, we've made it a core focus that we have a small investment committee within our own organization, even before it gets into the larger board conversation, where, if it's not working, we will, we will kill it off. And that's just the reality. We need to move fast. You know, we have a capital envelope that we work in, and we want to make sure we're leveraging those funds for the most important opportunities that we have.
Ben Yoskovitz 22:16
What do you think the funnel looks like? Cal, if you, if you could say 2025 you launched three businesses. How many ideas, how many things you test? Again? I know we can't go through the whole journey, but if you, if you had to imagine sort of you know, how many of these things are going to be killed along the way to get to the three that you get to market and launch with, which doesn't guarantee success, but at least they're out there and live. What do you think that funnel looks like? Percentage wise or stage wise?
Kal Amin 22:45
I'll tell you. We so over the last seven months, let's say we had about 100 ideas in the initial, initial idea generation bucket. We brought it down to a top 10, and of those 10, we have about three that we believe are viable. So that's the model for this year. We're hoping we have even more ideas in the idea bucket at the early, early stages. But look, our goal here is to, like, as I mentioned, to launch three this year and then consistently launch a minimum of two moving forward. So given some of those, given what I just shared with you, I think like we found that sweet spot. I'm not sure if we need 1000s of ideas just yet, but look, I think, with with AI, and some of the, you know, some of the things we can now do with technology, can we do more research? Can we do more validation? Can we do more prototyping that, you know, supports the work that our team is already doing to potentially launch more so we're investigating that. We're looking into it at the moment, and we think that there could be, again, another viable path to create or complement the venture process that we've created today.
Ben Yoskovitz 23:47
Got it? And you mentioned, so you've mentioned the innovation engine and the innovation engine team a couple of times. Can you? Can you just share with us how the team is roughly structured? I believe that team is the team that's doing that ideation and that research, taking things to a certain point, and then it goes into, okay, we're going and building this, and that's a different team. Again, you pointed out some folks might be the right fit to move along with it, but just how is the team structured overall?
Kal Amin 24:16
Yeah, so the composition that team is, there's there are individuals who focus on research. We've hired a pretty substantial engineering team within that organization over the last seven months. We have data scientists who sit within that organization, and then we've got, you know, what we call venture leaders, or, sorry, venture builders, venture builder product, venture builder technical. Some of those are the data scientists that I mentioned, and we're looking at like go to market as another opportunity, as I mentioned. So right now, it's primarily research engineering and these venture builder type roles that we've we've created,
Ben Yoskovitz 24:52
and that's in the innovation engine team. So those data scientists and engineers, they'd be building prototypes, maybe even MVP. Right before they're even testing it in market, right? So they're, they're launching these things in market, testing at first, before you say there's a there, there, then you would go and formalize a venture team for a specific venture. Is that, is that the handoff?
Kal Amin 25:15
That's right? Yeah. So the that venture builder team, plus the engineering team will everything from market research, customer conversations, building out the working with engineering, build out the prototypes, all the way to the MVP. But along the way, we're having customer conversations almost daily at this point. And at some point, when we feel like we've gotten to a stage where this can be a pre seed venture. It starts to make its way out of the innovation engine as a standalone company.
Marcus Daniels 25:45
Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, you're leveraging AI and you described, and that's big focus of ventures you're building right now. How do you think that is going to supercharge, how you get things through the funnel faster, like, what's your how you're dissipating that?
Kal Amin 25:57
It's a great question. So one of the things that I believe is that no matter how many humans we would hire, we would not be able to process the amount of data, analyze it, synthesize it as much as AI and like an agentic system could do. So we believe that's one area. You know, starting with early code for prototyping can be done through agentic systems today. So we think that's another opportunity. There's a lot of open questions around idea generation. We still believe that is the creativity is still like a human element to that. That's where we lean in, and then all the way through, like, you know, like our score carding methodology, like we've done it, what I'll call manually today. But how do we actually implement that into a system allows us to understand the viability, the quality, and potentially even the scalability of a venture through through an AI system, right? So it's not about reducing the number of people we have in the organization. It's about how do we potentially double the amount of ventures that we can create based on the fact that we now have technology that can help us again, be more productive, be more efficient, and automate some of the things that have been historically manual, which
Marcus Daniels 27:04
I think also leads well to how you're also creating more value as an entity, as an organization, just thinking about how you leverage AI and the the enterprise value creation of these new ventures, right? We see in the startup ecosystem all these AI startup for raising at high valuations and equating things that you're putting through your operating model and launching what that value is, does that come up at all at the board level?
Kal Amin 27:28
It does. And, you know, we back to, like solving problems rather than creating complex solutions and finding your problem. Again, it's all about really solving a problem for the small to medium sized business community. And it does come up, it's, we've put an emphasis this year, what I call an AI first strategy, right? So we believe that, similar to what we've seen historically, where in the early days of the Internet, there was this, you know, unlimited access to information, that we went through this like mobile first, was supposed to be the year of mobile, but ended up being like the decade of mobile. There was like cloud first, and now we're in this AI first kind of era, and we think this is gonna be very transformative, right? It is going to be a very different way of working. And the thing that we also like to say in terms like, it's not that AI is gonna take your job, it's if you those folks who know how to use AI, they will be the ones who will be successful in this next generation. So that is where we were leaning in, and we think that allows us, again, not only to build new processes within the venture studio, but also as we're building companies to support small to medium sized businesses. It's really important to you know what we call eating our own dog food, right? So understanding the technology, being able to understand how it can be harnessed by these small to medium sized businesses. How do we make it easy, intuitive to use, but also easy to implement? So that is a big focus for us. It's still early days for all of us, so we're all learning along the way, and what we we know today is going to be very different even, you know, a month from now, let alone, like the rest of 2025 Yeah,
Marcus Daniels 28:59
totally. It creates a pathway to co create with some of these SMBs on the outside too, which I think also it's a logical evolution. As you get more beyond the core,
Ben Yoskovitz 29:06
it's changing so fast. I mean, I've been playing with lovable, I don't know if you've tried it, lovable dot Dev, and I've been using another tool called relevance. These are not promos for these, these organizations. It's just tools. I'm using relevance. AI for building agents. It's pretty scrappy. Still, it's pretty scrappy. But and idea generation, I'm with you. I think AI for idea generation is we've tried it, we're trying it, we're using it at Highline beta. It's okay. I think for automating scorecards, that's an interesting one. I hadn't really thought about that because we implement and work with scorecards with a whole bunch of partners, that's sort of an interesting one of can you pull a bunch of data together as we think about stage gates through a process, and automate some of that, maybe take out some of the human element, which is, well, I worked for six months on this venture, so I'm going to put my vote in. For this one versus the one Marcus worked on. You know that that sort of thing is, is interesting when you mentioned pre seed and scorecard. So you sort of said, when a venture gets out of the innovation engine, you think of it as the pre seed level. So what has to be absolutely true with that scorecard for you to say? Because, again, we could debate, maybe, maybe we agree. I don't know. But even what pre seed is, if you think about it as an investor, but what has to be absolutely true for you at that place to be like, let's go and move this to that. It's at a pre seed stage.
Kal Amin 30:35
Yeah, look again. Great question. We we are trying again to be a little bit more flexible here, so we're not being rigid. I mean, there's obviously a scoring component to the scorecard. That's why it's called a scorecard. But again, understanding again, the product market fit is there, is there a set of initial customers that have signed on for the product? We've got to increase that number from where we were historically. So I think we need more customers than less customers. You set a higher bar. That's right, definitely setting a higher bar. Why not? Yeah, for us, I think, look, you know, we've been we look at both like, you know, direct product growth or direct sales growth, versus like product led growth. I'm a big believer in product led growth. So is there a product led growth opportunity or the type of venture that we're building. Does it solve a customer's pain point that is, like, I think, the core of it, and can we find the customers who will want to pay for that product? You know, you'll talk to hundreds or 1000s of customers, and yes, many people will have a specific pain point, but unless they're truly willing to pay for it, you know, it's, it could be a great product if we can't really grow a business, that's probably not something we would invest
Ben Yoskovitz 31:45
in, right? And you would use paying at that stage as a as the indicator of value. I, to me, this part is always so fascinating, you know, like, is it solving a real problem? And it's like, they tell me it is. So is paying the key for you to say, look, they're paying for it.
Marcus Daniels 32:04
That tells me it's always fuzzy.
Kal Amin 32:05
Yeah, it's fuzzy. I one of the things that I said when I first got to 1848 ventures and shared with the team is that not only are we going to focus on building quality ventures, they have to be revenue generating, and they have to be profitable. And I think in the world we live in today, yeah, I think revenue is critical, and customers are critical early on, can we continue to, like, you know, pivot from the initial product idea? Sure. But I think understanding, if there are a set of customers who are willing to pay for a product, I think, is a pretty important, you know, stat right? In the areas we're not we're not building consumer products, right? We're not building a social platform, we're not building a music platform. We are building products that serve customers to make their lives easier, and if they're willing to pay for that, then I think that's a pretty good signal that we should be focused on that
Marcus Daniels 33:00
product. What sort of timeline are you looking for, really, to get the profitability? Because obviously there's that balance between growing, getting revenue traction, go to profitability. I know the CFO, they see these high burn rates with most ventures, and they can certainly appreciate your leadership there. Cal,
Kal Amin 33:15
yeah, I would love, I would love to understand how you think about that as well. But from our perspective, it's certainly not in the first few years. But you know, we think that within a college five to seven year period, where, where would we be, from a financial perspective? And I think as we see, if we see the right trend moving towards profitability or being cash flow positive, obviously that's a good signal for us. So if we're hyper scaling a specific product, and we think that they just needs to, it needs to, it needs more funding. We will do that. But given our mandate, given our focus, I think it's probably, you know, that COVID five to seven year
Marcus Daniels 33:49
period. Yeah, that makes, that makes complete sense, from what we've seen typically within one of the challenges is, how long does the operating group? Can it last five to seven years? Right? Usually these groups get funded, like, three years. And so you have to have enough momentum, some of those early wins, I think, become pretty critical the studio itself. You mean, Marcus, like the studio itself, itself, exactly, yeah, yeah. Legal studio doesn't last long enough for the ventures to materialize and generate enough scale to take the wins.
Kal Amin 34:17
Yeah. Well, that's, that's one of the beauties of, you know, our model, while we are a corporate venture studio, that's what we started the conversation where there isn't a lot of like, you know, decisioning or mandates coming from our corporate investor, but the consistency that we've had, the ability to stay focused on the mandate and serving small to medium sized customers, yeah, it's given us, I think it's a competitive advantage for us, is the way I think about when I think about it, you know, I'm not out there raising capital. We know what we have in terms of the capital envelope to work with, but we have the assurance, and we have the confidence in our investor that we're focused on the right opportunities. And I think given what we are aiming to do in 2025 it only builds more into that confidence. And. Yeah, but going back to the point that you raised earlier, Marcus, if we don't see something working well, well, we won't, we won't fund it fully at the beginning of a venture, right? We will fund it along the way. If it's not working, it's, it's our job to make sure that we make that decision and have, we have that fiduciary responsibility that if it's not really meeting up to the standard of what we believe, then we're going to kill that venture.
Marcus Daniels 35:19
And that's the hardest thing that you know, Ben and I have seen over the last 10 years, you know, doing this, it's been the ability to basically have that orieller moment, the ability to actually, you know, recycle the talent and capital and actually get the learnings and re populate those learnings to the new venture building activities, opposed to just holding on to dear life with some of these companies. Well,
Kal Amin 35:41
I think this is, and I would love your opinion on this. Like, one of the things that I think about is, how do we create a learning environment within 1848 ventures? So we learn from success, but we learn just as much from failure, right? And if we can take those learnings, apply them into the work that we do moving forward, so we're not making the same maybe mistakes, or kind of going through the same pitfalls. I think that's a win. Like part of this journey for all of us in venture and venture studios, is that you are going to fail. It is, it is naturally risky, right? So how do you capture that risk? How do you understand that risk? How do you learn from that risk and then apply it to the work that you do? So it's not something that happens over and over again. You're learning new things along the way. So for us, by creating that learning environment, celebrating failure as much as we celebrate success, is an important part of the type of environment and culture that we're building within 1848 ventures.
Ben Yoskovitz 36:38
Yeah, it's such a tough one that the celebrated failure. In particular for me, I think really part of this comes down to the actually, it all comes down to the people you have inside the studio. So in your case, inside of 1848 I've seen folks come into studios, corporate venture studios. They see it as a pathway to level up within the organization, shiny toy. I'll do my two years here. I can't fail because that would be terrible, because I'm not going to go get the director, or the senior director or the VP job, and then I'll go back to the core, having built some, you know, successful business. And those folks can't do failure, right? Because they can't. If they fail, then it just looks like they they failed, they shit the bed, and that won't that won't work. But if it's people who believe in the studio model, and they've kind of like burned the ships, I'm not doing this to level up within the org and then go back into the org, well, then failure is just part of building companies. And as long as it's not a competence issue, it's a we learned and it didn't work, and then we can celebrate that, and that person might even level up inside of a studio as a result of that failure, as opposed to, you know, trying to go back into the into the mothership. So to me, it's about the team, because celebrating failure is, I think is borderline impossible. Yeah,
Marcus Daniels 38:03
I was gonna say this about the team then, but I think it also begs the differ of looking at what is the organizational structure again, right? The fact that the entity is separate, and who are you employed by, I think really matters, because you don't have to burn the boats or the or knock down the bridge if you're ready. Your only employment is the actual studio.
Ben Yoskovitz 38:23
There's nowhere to go. No, there's, that's my point. There is nowhere to go, right? So if there's nowhere to go, you're not doing this as a way of just getting attention from senior folks within the org. You're doing it to legitimately build new businesses, which, by its very nature, will have
Kal Amin 38:37
failure built into the model. Yeah. And that's, that is exactly the approach that we take. I didn't come from the insurance side of our business. I was hired in really better help build out what we are now doing at 1848 ventures, and again, back to velocity, quality and scalability. That is what we're focused on. But look, I've worked, you know? I've had the opportunity, and I've been very fortunate to work at companies where we had celebrated failure, right? I mean, if you look at Google, how many products all follow the products that are successful in market. There's probably double the amount that are not successful, right? Even at Spotify, when I was there, there are products that have been successful and things that we shut down. I remember that. I think it was probably my first year there, we had created, like, an app store. If you go to Spotify, you're not, pretty sure you're not going to see an app store, right? So, like, I think along the way, those learnings helped with what I think the team would say is, like, you know, it wasn't like this hyper growth, it was. It was a set of linear growths that got them to where they are today, but that all comes from both having successes along the way, but also having failures. And I think historically, I think both of you are right. There may have been this concern that failure is not an option. I think failure part of the journey. It has to 100% but you have to learn quickly, and you have. Make decisions and understand how to then, you know, incorporate those learnings back into the work that you do, so you're not making the same mistakes over and over again. Yeah.
Ben Yoskovitz 40:08
Well, I think that. I think that's the key Cal because if you again, if you think about this in a corporate studio context, or think about it in a corporate context where projects run for a long time, the budgets tend to be high. Nobody wants to admit failure, so they just, you know, 10s of millions of dollars of projects sort of swept under a rug here. Failure is okay if it's if it's fast, it doesn't cost a lot of money, if we're just being very clear about it, right? If we can learn quickly and say, Well, that didn't work, but it didn't cost us three quarters of our budget. So thank goodness. That was a good decision, and we've learned a bunch from that, and we can not repeat those mistakes. To me, then you do celebrate that as as a key part of the venture studio
Kal Amin 40:50
model? Yeah, I think that's right. That's exactly right. And I think your point on budget's a good one. You know, I don't think we've had to experience this in the time that I've been here. But look, it's easy to overspend, right? And like you, continue to invest in something that doesn't seem to be working, but in order to try to make it work, you pour more money into it. We haven't done that, luckily, and you know, we're not going to do that moving forward. So the goal is, how do you back to, you know, some of the questions Marcus, you were asking earlier. How do we understand the success of a venture at a certain stage? Is it truly working? Does it meet our kind of scorecard metrics? Does it pass our, you know, in market sniff test? Are we seeing customer validation and are we growing the customer base, right? So it's sometimes easy to get that easy is maybe not the right word, but sometimes it's, you know, ever in any which way possible to get that first set of customers. But can you grow a pipeline? Can you cultivate a pipeline? Can you ensure that there's repeat business? And those are things we're now focused on, and I think we're seeing that, not only as a team really adopting the way of working that we've now established, but we're seeing that the products and the companies that we're building have that ability to create that repeat opportunity, or that pipeline opportunity that I mentioned. So that's where we spend a lot of time these
Marcus Daniels 42:13
days. You're in such an interesting spot with respect to the studio operations, and tell us a bit more about what you're thinking about doubling down into the capabilities, or new capabilities beyond AI. Obviously, that's the easy one. You know, applying AI to be able to build companies and do rapid prototyping faster. But I think that you know at the stage that you're at, you know, being at it for a few years, and now you have this new lens coming into at this point is, I think it's very unique opportunity to really pick some bigger swings?
Kal Amin 42:41
Yeah, I think in addition to what I've already mentioned around, like having some of these operators join earlier in that process, so the, you know, go to market industry folks, look, I think having some horizontal go to market individuals who can help us think through even, even before hiring like a leader for a venture general go to market kind of like a playbook of how we should be thinking about go to market, I think is very important, back to product and engineering. I think having more engineers earlier in the process, having data scientists earlier in the process, is a big focus for us. So I think we've more than doubled our engineering team in the last seven months that I've been here in the studio model or the innovation engine, and I think that would be a place where we continue to focus, right? So go to market is a big one for us, and product and engineering, especially in those build phases. We want to do more of that earlier in the engine. Makes sense.
Marcus Daniels 43:35
What are some of the changes you've made with the operations in the first seven months? Yeah,
Kal Amin 43:40
I think one like establish. One of the big things that I've focused on is re establishing our strategy. So it's easy to say we focus on small to medium sized businesses. That's great. What does that really mean? What is the profile of an SMB owner? Where do we believe are the right industries that we should be focused on within small to medium sized businesses. Again, what are some of the horizontal opportunities that are presenting themselves given this ability to bring technology into the fold and knowing how the market is maturing, right? So establishing a strategy that everybody can align around has been a big focus for us. So we've done that. We've established a new operating rhythm, as I like to call it. So the way we work inside 1848 ventures, you know, obviously everything we talked about from a principal standpoint. But again, you know, idea generation, score carding, getting products and services into market, more customer conversations. So those are have been big focus for us. I think just establishing more communication with the entire team, right? So between the venture leaders who run each of our startups and their organizational leadership, having that group spend more time together, I think is really important for us. So we've done quite a bit of that over the course of the last seven months
Marcus Daniels 44:56
as well. What about talent moving within ventures? Are you supporting? Doing that just from different variety of experiences. I think that's a hot topic these days, kind of specifically with corporate venture studios.
Kal Amin 45:07
Yeah, that's a good question. We do? Yeah, we've seen individuals kind of bounce from a couple of different ventures that we're working on today. We've also taken some of our resourcing from the innovation engine itself and applied it to the venture teams, not in terms of the leadership, but, you know, across some of the other functions that that operate when a venture is out there in market. I call it cross pollination. Is the simple way of pulling it. You know, look, I think the more we can cross pollinate, the more institutional knowledge we can share across the work we do in the engine or across the ventures. It's the better it is for us as a studio, the better it is for the employee as well, right? So I'm a big believer in upskilling. I'm a big believer in, like, sharing experiences and making sure that every single person that works at 1840 adventures has an amazing experience when they're here. So when you get to do these different things and start to cross pollinate, I think it just creates a very different environment. So we focus on that quite a bit.
Marcus Daniels 46:03
Sounds like you're really unlocking a special talent class within this group.
Kal Amin 46:07
That's a great way of saying it. Yeah. So nice. Marcus, that was such a nice
Marcus Daniels 46:12
I have, I have my moments. You do you 100%
Ben Yoskovitz 46:16
do so, so. Cal, let me, let me ask you, you know, sort of one final question, if you were providing advice to another company, another Westfield, not an insurance, but some other, some other industry, and they were looking at at starting a corporate venture studio, what would be sort of your one big piece of advice? They're starting from nothing. They see 1848 and they think, Geez, I want one of those. We should be doing that. What's your one you know, top other than stealing your whole team, which is not an option. But what would be your piece of advice that you would give that corporate?
Kal Amin 46:54
Well, number one, look, I think, back to like talent. One of the things I do believe in is that, you know, talent will move on at some point. That is just the reality of everything that we do. So while you have a strong, talented team within your organization, your number one responsibility is to upskill them so when they end up leaving your organization at some point, which is inevitable, that they are the most marketable candidate in the job pool like that is what we want to provide individuals when they come to 1848 ventures, because we think that they will contribute to our success, and if they can contribute to our success, that when they do end up moving on, we'd love them to stay forever. It's not reality, but they do end up moving on that they are highly marketable. So that's one area that we focus on. From a talent perspective. I want to break it down a few areas I think are important. Number one, have a very clear mandate. You know, in everything that's changed within 1848 ventures, the mandate has stayed consistent since the beginning of 1848 ventures. So to me, the mandate is really important. I think that's clear. I think experimentation is also key. You're not going to get it right the first time around. So have the flexibility, have the ability to experiment again, learn from those experiments quickly and adapt. I think that's an important part of the journey that we're on and get Always Be Shipping, right? I mean, it's easy to say, but like at these early stages, I don't care if you're building your own individual startup or you're within a venture studio model, you have to ship product. The more you ship, the more you will learn, the more you will learn, the better you will build companies. So that's an important part of the journey as well. So I would say those are important. Last thing I would also say is that AI is fundamentally reshaping how businesses are built, right? So within the venture studio model, we are in a prime position to capitalize on that. So don't be afraid of what's coming. Embrace it. It may be messy, it may be challenging, it may be a whole new unknown. But embrace the change, and as the more you embrace it, I think the better the outcomes will be for you and your
Marcus Daniels 49:02
venture studio. Kel Do you have any asks for the beyond the core community, or how people can get in touch with
Kal Amin 49:08
you? Caliman at 1848 ventures.com feel free to reach out. I think the ask is, look, we, as we expand our kind of, as I said earlier, expand our view on the market opportunity. If you have ideas, thoughts that you're willing to share with us. We'd love to hear from you, right? One of the things you had asked earlier is like kind of this journey over the last seven months? Ben knows this well. When I when I first started, we went on a listening tour to speak to VCs and venture studios. Caught up with Ben, which is very insightful, but the more we can learn and the more we can share with each other, the better we'll be for everybody. I'd love to establish a venture studio community that we're all part of, be it virtually across slack or on calls like this, or even getting individuals together call it once a year, so we can share best practices we can learn from each other. I think that would be really well. Coming to the 1848 team, and hopefully there are others within the community that like, like yourselves, that are doing this podcast. So thank you again for that, but like others that we can bring in so we can really build what venture studio is really about? It. It's still varying across the industry. How do we find commonality that we can all kind of tie into totally agree, we can probably
Ben Yoskovitz 50:21
help a little bit with that, I would think, but, and it is, it is varied, because there's, there's like, there's so many flavors of venture studios, there's so many different ways of doing it. I think your point about the strategy with companies, you know, what's the mandate and the strategy? Westfield and 1848 has one approach to that. Somebody else might have a different approach. So Cal, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate your time. This was a great conversation, and we wish you the best of luck with 1848 ventures.
Kal Amin 50:49
Yeah. Thank you. Ben, thank you. Marcus, thanks. Cal, excited to be here. Thank you.
We always enjoy conversations about innovation and startup building so please get in touch.
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