May 28, 2025
After a decade of building and funding startups alongside some of the world’s leading corporations, we’ve reached a turning point in how we approach venture building at Highline Beta. In this latest episode of Beyond the Core, we went deep on why we’ve launched multiple vertical venture studios—and why we believe this evolution is the right move for us, our partners, and the future of corporate venture building.
Here are some of the most important takeaways:
Most venture studios try to do too much. We’ve done that too. And we learned that without constraints, the system gets noisy.
With vertical studios, we can:
The goal isn’t one-off wins. It’s a repeatable system that gets smarter with every new build.
We’ve said it before: every vertical has potential. But the key variable is the partner—the person or org that brings unfair advantage to the table.
We’re looking for:
We’ve seen time and time again that innovation lives or dies by the executive champion who’s willing to put skin in the game. You can’t outsource bravery.
If your goal is total certainty, stick to strategy decks.
But if your goal is to build new venture-profile companies, you need to embrace risk—and structure your validation process so the riskiest assumptions surface fast.
We don’t try to eliminate all risk.
We try to break things when the stakes are low, so we can double down with confidence later.
People ask us all the time: “How are you running multiple studios at once?”
Here’s the answer: you can’t do that without a platform.
We spent years building and funding startups before shifting into vertical studios. That’s our 3.0.
We’re not chasing scale for the sake of it. We’re chasing synergy, infrastructure reuse, shared learnings, and cross-studio capital access.
If you haven’t shipped real ventures and navigated the funding gauntlet, you probably shouldn’t be running more than one studio.
We get asked how we measure success beyond financial return.
Here’s how:
Sometimes the best indicator of momentum is how many people start paying attention to what you’re building—even before the dollars roll in.
We’re not scanning verticals with a spreadsheet.
We’re listening for the right people with the right combination of:
Sometimes they’re founders. Sometimes they’re operators. Sometimes they’re family offices. But when someone shows up with a sharp point of view on an underserved market? Our ears perk up.
That’s how we launched a venture studio focused on DentalTech and one in Ethereum. And that’s how we’ll pick our next vertical too.
If you’re thinking about launching a venture studio—especially inside a corporate or family office—we’ll say this:
Don’t try to boil the ocean. Build the best beachhead studio in your niche.
That’s how we’re doing it. And it’s never been more exciting.
—Ben & Marcus
Founders, Highline Beta
We always enjoy conversations about innovation and startup building so please get in touch.
.png)
.png)
