May 28, 2025
[Full Podcast transcript at end of page]
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
Ben Yoskovitz 00:00
How does Highline beta manage risk in vertical studios where there is a high degree of regulatory environment?
Marcus Daniels 00:07
I guess if you're trying to de risk every move, maybe you should stick to corporate strategy decks. I mean, that's the blunt way of describing it. It's, you know, we're talking about building and funding venture profile companies. Even if it's spin outs, there's a certain level of things you just can't de risk. I think it's important to think through tactical things you can do, and a lot of that, often, is finding the right kind of CO builders, either on the outside, on the inside. How do we work with people who understand where the friction points are and empower them to kind of navigate that and adapt to just getting through it again. You have to question, if you're trying to de risk it too much the studio itself is de risking through the validation process. Maybe you shouldn't be running a studio.
Ben Yoskovitz 00:59
All right. Well, welcome to the Beyond the core podcast today, it's going to be just myself and Marcus. Over the last little while, Highline beta has been focusing on specific verticals, and this is sort of what we called Highline beta three Dotto, and it's just an evolution of our business and our business model to focus on specific verticals and launch what we're calling vertical venture studios. And we've launched two recently. In the last sort of 100 days, we've been building these and partnering with folks. One is in the dental tech space, focused on clinics primarily as the as the main customer, and then the other one is in the Ethereum space. So two very different verticals, and we can talk about that, and how do we land on those types of verticals? But we've been getting a lot of questions about that from a whole variety of people, investors, potential corporate partners, and others that are interested in, well, what is this evolution of the venture studio model, and why are we focused on, again, vertical venture studio? So we've got some questions that we've received over the last little while. We thought we would dive right into those and try to share with folks, sort of, our thinking and reasoning behind this, because we think it can apply to anybody that's looking at building a venture studio and how they think about some of those key components. So let me jump into the first question. Marcus, of course, I'll throw this to you. How does Highline beta assess early signals or trends in a vertical to ensure it's a sustainable long term opportunity, rather than a short lived hype cycle?
Marcus Daniels 02:41
Short lived hype cycle. Really always interesting to hear that when you're thinking about building and funding venture profile companies, which you have to think in, typically decades. I mean, firstly, I mean, we do so much work with corporates and family offices, and I think that's always given us some really strong cues of connecting the dots of the future in industries. So that's been always, I think, one of the guiding elements. But I always like to think about, where is that kind of repeatable pain coming from, and as well, just thinking about, how can we build out, you know, compounding advantages. I mean, those are two areas, you know, the pain in an industry and going deep into a particular vertical. But then there's also the piece of, how can we create a really powerful value proposition for the founders as we create these new ventures and unlock all these other assets to really, really allow it, give it a better, best chance to win in something that is pretty difficult to win when you try to transform an industry? Yeah? Yeah.
Ben Yoskovitz 03:38
It makes sense. Yeah. I It's an interesting question. You know, I myself don't think a ton about sort of short lived hype cycles. I sort of believe that you can pick almost any vertical and imagine building, let's say, a portfolio of up to 10 companies over a few years in that vertical, some of which will be successful, of course, some that won't. So I think almost any vertical, if you're thinking about building a vertical studio yourself, almost any vertical is sort of on the table, because they all have potential, even if you're riding a sort of a hype cycle wave and then it goes away. That's probably when the real work begins, anyway. So that's sort of the way I think about it. Well, Said, Okay, next question, so what's the ideal corporate partner profile when launching a vertical venture studio? How much domain expertise should they have versus openness to disruptive innovation? So this is a great question. You know, for us again, take a quick step back and say, anytime we launch a vertical studio, we do need a partner with domain experience. Because, you know, Marcus, you and I are not particular experts in one industry, where we've spent the last 20 years of our lives in that industry, and so we're relying on a corporate partner, a family office, or somebody else who has the domain expertise, but also the. What I've I've described as the privileged access to stuff, the network, the contacts, the relationships, the CO investors, and so for me, we need to bring that into a vertical venture studio Now, having said that, there's always a bias that comes with domain expertise. So this is, I think, where the question is getting at. It's like, do you end up working with a corporate that only wants to work on stuff that's incremental, that they're comfortable with? So you have to find the right partners that are committed to beyond the core disruptive innovation building new ventures in their space, but they have to have that domain expertise and the access to stuff that you need to genuinely accelerate venture building. No,
Marcus Daniels 05:41
I liked how you framed that. I'll just take a slightly different perspective. I think it take it, take it down to the individual level. You know, when you think of the experience that we've had over the past decade working with large corporations, it really came down to that executive, that individual who had the courage, maybe in some ways, got fed up of incremental innovation like you described, and really wanted to take a swing, really wanted to put things into action. So sometimes it's people who have the right intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial, you know, I think talent and desires, and, you know, the venture studio itself becomes like a really great vehicle to kind of unlock that talent. But, you know, again, like you mentioned, distribution is so critical, unlocking assets is always part of the playbook.
Ben Yoskovitz 06:27
Yeah, yeah, perfect. Okay. Next question, once a vertical studio is established, how does Highline beta measure success, beyond financial returns, are there specific KPIs you use to track impact or ecosystem
Marcus Daniels 06:40
health? It's a great question. It comes up all the time. I usually take one step back first. And when we talk about financial returns, often it's really people look at it through one stakeholder lens. And I think for a studio to really drive the most impact, and I love the fact they talked about, what are these ecosystem metrics? You have to look beyond just the corporate ROI, financial ROI, the individual operators of the actual studio ROI, and also the entrepreneurs, or the new venture leaders that are that are basically driving the venture. So I think there's a bit of a balance into that, that equation. But I guess it really comes down to, like, is there downstream capital, like I always like to think of, is there a third party that's validating this venture and investing into it that shows that value as being created? A fun one that we've had over the years, at least I remember quite vividly, is just, you know, a banking executive at a competitor. Have you actually made some sort of impact there? Have you actually got them scared and have some sort of reaction in the market? So there's different, you know, non financial metrics that also can be measured for success. Yeah,
Ben Yoskovitz 07:51
makes perfect sense. You know, the ecosystem health one. It's not something that I think we measure from a KPI perspective, but when you go into a narrow vertical so again, let's use dental tech as an example, because that's a studio we've launched. We have one portfolio company called dental force in that space today, all of a sudden, your community or that ecosystem gets really narrow, and that's a good thing. So you know, who are you interfacing with? Dentists, dental clinics, dental service organizations, investors that have proactively said they want to invest in the dental space. Suddenly, that ecosystem gets smaller, the network gets tighter, and there is a benefit to driving community activity in that space. Again, you don't maybe measure it as a metric, but you do think about, how do you insert yourself into that ecosystem? How do you play a role? How do you contribute value into it? Because that ecosystem is small, and you need to, for a vertical studio to be successful, you need to be connected to all the players, from founders that care about it to acquirers that are ultimately going to buy the businesses that you're building. Yeah. Well said. Okay, next question, are there any industries or verticals we believe are particularly well suited or particularly challenging for the vertical venture studio model based on our experience.
Marcus Daniels 09:08
I mean, I think you'd have to think back to industries that have been slow to move, have not had a lot of call it, growth, innovation, and that's where a lot of the opportunities, I think venture studios, vertical venture studios, specifically, when in the shadows, kind of like what you described before, it's having these really specific value propositions, and you're kind of stacking together all the advantages. And back to the portfolio construction of building up to 10 ventures. You may not actually build up to 10, but if those the portfolio construction really works, can you actually create the synergy between it, if you're really pinpointing down to what you're trying to solve for
Ben Yoskovitz 09:45
Yeah, for me, again, I've already said it. I think you could identify any vertical and build a portfolio. I think the key is, what's the level of fidelity of the vertical? So insurance, we use that as an example. Insurance is not a. Vertical. It's too big. And in fact, we've built and funded companies, multiple companies, in the insurance space. Worked with multiple corporate partners in the insurance space, but some has been enterprise, B to B. Some has been consumer. And so you have to narrow down more than that. Insurance is not a vertical. Health is not a vertical. I think one of the things we're working on in the in in the Ethereum space, is, okay, what are the components of that, or the areas we want to go into, because crypto or blockchain are enabling technologies and capabilities. They're not so much a vertical, whereas dental tech, it's very clear we're selling to a dental clinic. So we've narrowed the focus, so you've got to get the right level of detail on who's the customer, what's the go to market approach, what are the technologies that you're using that to help you define the right vertical?
Marcus Daniels 10:54
Yeah, and I think the work we've done over the last decade, you know, working in collaboration with corporates, have kind of allowed us to connect those dots, and I think has also helped shape which kind of vertical kind of vertical venture studios we're pursuing.
Ben Yoskovitz 11:05
Yep, okay, next question, how does this always there's always a question about risk and legal and compliance in here. But anyway, how does Highline beta manage risk in vertical studios, particularly in areas like dental or Ethereum, where there is a high degree of regulatory environment and stakeholder dynamics that could be complicated. So this is the sort of legal, regulatory compliance. How do you navigate that in particular industries?
Marcus Daniels 11:35
I guess if you're trying to de risk every move, maybe you should stick to corporate strategy decks. I mean, that's the blunt way of describing it. It's, you know, we're talking about building and funding venture profile companies. Even if it's spin outs, there's a certain level of things you just can't de risk. I think it's important to think through tactical things you can do. And a lot of that, often, is finding the right kind of CO builders, either on the outside on the inside. How do we work with people who understand where the friction points are and empower them to kind of navigate that and adapt to just getting through it? I just again, you have to question, if you're trying to de risk it too much. The Studio itself is de risking through the validation process. Maybe you shouldn't be running a studio. Yeah,
Ben Yoskovitz 12:22
I think there are some areas we won't go into, you know, those, for example, that require or even in dental Right? Like things that are like heavy duty on the hardware side, or require FDA type approval. Those are things we're probably going to skirt around, because we know that the cycle time for that is just so so long. So you know, again, in each vertical there's different types of ventures that require more regulatory or compliance overhead, some that require less. But I think maybe unfortunately, to some extent, the areas that are boring, underserved are the areas that often also have high degrees of regulatory and compliance requirements, and if you have the right partner. So in our case, a corporate partner, family office, a person who knows how to navigate that and then can unlock those things. That's how you can actually build ventures in those spaces. I wouldn't on my own go into a space where I don't know anything and I know the regulatory, legal compliance burden is going to be high. That's just suicide. So you've got to bring the right people to the table and then try to focus on ventures that you know aren't going to go headlong into those trouble areas. Well, Said, Okay, next question, Can you share any insights or lessons learned from launching multiple vertical studios simultaneously? Are there advantages or unexpected challenges? So this is basically, why are we doing what we're doing, and why are we so crazy? So Marcus explaining, explain why we're crazy. Like, that's maybe where we need to go.
Marcus Daniels 14:01
Yeah, no, I think, you know, we can get into the historical context and the evolution of Highline beta, but I think it really starts with, you know, launching multiple vertical venture Studios is really not for amateurs. And what I mean by that is, we've been doing this for over a decade, and you have to start somewhere. So we kind of articulated, you know, Highline beta 3.0 recently, just on our strategy with respect to scaling our platform through vertical venture studios. And I think the piece of having a platform right that was really the first phase. We think what Highline beta 1.0 was, we built out a platform, proved that we could build and fund startups, worked with corporate partners, and you kind of earn the right on the pathway, right and so that's how I would take it. You just can't have like, if you can't build and show success of building and funding multiple startups, you probably shouldn't be trying to graduate into multiple studios.
Ben Yoskovitz 14:56
Yeah, makes all sense the way I think, again, I think that some. Context also helpful here. So you know, each vertical venture studio is launching a couple of companies a year. So I think that's important context, maybe one, maybe two. But you know, our goal here is not to launch 10 companies per year per vertical. It's not. The model doesn't scale that way. It scales by going into perhaps more verticals with the right partners in those verticals, leveraging our experience and expertise in how to build ventures, how to get those ventures funded with the domain or industry unlocks that come from the right partners. So to me, this is you can launch multiple vertical studios if you have the right partners, and if you keep the you know, again, one to two companies a year that you're building, get some momentum in that portfolio, build up that ecosystem of partners to prove that you can build successful companies in any vertical, and then figure out how to scale it from there.
Marcus Daniels 15:53
Yeah, I just, again, I'll just reiterate my point. I think it's really difficult to do if you don't have a platform business to build that off. I think it's one of the most critical things that get missed, and part of that part of that also is who are the right Capital Partners, is the other piece that often gets neglected.
Ben Yoskovitz 16:07
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Okay, so let's dig a little bit more. What's the internal decision making framework you use to prioritize and select new verticals for exploration? So I can take this one first. So, so it's a combination of things we think about, what are the criteria for launching a vertical studio? So the way that that I think about this is ideally, and again, we afford ourselves an opportunity to break the rules sometimes, of course, but So, for starters, we need a partner who has unfair advantage or competitive advantage in a space we're not going to go into a vertical without having some unlock from the market, a customer, a partner, a managing director, somebody with expertise. So number one, we need that. Number two, I like to think about, how do we eliminate variables? So what I mean by that is, who's the customer? So I'll use dental as a good example. The customer. There is a clinic. Our job is to figure out how to solve problems, primarily for dental clinics. There's a whole bunch of other players in the dental ecosystem, but we're focused primarily on dental clinics. So now we could just build relationships with dental clinics, talk to them all the time, figure out what their pain points are. If the dental clinics are really the only customer for our startups, then the go to market and the business model start to be the same. You know, you're not doing a B to C plan, a B to B play, you're not doing a B to B to C play, and a B to government play. So now the motions, the go to market, motions, the business models, all of those things standardize, which means that every company you build in a vertical venture studio gets better and learns from the one before that, but very, very specifically. And so to me, those are the criteria. Do we have a great partner that provides competitive advantage? Have we eliminated variables so that every startup we're building is legitimately following a consistent playbook over and over and getting better, and if we don't have those ingredients, and that's why I said earlier, like insurance is not a vertical, because there's just so broad you can't put the pieces together and really see a clear path. To me that's and then, and then the other element would be, is there capital? So, Marcus, you already mentioned this before, but if it's a vertical that has no capital, or no capital partners or not, no real momentum, there where the odds of getting these things funded when they leave the studio are small. That's another key component to finding the right verticals for us to go into.
Marcus Daniels 18:48
Yeah, those are all really excellent points. I'll take a slightly bolder kind of answer to it. I mean, ultimately, us as founders, I think that's one of our greatest strengths, in the fact that we've been building and funding companies for as long as we have successfully, but also the fact that we're independent, and I think the independence allows us to really work and CO create, with family offices, with corporates, to really kind of envision what the future could be without being stuck. And so in many ways, I don't think we're really scanning for, like, what's that next vertical. I think in many ways, we're taking all these parts together. And, you know, as founders, deciding with, you know, I would say high conviction, really strategically, how does this fit into our platform? And as well, again, back to the, you know, just the ability to execute against it. And we, I don't think we have so have an issue with, Hey, we don't have to build 10 companies in a particular area. We have a thesis on portfolio construction, but then we could stop and just double down in certain areas. And so there was this you described, I think, extremely well how systematic we would approach it. But I think there's the other side of it as being founders who live and breathe, building companies through studio models, really. Play Store advantage,
Ben Yoskovitz 20:01
right? I mean, at the end of the day, we're opportunistic about going into verticals when we find the right partners and the right ingredients. My description of it is more, how do we line these things up in order to build the infrastructure, get quality companies out the door? But at the end of the day, we're having conversations with a whole variety of folks about different verticals where we think there is white space. And I, at least, for me personally, I can get pretty excited about almost any vertical, even if it's areas that I don't have a lot of experience in. I don't know, just the entrepreneurial nature of how I think is like, oh, that's an interesting space. That's so we can be opportunistic about things that we go and chase.
Marcus Daniels 20:41
Yeah, I mean, we're driven to make societal impact in the big picture, but also comes down to the problems. You know, regardless of what vertical you're in, what problem you're really trying to solve, and I think that's a part of our I think winning conditions is just how we can catalyze these different stakeholders to kind of go after solving really difficult problems in the world.
Ben Yoskovitz 20:59
Agreed, okay, so how do you balance the need for deep, vertical expertise with the risk of tunnel vision, ensuring ventures remain agile and adaptable? Ooh,
Marcus Daniels 21:11
that's a it's an interesting one. I mean, I think having vertical expertise can really give a bit of an edge, as long as you're not to to to holding on to it too tightly, right? And so I think how we do it really well is the fact that we do have, you know, corporates, family offices, typically, who have domain expertise, and then we bring in founders that have no real industry context whatsoever. And so they kind of the yin and the yang there allows, hopefully, some magic to happen and try to find the truth of how the problem gets solved, how the venture gets built. But I think, you know, in a vertical venture studio construct, I think it becomes even more powerful, becomes more multiplied, because you you have so much concentration of that expertise that you can be like you described it just right before the repeatable system, right?
Ben Yoskovitz 22:02
Yeah, I actually was going to say the same thing, which is, you know, the founders that we bring in to help us validate and run these companies aren't necessarily the domain experts. They could have familiarity with the industry. They could be domain experts, but they don't necessarily have to be. And so I think that that does provide a balance to the well, we're only in this very narrow space. We're only focused on this narrow thing and a founder coming in with fresh perspective. So I think we get a balance there. It's still early days. You know, I fully expect we will start something in one of our vertical studios, maybe the Ethereum one, maybe the dental tech one, maybe another one that we'll be launching in the future, and it will pivot out of that industry. Like I 100% believe that that at some point will happen, and we'll just navigate that with the founder and the partners that we brought to the table and said, Well, we thought the opportunity was selling to dental clinics. It turns out it's selling to vets, and we can either force it on the dental clinic space, or we could pivot despite it maybe being a little bit outside of, you know, that corporate partners interest level, or what have you. And we'll, we'll navigate that when we get there. Or the other one is, you start in one space, like dental clinics, and you expand out of it. Oh, we went from dental clinics to a similar model, you know, therapists, or whatever the case may be. And so I think there's expansion opportunity outside of the verticals. Once you've established your position in vertical a you could move to other industries, and I don't think we would, you know, quote, unquote, stop a founder from doing that, or say, hey, wait a second. We intended you only to build to solve dental clinic problems. How dare you, you know, try to build a bigger company and branch out. We would just roll with that and figure
Marcus Daniels 23:48
it out. Yeah, again, it reiterates the importance of having a platform business, and it's one portfolio, and the linkage and synergy throughout the platform, but also with the studio. Again, you could technically have multiple studios, because the overlap actually invest and provide other value propositions to one startup to help win, right?
Ben Yoskovitz 24:04
Yeah, agreed. Okay. Next question, how has the concept of vertical venture studios changed the way Highline beta collaborates with corporates compared to traditional venture building partnerships?
Marcus Daniels 24:16
I mean, I think it's just helped us accelerate it. It certainly, you know, drives a lot more focus. I think, you know, we had, historically, these kind of pilot corporate startup collaboration successes with lots of large organizations as they look at all the different tools of how they kind of drive growth innovation, and now with the vertical venture studios, it certainly just puts more power behind it, because it's a lot more focused. That's kind of how I see a lot of again, people get too caught up sometimes with just trying to put labels onto these different tools, ultimately, is what's going to drive the most value and help you know, both parties win.
Ben Yoskovitz 24:55
Yeah, agreed. I think what I'm seeing in the early. Days of this is it's helping corporate partners understand the concept of portfolio. Instead of let's go build a business together, and we might start there. Let's go build a business together. Let's validate it. Let's spin it out. Let's prove that we can do this together, prove that we can unlock corporate assets, prove that we can recruit the right founder, prove that we can raise capital for this thing and start scaling it. But I think it creates this, this idea of portfolio, because you say we're going to build a we're not going to build a business, we're going to build a vertical studio, and the job of that vertical studio is to build businesses. Now, again, that doesn't, that doesn't mean 50 businesses a year. It could be two businesses a year, but it gets the mindset of portfolio. It gets the mindset of, well, if one thing fails or drops off or invalidates, I've got other things in the pipeline. So I like that. And then, and then I think that that's just a good way to think about it. And then I think it also affords us the opportunity to speak to corporates about something that we're starting to get very deep into. So again, use Ethereum, and you know, we're focusing initially on the wealth management space. Well, there's, there's a Venn diagram there of corporate partners that are going to be interested in that universe. And that's, that's good for us, because we can talk to them about, well, we've got this structure. Let's build ventures together inside of this structure, as opposed to just pitching one off deals. Yeah, I know. I
Marcus Daniels 26:27
think, I think you framed it really well. I think the only thing I would also add to that is we've seen there's a small percentage, I wish it was larger, of corporates that really want to go on the offense with respect to kind of growth, innovation. And I think when you go down the pathway at least, of having a vision to get to a vertical venture studio. It in many ways, stops you from just playing small, right like to spitting up and doing one pilot or creating a sandbox to experiment. So you know, you could start with one venture and see if that will graduate into building, building the studio. But as long as you know, you're thinking, hey, that's our North Star. Because, as you articulated, you're going to build a portfolio of businesses, and it's okay for someone to fail that it really gets the mindset, I think, really better aligned in the bigger picture, at least. You know, we've seen that with the ones that have the courage to kind of go on the offense.
Speaker 1 27:16
Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree. Okay, last question, already. Last question. Wow, okay,
Ben Yoskovitz 27:21
yeah. Oh, I know we're ripping through this looking ahead. Are there emerging verticals you're particularly excited about or actively exploring for future studios
Marcus Daniels 27:31
who, I mean, I don't think we're actively, I wouldn't describe it as scanning. I think we're looking because we're in the business of connecting dots and connecting people. I think that's, again, part of the unique qualities that we have. And I think you do require to operate a studio is we're looking for kind of global inflection points, you know, if I think of even the Ethereum studio specifically, I think this is the perfect time. 2025, 2024, you need to have a bit more institutional adoption, right? You know, the Ethereum ETF helped created a framework. We start seeing more tokenization. We see you need to have the winning conditions. And so, you know, we've had, we have our eyes on so many different studios because of the nature of the corporate work that we do in working with family offices, but the fact that we're, you know, insatiably be curious about solving big, hard problems. Leveraging entrepreneurship as a tool has kind of pushed forward into us being opportunistic when the winning conditions and when that global inflection point happens,
Ben Yoskovitz 28:32
yeah, yeah. Look, I think that's it. You know, we're always thinking about verticals that we could get excited about we're talking to it, but it's mostly inspired by the people we engage with. You know, I think I have personal interests in certain spaces. Marcus, of course, will have personal interests in certain spaces. Sometimes those personal interests will overlap. You know, I, when I, when I saw this question, I my, my head immediately went to the elder care space. And, you know, it's an area we've looked at in the past. We've talked about it. It's an area we continue to look at and explore the ingredients and the pieces of the puzzle aren't quite there to launch a specific studio in that world, but there's areas we just care about and we're interested in. But then a lot of it is, again, it is, it is actually opportunistic. When people come to us and say, I know a lot about this space, and it's it's underserved, and maybe it's boring and nobody's paying attention to it, and there aren't, you know, 10,000 new AI companies every 20 minutes launching in that space, but I know the network, and I know the contacts, and I know the pain points. Then we get intrigued by that, and that curiosity kicks in, and we're like, maybe there's a vertical, you know. Now, every time I talk to someone, I'm like, that that could be a vertical, that could be a vertical, you know, I just it, just, I start to think about it in that structure of, I think there's a portfolio there. I think there's a portfolio there. So again, personal interests, elder care, I'll throw sports out. To the universe, because Marcus is a, you know, super, you know, avid football fan. I'm a hockey fan. Anyway. Point being a little well, throw that in the universe, just in case, right? Just in case somebody is like a sports vertical studio, that makes a ton of sense, so opportunistic to finding the right partners in interesting areas where we think that there's white space, but I think there's white space everywhere. So to me, that's what's the most exciting about
Marcus Daniels 30:29
it. And I'll just quickly add, I mean, just thinking about the Ethereum studio, right? I mean, one of our partners is Dima Buterin. He invested in Highline beta in 2016 and invested in 2019 and we've been having this exploration of what's the right kind of global inflection point to build out the studio for almost a decade, right? And I think that's the point I was trying to make, is that, you know, the timing does matter, but you know, we've spent over 10 years thinking about it, you know, trying to validate the areas of opportunity. What are the winning conditions? And then, you know, you have a partner in, you know, Nigel da Costa, and you know, bringing in his expertise and experience to kind of bring in those two worlds. So I think, you know, again, us as entrepreneurs, and running a venture studio platform business affords us the time and the patience, I think, as well, opposed to really not forcing it back to your point, like, I think, you know, we'll be opportunistic, but back to the point. It's quality over quantity. And so the objective isn't to have, you know, hundreds of studios or building hundreds and companies a year to scale it. It's all about, how do we put the right value propositions in front of all the stakeholders that really that we need to build and fund with, right? Yeah,
Ben Yoskovitz 31:43
I totally agree with that. And to me, I think when, you know, after we had built, you know, quite a few companies in a variety of different verticals, before focusing on this approach of vertical studios, you know, that was a successful approach to it, but it was a little bit like every startup. Was a little bit different, a little bit of a different approach. I'm all in on the notion of a vertical venture studio. I think any venture studio out there that's thinking about launching a new venture studio, pick up, pick a lane, pick a vertical design the studio with the intent around how to unlock the assets inside of that vertical, whatever vertical you're going after, it really doesn't matter, certainly to me, but to me, a sort of a broad based interest or industry based studio is not enough. You got to go narrow, and you got to go deep into something and then, in a way, try to become the world's best studio for vertical a or vertical B or vertical C. So that would be my sort of advice to anybody thinking about building a venture studio, whether they're a corporate or an individual or whatever it might be. To me, I think we had this unlock after building a whole bunch of companies in our portfolio where we really said, how do we just get better and better and better at building companies consistently and repeatably? And to me, that's pick a vertical. Get the like you said, Get the demons of the world, get the nigels, get the ingredients together, and then really construct a vertical that has the best chance of building great startups. Yeah,
Marcus Daniels 33:23
no. This one final point, and you know, the one question earlier was a bit about de risking, and it becomes sometimes a bit analysis paralysis. You do have to be patient, but you also have to take the plunge. You have to get to the point where you're willing to write the check, if that's from the corporate side or as the individual, and really put real skin in the game and just do it and execute right? There's, there's nothing wrong also with stopping right, if it doesn't work out. And I think that's also the other piece that a lot of people wait too long to kind of design the perfect studio and try to get all the winning conditions. Often it's just like building a startup. You're building it as you know you're flying. So it's an interesting it's an interesting time right now, with the advent of AI and the ability of what, how you can empower and how the studios are evolving the same way how venture capital is evolving and how building startups is evolving. So exciting times. You know, really, really enjoy these questions. Looking forward to getting more of them. And I guess until next time. Yeah,
Ben Yoskovitz 34:20
yeah. Please follow if you want to keep an eye out on the new verticals that we're launching in the future. I don't know what they are yet, but you might as well keep keep an eye on them.
34:29
Please subscribe to the podcast,
Ben Yoskovitz 34:31
five to the podcast. Follow us on LinkedIn. Check us out. You know, check out the website, highlinebeta.com where each of the verticals gets announced there. And thanks for listening, and please keep sending us your great questions. Thanks for the support.
We always enjoy conversations about innovation and startup building so please get in touch.
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