Tap our experienced team

Simplifying Studio Design

Our experience across +100 studio engagements provides us a rich and deep knowledge base to draw from. Leverage our expertise to build your studio faster, avoid common pitfalls, build strong processes, and focus on building portfolio companies.

Bespoke Approach to

Advice & Education

Your situation and studio is unique. The team you have, the thesis you are pursuing, the ecosystem you operate in, the role the studio will take on and how you choose to build companies. These factors just begin to shape how the studio should be designed. Knowing how these design choices impact operations, studio performance, and LP and entrepreneur interest make all the difference.

Grounded

Design Approach

We have distilled thousands of hours of studio design analysis and experience in to fundamental startup studio design frameworks. From private startup studios to corporate studios, venture capital aligned studios to cash flow company creators, return focused to impact focused studios, our design approach identifies the key constraints first cutting design time drastically.

Studio Design Analysis & Frameworks

Matt Burris

A thought leader in the design of startup studios, Matt is involved with multiple studio whitepapers and has begun to define new terminology, frameworks, and design constraints for startup studios. Matt’s passion lies in the 0 to 1 of finding ideas that are worth pursuing and refining them to thrive in the complex realities of the real world. Initially exposed to the startup studio model in 2011, understanding the potential of the model has become his focus having spent thousands of hours analyzing the model. He has helped design three startup studios and leveraged the framework within the corporate environment to improve the success rate of innovation.

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Studio Design & Branding Expert

Jake Hurwitz

As cofounder of the Global Startup Studio Network, Jake has spearheaded foundational efforts to define startup studios, their value, and the performance of the asset class. Since then, Jake has advised and consulted with 100+ studios around the world and published thought leadership on the studio model and global market. Along the way, Jake founded 3 startups, ran a creative agency for startups working with 85+ clients, and then worked at a startup studio as the VP of Branding for two years.All of this has been driven by the desire to build new things, connect with humans along the way, and help create more entrepreneurs in the world.

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Strategic & Innovation Operations

Philippe Rosiere

Philippe has 20+ years of experience driving business advantage and leading large high-impact business transformation and performance improvement programs for major multinational organizations and public institutions, including the European Union and United Nations.Philippe's domains of expertise include strategy, digital transformation, innovation, operating model design, and M&A post-merger integration. He deployed innovation hubs within large corporations and also mentored entrepreneurs in the USA, Germany, Denmark and Australia.

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Innovation Process & Investor Insights

Toly Shilman

Toly is an experienced marketing and innovation leader with an obsession for product market fit and creating breakthrough solutions for customer pain points. Toly has advised clients ranging from early stage startups to Fortune 500 corporations. Toly has had an accomplished career in corporate innovation as well as in early-stage startups both as a founder and as an operator. Additionally, Toly is a mentor with Techstars, and an advisor to numerous startups, entrepreneurs, and investors.

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It all starts with

Understanding Where You Are

The startup studio journey starts from many places. From experienced founder, operating professional, professional investor, corporate innovation, agency, and more, where you began your journey can be just as important to plot the course ahead as where you are in that journey today.

Focusing on

Comprehend Your Mission

The flexibility of the startup studio model allows each studio to be designed to achieve a specific mission. Understanding the goals you have for your studio, from raw returns, ESG impacts, to local economic empowerment, are critical factors that shape the design of your studio.

Deliver

Tailored Support

Just as startup studio designs are unique, so is our support. Light touch advice to hands on support, short timeframes or long, we adapt our approach to your mission, team, and ecosystem to set you and your team up for success.

Focused on Your

Success First

Design that works is our calling. That means identifying and highlighting challenges that should be addressed as well as pointing out where the studio model is being stressed beyond a breaking point with critical long term implications.

Expert

Advice

Regular dedicated support from experts who have seen startup studio designs all over the world. Legal structures, compensation design, process and playbooks, equity splits, deal terms for founders and investors, advisor recruiting, recruiting entrepreneurs, preparing for fundraising, interpreting feedback from LPs, crafting the studio story, and more. Our experience can move you faster.

Hands on

Design

Our team of experts guides you through the iterative studio design process. We start by understanding your thesis, the founder role of the studio, and the four customers of a studio to define the core design constraints. Then we dive deep, designing the studio, building the initial playbook, defining core processes, and creating the essential launch assets of your studio.

Operations

Optimization

Building a studio and creating the processes and playbooks for each portfolio company to leverage is challenging at best. Process gaps, disconnections, resource misalignments, and shifts in strategy all lead to the need for streamlining operations. Our team of experts can help peel back the interconnections and realign your process to help you scale up your operations.

TaILORED

Education

The startup studio model has been successfully applied to deliver superior returns, achieve ESG impact, develop local ecosystems, and speed corporate innovation all by adapting the startup studio model to build businesses.Learn how to adapt the model within your constraints, how to evaluate studio investments, and more.