The magic of a venture studio model

Today, I'm thrilled to announce the launch Dark Venture and Dark Studio . These companies operate with a venture studio model. A venture studio combines financing with a systematic company building or startup studio approach.

But why? Let me explain. Venture Studios are the new way to create companies. You work on projects as early as the ideation phase, identifying the problem to solve, matching it with a huge market and providing initial funds for the start-up to target product-market-fit.

The model has become popular. There are more than 600 Venture Studios across the globe. The reason for success of this model is that it provides companies with experienced entrepreneurs and investors, a creative environment and SMEs (subject-matter experts) who help shape the idea into a concrete business model.

Venture Funding

Venture funding is a form of private equity and a type of financing that investors provide to?start-ups that are believed to have?long-term growth?potential. Dark Venture 's investment thesis is oriented towards technology-led business models that require capital to blossom, digital native vertical brands that want to break the barriers of brick&mortar, unified commerce companies that believe in digital and physical as well as category creators in the field of technology.

Investments made in Roleshare for example are led by the belief that revolutionising work through role sharing, transparency, asynchronous communication and work-life balance is the way forward.

Systematic Company Building

The magic of the venture studio model is that while start-up founders focus on building a product or solution, the studio supports them in every other way that matters. Dark Studio was created with the belief that it is hard enough to build the core of a new business.

Our core team of company builders, strategists, technologists and creatives apply a playbook "idea-to-execution" to launch our start-ups. We leverage our capital, years of experience, core resources and networks to reduce entrepreneurial risk and make our ventures successful.

Furthermore, day-to-day operations are facilitated by the studios’ experienced team of project managers, marketers, designers, finance professionals, business analysts recruiters, and other subject-matter experts. Shall a technology-led start-up focus on book keeping, setting Microsoft 365 or creating LinkedIn banners? Clearly no. What counts is how quickly can a start-up launch an MVP and reach product-market-fit.

Focus is key. A venture studio model enables our portfolio companies (to be announced soon) to focus on what matters. We're all super excited about Dark Venture and Dark Studio . We believe our portfolio companies will have the necessary tools and support to solve real problems.

Article also published on my blog at https://laurentchristen.com/blog/magic-of-a-venture-studio-model