Martin Hacks

Martin Hacks is a global network uniting elite management consultants and business advisors. 
Our primary mission is to foster opportunities for members to learn from each other, enhance their careers, acquire new skills, and leverage AI to deliver exceptional value to their clients.

- Community with Spaces
- Live coaching sessions
- Consulting Academy: Consulting MBA and topic-specific training
- Templates
- Job Portal and X-selling engine
- 3rd party software discounts

Apply today to www.martinhacks.com

Partner

Stealth Climate Startup

Stealth Climate Tech Startup
Batteries + AI + Web3

Forecastly AI

Advisory Board

BrightDay

BrightDay is an ecosystem of life enhancement apps https://brightday.app/
Download iOS BrightDay
https://apps.apple.com/no/app/brightday-habit-tracker/id1636308273
Download iOS SuperHabits app
https://apps.apple.com/no/app/superhabits-1-habit-tracker/id6452316201

Founder

PwC Norway

Outcomes
- Designed and run a ScaleUp program www.slingshot.no for the region
- Grew Innovation & Growth Offering to 7 figures

Innovation & Digital Director

Head of Innovation & Digital Delivery | Sr. Manager @ EEC PwC Stavanger

University of Stavanger

Imparting lessons on Design Thinking for Green Energy Transition at the University of Stavanger

Visiting Lecturer

Accenture Song

-> Leading the Digital Energy Hub for Accenture in Stavanger, Norway 
-> Inspiring business leaders with the latest trends in ways of working and technological disruption 
-> Design thinking workshops, brainstorming sessions, prototyping, value chain opportunity mapping, digital strategy roadmaps and product development sprints (1 day, 5 days and several weeks) 
-> Digital advisory & training to executives

Digital Hub Lead | Innovation and Digital Transformation Manager

Accenture

-> Leading the development of a Digital Hub for Accenture in Stavanger, Norway
-> Inspiring business leaders with latest trends in ways of working and technological disruption
-> Design thinking workshops, brainstorming sessions, prototyping, value chain opportunity mapping, digital strategy roadmaps and product development sprints (1 day, 5 days and several weeks)
-> Strategy Lead of a RPA (Robot Process Automation) program

Digital Hub Lead | Innovation Manager

Vertical Strategy

VERTICAL is a new breed of strategy advisors catalyzing growth for a fast paced future

- New venture digital product sprints
- New digital products concept development
- New business model and strategy development
- Corporate entrepreneurship
- Digital transformation / Digital roadmap for industrial clients
- Service design (UX/UI/Design Thinking Workshops)
- Idea generation and innovation workshops

Innovation Senior Consultant / In-house entrepreneur

martinhacks.com

Innovation coach @ youtube and writer (sci-fi, business)

Hi 👋 My name is Martin

As a management consultant, I built an Innovation Agency for a Big4 to 7 figures. I have consulted in nearly every industry, from disruptive Startups to fast-growing Scale-ups, B2C, B2B, and Enterprise SaaS, from The World Bank to Fortune500s, from shaping regulations in the US to implementing agile at a $60Bn revenue corporate, from designing battery tech spin-outs to medical tech IPO pitch decks.

If you are a scaleup CEO with annual revenues over 5 mUSD, feel free to reach out (DM) to discuss:

- Strategy execution
- Increasing margin play through revenueops (e.g. pricing) and cost optimization

I am an Entrepreneur (40%) and Management Consultant (60%).

As an entrepreneur, I run a portfolio of Life-enhancement apps (www.brightday.app), a digitally-driven Innovation Consulting and a stealth-mode climate startup. I do not invest at the moment.

Martin Gallardo

Everything in "Europe is better than US except 1 thing" he said and continue:

Manhattan is a tough place

I work 9-9-6

I live in 46 sqm, and pay 6000 euros a month

I make 150,000 grand a year
yet I barely save any money

Food sucks... even trying to eat healthy... I put on weight.

I think there is something wrong in the food even in vegetables.

Tap Water... undrinkable

People are highly transactional

Dating can easily drain most of your time

Dining and Taxis cost like 5x versus Europe

Safety?... just search on insta "NYC metro crazy"

But there is one thing you get here

"The Learning"

If you have a dream, strangers are willing to bet on you.

They let you build... and pivot... and fail... no questions asked.

And then you have the best market on the planet.

It is a jungle, survival mode.

But noone can take this experienced out of me.

I paused, reflected for a second,
and kindly asked him, one of my best friends:

"Would you stay there for the rest of your live?"

"I am retiring in Europe"

No alternative text description for this image

Current status of my inbox daily: {{primary_intent_signal}}

Timothy Armoo has one of the coolest bio in Entrepreneurship.
Are you failing enough? Literally all really successful people I know are risk takers. You can t have outsized returns without 100% risk of failure.

10 Eye-Opening Insights from 885 European VCs 🚀

I dumped into Google Gemini3 all Marc Penkala's comprehensive EU VC survey, and the data reveals fascinating patterns about how European venture capital actually works. Here's what stood out:

Deal Flow Reality Check 📊
European VCs see an average of 851 investment proposals annually but close only 38 deals - that's a 4.5% conversion rate. The funnel is brutal: only 37% even get a management meeting, and just 6% make it to closing.

Key insight: Independent VCs receive 3x more proposals than governmental VCs, yet governmental VCs have significantly higher closure rates.

What VCs Actually Care About 🎯

When selecting investments, it's all about the team:

96% say management team is critical (this isn't just talk - it's universal)
72% prioritize product/service/technology
Only 21% consider industry a key factor

Most surprising? The investor's own contribution ranks dead last at just 12%.

Founder Qualities That Matter 💡

VCs look for competence (75%) and passion (73%) above all else. 

But here's the nuance:

Family Offices care less about ability but MORE about commitment/passion
Governmental VCs prioritize industry experience
Only 28% cite competence as THE most important factor 

The Valuation Reality 💰
71% use comparable transactions as their primary valuation method, yet more than 60% don't use ANY formal valuation methodology!

Late-stage VCs are more likely to apply formal methods, while health-focused VCs rarely use IRR calculations.

Target ownership? 63% aim for 10-20% stakes, with a required IRR of 29% and cash-on-cash multiple of 6.4x. 

Half of late-stage VCs target ownership above 20%.

Deal Terms Tell a Story 📝

80% demand pro-rata rights (especially important in mature markets)
68% require anti-dilution protection

Western VCs push harder for anti-dilution than Northern VCs

Health-focused VCs care more about participation liquidation preferences and cumulative dividends

Success Factors: It's Not Just Luck 🎲

What actually drives successful exits?

Management team: 96% (again, the team!)
Product/offering: 72%
Timing: 56%
Good luck: 33%

Interestingly, late-stage VCs mention luck less often (26% vs 33% overall), 
while Northern VCs rate timing and luck as more critical than other regions.

Decision-Making Styles 🤝
36% use majority voting
31% require unanimous decisions
Only 4% allow individual partner decisions
Health-focused VCs use unanimous voting more (50% vs 31% average), suggesting higher-risk tolerance requires broader consensus.

The Exit Landscape 🚪
40% of exits are trade sales, but only 9% achieve 10x+ returns. 

The reality:
22% of investments fail outright
7% exit via IPO
28% exceed investment objectives

More insights in the comments

Full credit to Marc Penkala for this comprehensive research. 
#VC #fundraising #insights

I am tired of LinkedIn clickbait. 20 year old saying Founders pay $30k for TAM. Let s dismantle this bull€&"!

LinkedIn has become a clickbait funnel towards Founders

Archetypical criminal:

20 year old school dropout

Learned about GTM 6 month ago

Copy lead magnet from someone else

Never done consulting before

Just asked last night GPT how much McKinsey charged for TAM

Discovered AI can produce a decent outcome if well prompted

Figure out he can get hundreds of comments and leads towards a sensitive group like Founders

So he can sell them something he has never really done before

The problem is... 

You are lying boy

In the business of serving... trust is the coin.

You ll get desperate founders, a 2% conversion rates and more problems than income.

I have worked with 100s of founders, even at a Big4 we will never serve a Founder on TAM. They wont buy. And I was PwC. 

Now you can earn $20k for TAM, maybe even more.

I know because I am part of many top strategy networks with daily engagement requests. 

Btw, comment "secret network" to get access to it 🤣🤣🤣 just kidding but you can DM me

So yeah, boring, saturated mid-market companies are willing to pay $20k for a TAM because market share and location does matter when allocating capex.

Even $1000s to review an IPO pitch deck (been paid for that).

They can pay me $30-50k for a 5-day "Strategy sprint". Btw my next book coming out soon, DM for early access.

But they are not startup or early stage Founders... unless SanFran?

So please liberate me from commenting and start also calling out this behaviour. So should make LinkedIn great again... is f€&"?!' becoming Instagram

graphical user interface, text, application

I have the pleasure of serving Saudi Arabia Government, and it is one of most incredible transformations in the world. Very inspiring message from HRN at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) about meritocracy and the welcoming nature of Saudis.

KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology)

View company: KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology)

Our Class of 2025 steps into the world at a time when Saudi Arabia is writing one of the most ambitious chapters in its history, defined by curiosity, innovation and an insistence that talent—not background—shapes the future. It’s a moment built by people who believe possibility is a resource, and progress is a collective act, reflecting the spirit of #SaudiVision2030. 

No one expresses this spirit more powerfully than His Royal Highness Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Minister of Energy and Chairman of the KAUST Board of Trustees. At our 16th Commencement this week, he delivered a powerful message that captured the momentum of this new era: 

This is the new Saudi Arabia — a nation built on meritocracy and talent, welcoming everyone who wants to live, build and dream with it. Those who wish to share this ambition, contribute to its future, or be part of its accomplishments are warmly welcomed. 

This message reflects the very heart of our university and 2025’s graduating class. Whether you grew up here or traveled from the other side of the world to join our community, you are part of a culture of openness, collaboration and scientific ambition that is reshaping this nation and the world. 

#KAUSTClass2025 #KAUST #Classof2025 #Commencement #NewSaudiArabia

This is what GTM engineering actually looks like: PLUMBING!
I engineer multi-GTM CRMs for multi-million dollar revenue scaleups.

As a COO deploying AI across entire business functions... it s clear that there a new job in town: Observability! My friends at Eyer are tackling that problem. I struggle with observability and alerting across entire stacks:

- Prosgres
- Azure
- Fillout
- Attio
- n8n
- Gleap
- APIs
and more

The stack is amazing but there is an entire job keeping the machine oiled and ensuring endpoints, webhooks and stuff has lights on.

Any startups out there fixing this problem?

I want a dashboard with all the integrations and connection health and alerts on real time

AI powered Observability. Headless AI powered observability that works with your existing tech stack. Conversational AIOps powered by Claude & MCP. Scalable - Sustainable - Affordable.

Your monitoring stack produces thousands of alerts. 90% are noise. Your team is drowning.

We're hosting a live webinar: Cut Alert Noise by 70% With Your Own Stack

What you'll learn:
- Deploy AI-powered anomaly detection without replacing existing tools
- Integrate with Grafana, Prometheus, Telegraf in hours
- Eliminate false positives through baseline learning
- Route only critical alerts to your team

Bonus for attendees - Free Reliability Maturity Assessment including:
- Online diagnostic with instant maturity score
- Personalized PDF report
- 45-minute consultation ($$$ value)

This is for IT Ops, DevOps, SRE, and manufacturing teams running mission critical systems, or process control environments where alert fatigue kills productivity.

Register: https://shorturl.at/jkhJw

#AIOps #Observability #SRE #DevOps #ITOperations

When Management ask for 200 Metrics a month they are doing Management. When they Get Hands Dirty with 1 Metric that Matters... That s Leadership!

The Venture Studio Forum

Chief Content Officer

9point8 Collective

9point8 supports early stage investors, accelerators, and venture studios through services and technology. We focus on entity design, strategy, talent development, and diligence.

Venture Studio Associates

CogBias AI

Bad questions lead to bad answers which lead to bad decisions. 

Break the cycle.

Ask better questions and see truths hidden in the answers.

CogBias AI is a platform for industry specific application development to detect Cognitive Bias in product development, hiring, legal, healthcare, and marketing research.

Co-Founder - CPO

Savvy Tinkers Studios

We partner with experienced professionals to build AI powered B2B SaaS Startups. Building first portfolio companies now. 

We partner with:
✔️ Experienced professionals with at least 10 years of experience
✔️ A problem they want to solve where they have 3 years of relevant experience

NCR Corporation

Formed the New Ventures Group, a startup studio inspired group focused on delivering early innovations to deployed products. Supported by the CEO, COO, CTO, and business unit GMs on the heals of the success of the launch of the first internal accelerator program.

✔️ Proposed and led NCR’s first accelerator program with the full support of the CEO and ELT. Delivered $90M in revenue from the first cohort with multiple teams taking products to market.
✔️ Launched the New Ventures Group operating as a hybrid startup studio responsible for transitioning multiple concepts to product owners, supported M&A evaluations, and market analysis.
✔️ Provided opportunity and framework to establish partnership to deliver strategic inroads to retail opportunities and new revenue streams worth over $2B.

Innovation Principal

Led innovation efforts across retail, financial, and hospitality lines of businesses. Secured executive support for partnerships and responsible for over 20% of patent filings for FY 2019.

✔️ Proposed an M&A to the CEO, GM of Retail, and Head of M&A backed with a business case that resulted in a partnership agreement with a potential revenue of $80M ARR in year 1. 
✔️ Found a $9B cost savings opportunity in the North American banking industry. Secured over 10 patents, built a business case, and secured executive support to pursue opportunity.
✔️ Trained internal teams on Flashpoint customer discovery techniques to leverage behavioral economics techniques to minimize cognitive bias in customer discovery

Innovation Leader

Providing internal product teams innovation and new product development support during NCR’s transition to an ‘as-a Service’ business model. 

✔️ Joined a team of intrapreneurs participating in the Flashpoint accelerator program, interviewing 175 customers and identifying 10 opportunities worth a deeper look.
✔️ Built the business case for three opportunities in finance and the convenience fuel retail industries, each with a potential of generating more than $100MM in SaaS revenue.
✔️ Led cross-functional hardware and software development teams to architect, prototype, and develop solutions leveraging computer vision, data analysis, deep learning, AI, and mobile development.

Innovation Engineer

Savvy Tinker Consulting

We worked with industry organizations and major investor groups to generate investing, company design frameworks, training, and though leadership content.

✔️ Distilled best practices across Private Equity, Venture Capital, Search Funds, Startup Studios, Accelerators, and Startups for new venture creation processes.
✔️ Adapted a quantitative venture investing approach for the strategic design of new company creation,  product development roadmaps, and focused customer discovery.
✔️ Created an evaluation framework for metal additive manufacturing use cased based by examples and data. 
✔️ Published core market and capabilities analysis on metal additive manufacturing achieving recognition from industry experts.
✔️ Presented findings at LiveWorx in 2018.

Independent Consultant

Flashpoint at Georgia Tech

Sole experienced founder on corporate team participating in the Flashpoint startup accelerator program the focused on adapting and applying behavioral economics and cognitive bias insights to improve the quality of customer discovery and user research in startups and new product development efforts.

✔️ Interviewed 175 customers using behavioral and cognitive bias limiting approaches. 
✔️ Mapped internal and external customer ecosystems to understand factors that shaped customer behavior and decisions.

Intrapreneur, Corporate Innovation Team @ Cohort 8

SPIN Collective Partnership

SPIN Collective was a collection of serial founders offering innovation and special projects consulting.

✔️ Delivered a strategy for $50MM annual cost savings for an agricultural client
✔️ Identified innovation special project opportunities with projected revenues of $500M ARR and $150M ARR respectively.
✔️ Identified a strategic gap in private equity operations strategy to deliver an additional 1-2x multiple through a targeted product innovation strategy based on work from McKinsey.
✔️ Developed financial model for growth value creation based on strategies found in private equity, search funds, venture studios, startup factories, and startup studios.

Innovation Consultant

MatterFab

MatterFab focused on designing industrial metal 3d printers targeting production and industry applications in the injection molding, aerospace, medical, and automotive industries.

✔️ Designed & built multiple prototypes capable of printing +98.5% dense solid stainless steel parts optimizing over process 200 variables.
✔️ Secured $2.5M in LOIs in under 8 weeks from mid-sized businesses and large enterprises.
✔️ Secured strategic partnerships & funded R&D agreements with Fortune 50 company.

Venture Studio Architect - I help you design, launch, and grow your company creation studio.

I’m an entrepreneurial strategy and innovation leader with 20+ years of experience designing and scaling ventures, partnerships, and corporate initiatives that have generated over $500M in strategic value.

As Chief Content Officer at The Venture Studio Forum, I lead the world’s largest global venture studio association—now 400+ members representing $48B+ in value creation across 675 companies and 8 unicorns. I drive content, standards, and community that define the venture studio asset class and position it for institutional adoption.

Previously, I launched NCR’s first internal accelerator—generating $90M from its first cohort—and secured 27+ patents across AI, fintech, and computer vision. I’ve built and scaled startups from zero to funding and strategic partnerships with Fortune 50s, and developed investment and diligence frameworks that institutional investors now use to allocate capital into the studio model.

I work with investors, founders, and innovation leaders to design, launch, and scale venture studios tailored to their goals, environments, and constraints. I bring unmatched breadth of exposure across 500+ global studios to create models that align incentives, avoid fatal design flaws, and drive long-term success.

Let’s connect if you're designing a studio, evaluating the model, or scouting strategic talent to take innovation, venture, or corporate development goals further.

Matthew Burris

Sep 2024: 
Started DM'ing studio operators, investors, and experts on LinkedIn about a crazy idea.

Nov 2024: 
A major studio investor validated the framework. This could actually work.

Dec 2024: 
Created the Venture Studio Index visual. No data yet. Just belief.

Jan 2025: 
Tested the 'Morningstar-inspired' VSI report. Felt like we had something.

Feb 2025: 
Spoke with 20+ studios. The response was clear: the ecosystem needed this.

Mar 2025: 
Soft launched The Venture Studio Forum (VSF). Invite-only. People we knew and trusted.

Apr 2025: 
Official launch + first podcasts. No turning back now.

May 2025: 
Chris Tottman and Michael Jackson shared our newsletter. Major VCs were paying attention. Started building the VSI back end.

Jun 2025: 
Completed the VSI article series. The framework was real.

Jul 2025: 
Hit 500 members for VSF. Published first draft of the VSI. Then... paused the entire VSI production platform. Back to the drawing board.

Aug 2025: Crossed 1,100 VSF members. Launched Research Forum with academic partners.

Sep 2025: VSI Whitepaper released. Multiple LPs now using the framework to evaluate studios.

Oct 2025: Keynoted Tamil Nadu Global Startup Summit. 
30,000+ attendees. Venture studios are going global.

Nov 2025: 1,500+ members worldwide.

Dec 2025: Launched the ecosystem survey with MIT, Harvard, and Stanford. Launched VSF Fellows program.

To every venture studio founder building in the arena: 

We're all writing the playbook together.

For 30 years the venture studio model has been an emerging asset class.

Now we have frameworks, standards, academic partnerships, and LPs using our research.

You either build the infrastructure or you build on top of it. Either way, the category wins.

Keep building. 

Check the featured section to join VSI

Special thanks to:

Sarah Adams Anderson
Denis Kovalevich
Tommy Knoll
Taylor Black
Michael D. Saarinen 
Mark Simoncelli
Ruben Mikkers
Elliott Parker
Michael van Lier
Max Pog
Bpifrance
Vault Fund
Ben Yoskovitz
Marcus Daniels
Marc Wesselink
Andy Walsh
Max Volokhoff
Attila Szigeti
Peter Walker
Dan G.
Jaimie Testai
John-Erik Hassel
Matthias Neumann
Brian Slawin
Paul O'Brien
Neal Ghosh
JT Benton
Evan Allen
Blair Merlino
Lauro Remmler
George H. Brandon
Nicolai Rasmussen
Thorbjørn Rønje
Simon G.
Arsam Homayounfar

matterfab

savvy-tinkers-studios

li_at

JSESSIONID

Talks about #startups, #venturestudio, #startupstudios, #venturecapital, and #productmanagement

I help innovation leaders build venture studios | Senior Director, Research & Data @ Venture Studio Forum | Partner, Head of Insights @ 9point8 Collective | Keynote Speaker | Trusted by 500+ Studios

Studios vs. accelerators vs. VC vs. incubators

One of the simplest ways to compare them? Hands-on support.

Venture capital: maybe 30 minutes per week.

Accelerators: 1–2 hours a week. Mostly group sessions and some limited 1:1.

Incubators: slightly less. Some education, co-working space, network access. But very little operational involvement.

Venture studio: 20 to 100+ hours a week of hands-on execution. 
Real operators. Half a person to an entire team building the business with you.

The range of support isn't even close.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

Model Comparison.pdf

Building a new studio?
Your thesis is weaker than you think.
Here is why and how to fix it.

I pulled the public theses from top U.S. venture studios. Real names, real websites.

Read these and ask yourself: Would this make YOU write a check?

"We partner with incredible entrepreneurs to create, launch, and scale next generation enterprise software companies."

"We work with world-class entrepreneurs to turn the best ideas into market-defining, venture-funded companies with rapid customer adoption."

"We bring ideas, capital, and talent together, partnering with co-founders to build the best ideas into great companies."

"We believe fiercely that human potential can be realized through technology so long as we place what is human at the core."

"Creates ground-breaking companies whose products and services change the way people think, live and work."

All from top U.S. studios. All generic. Soft. Uninspired. Junk.

Here's what emerging managers need to understand: Public examples of theses are terrible examples to learn from.

Most studio theses read like mission statements. Inspiring, but relatively useless in practice.

A real thesis is not branding. It's a decision system.

It should tell you which ideas you pursue, which founders you recruit, which investors you attract, and which capabilities you build internally. If it can't do that, it's not a thesis. It's a paragraph.

The best theses are brutally clear about:

The domain where you believe disproportionate value can be created
The studio's unique role in company formation
Why you win (the proof, not the hope)
The constraints you willingly accept

Example: "We build vertical SaaS for overlooked service industries leveraging our GP's experience building three category leaders generating $750M in annual sales through our deep industry access, GTM expertise, and first customer relationships."

That's 32 words. Clear domain. Named wedge. Specific proof. No fluff.

A studio with a crisp thesis moves faster because it moves intentionally. You know exactly what you're building and why you're the team to build it.

A studio without one drifts, slowly, and then all at once. Every decision becomes a debate. Every pitch becomes improv.

Question for emerging managers: Does your thesis pass the 50-word test? Would an LP remember it after one read?

If you want help crafting a thesis that becomes the backbone of your studio, you can sign up for Studio Foundations today. A 4-week program launching in January 2026 for studios that want clarity, coherence, and investor-ready positioning.

Request access to the waitlist and I'll DM you the link.

I help innovation leaders build venture studios | Director, Research & Data @ Venture Studio Forum | Partner, Head of Insights @ 9point8 Collective | Keynote Speaker | Trusted by 500+ Studios

Imagine a world with Venture Studio Data. Today, that world begins.

The Venture Studio Forum is launching the most comprehensive venture studio survey ever undertaken — aiming for 500+ studios to participate. Built on the Venture Studio Index frameworks and conducted in collaboration with MIT, Harvard, and Stanford researchers on both survey design and data analysis, this survey combines operational data with classification standards to enable rigorous performance analysis across diverse studio strategies.

This survey delivers meaningful insights across:

Researchers: A structured foundation to classify and analyze studios by strategy type.

LPs: Performance benchmarks critical for informed capital allocation.

Operators: Peer data to evaluate and sharpen your operational approach.

Covering legal structures, funding models, governance, geography, and performance metrics, participation grants access to the aggregate findings report, inclusion in the VSF database, and contributes to white papers shaping the asset class.

Studios have until the end of Q1 2026 to participate. The survey takes about one hour.

If you're a studio founder or operator, reserve an hour today to make your voice heard. If not, tag a studio founder who should join. The strength of this dataset depends on full spectrum participation.

Survey launches today, December 2nd: https://lnkd.in/e9uf4gtk

Learn more about the frameworks: 
Venture Studio Index Whitepaper: https://lnkd.in/erZjJvgH
Venture Studio Definition: https://lnkd.in/eyJC7mAG
Cost Structure Model: https://lnkd.in/eQwjCZVp


My asks?

Tag a studio founder or studio that needs to participate.

Share this with your network - DM or Repost.

We’d appreciate your help spreading the word to grow this important resource!

#VentureStudios #Innovation #Startups #VentureStudioResearch

Global Venture Studio Survey Launches. Venture Studio Forum, MIT, Harvard, and Stanford Researchers in collaboration.

Venture studios aren’t VC

So why should we try to fit them inside VC frameworks?

The carousel below explains why this is the case (and breaks down an alternative model for venture studios instead).

For more on studio structures, capital efficiency, and the case for new frameworks for venture studios… DM/Comment “VSF” to join the venture studio forum (a community for the venture studio ecosystem)

Venture Studios Aren’t  VC Funds.pdf

Corporate Venture Capital doesn’t go far enough  
but Corporate Venture Studios might be the solution  

Corporate development teams have long had two key levers: 

They can buy (M&A) 
OR 
They can partner (Corporate Venture Capital).

But there’s a third move many overlook: the build function.

That’s where venture studios come in.

When buying isn’t the answer and there’s no clear partner to invest in,
but the opportunity is strategically important… a venture studio fills the gap.

It allows corporate development to take action on what doesn’t yet exist in-market.

With a venture studio, the corporation can build it themselves, driven by strategy, owned internally, and guided by market need.

It fits neatly between M&A and venture investing.

More importantly, it expands the strategic toolkit of corporate development itself.

Why does this work so well?

Because corporate development already has alignment with the internal strategy. 

They have access to budget. And they know what strategic bets need to be made.

That makes them the ideal home for a venture studio.

It’s not about replacing M&A or venture; it’s about completing the playbook.

With a strong buy, partner, and now build function, Corporate Venture Studios unlock new levels of flexibility and scale.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

Why CVC doesn’t go far enough.pdf

Thinking about starting a venture studio?

There are a few ways you can structure the capital. And each has its own trade-offs:

1. Raise capital into a holding company.

2. Raise money as a traditional venture fund.

3. Raise in to a dual-entity model.

4. Raise inside portfolio companies

5. No capital raise, just use profitable cash flow

Each model has its place.

Your access to capital, network, and timing will help determine the right one.

If you want to know more about their pros and cons, be sure to check the carousel below.

P.S. Follow for more Venture Studio insights

Capital structure options.pdf

Venture Studios are on the rise

And more and more investors, entrepreneurs,
and top operators are looking into them

One reason being the success
that this model is experiencing

Speaking of which…

Here are 6 Venture Studio success stories
(And the valuation of their companies)

P.S. I’ll be sharing case studies on each of these studios and their startups

In case of interest:
follow me at Matthew Burris

6 Venture Studio Success Stories.pdf

Shuping D.

Your corp dev team closes deals brilliantly. What happens when there's nothing worth buying?

Corporate development teams excel at "buy" through sophisticated M&A and "partner" through strategic alliances and corporate venture capital. Yet most lack systematic "build" capabilities for creating new companies from scratch.

This gap becomes expensive when attractive markets lack suitable acquisition targets, partnership opportunities don't materialize, or organic development faces resource conflicts with existing business units.

Venture studios complete corporate development's strategic framework. They provide the missing "build" capability that turns corp dev from a reactive deal-making function into a proactive growth engine.
But most corporate venture studios don't report into corporate development. 

The Global Corporate Venture Builder 2025 report reveals fragmented starting points: 29% initially report to chief innovation officers, 30% to CEOs, 23% to chief strategy officers, and only 22% to corporate venturing heads.

This organizational misalignment creates predictable problems. Innovation teams lack M&A expertise. Strategy teams lack operational resources. CEO direct reports face competing priorities.

Corporate development already owns the strategic framework for evaluating markets, assessing competitive dynamics, and determining capital deployment. Adding systematic company building completes the picture.

The companies that figure this out first will amplify their innovation, corporate venturing, and M&A efforts simultaneously. The ones that don't will keep watching competitors acquire the companies they should have built themselves.

Read the full analysis in this week's newsletter.

Where does venture building sit in your organization?

You spent 3 months researching venture studios.
You still don't know how to build one.

I see this pattern constantly with exited founders.

Studied the top studios. 
Joined the Slack groups. 
You've read every article you can find. 
You understand the model intellectually.
But when it's time to actually build?

You don't know which ideas to pursue. You can't articulate why an LP should back you over a traditional fund. Your thesis sounds like everyone else's. 

You're guessing at equity splits. Your financial model is a hope-filled spreadsheet.

The problem isn't more research. It's that venture studios require a different operating system than anything you've built before.

You're simultaneously an investor, entrepreneur, and operator. Most founders overweight one dimension and starve the others—killing the model before it starts.

After analyzing 500+ studios through the Venture Studio Index, we identified the exact frameworks that separate studios that raise capital from studios that drift.

Studio Foundations is a 4-week intensive program that gives you:
→ A thesis that actually guides decisions (not just branding)
→ An ecosystem map that reveals your structural advantages
→ A venture creation funnel with stage gates and kill criteria
→ Financial models that show LPs you understand the arbitrage
→ Deal structures that balance all four customer groups
→ Direct feedback on your artifacts from practitioners who've built this

This isn't theory. It's the condensed playbook from decades of pattern recognition across the ecosystem.

We're launching our pilot cohort. Limited to founders serious about building investor-ready studios, not lifestyle projects.

Here's how this works:

Tell me in the comments or via DM:

Where are you in your studio journey? (researching, pre-launch, launched but struggling)
What's your #1 challenge right now?

If it's a fit, I'll send you the details.
If I can help, I will.

Most studios don't fail because of weak ideas. 
They fail because governance doesn't fit the mission.

Mark Simoncelli, former CRO of Mach49, captures the fundamental problem facing corporate venture studios: "You cannot ask a team to act like entrepreneurs and then govern them like a corporate project. The parent company often keeps too much control or pushes for short term results, which removes the flexibility a studio needs to succeed."

The GCV 2025 report confirms internal stakeholder management ranks among the most frequent challenges within corporate studios.

Here's the Corporate Control Paradox in action:
Your procurement process takes 90-120 days for vendor evaluation. 
Your venture needs to deploy tools in 1-7 days to test and pivot.

The opportunity cost of that delay exceeds procurement savings by 10-50x.

This pattern repeats across every operational area:
HR: 60-90 day hiring cycles vs. 14-21 day offer-to-hire needs
Legal: Months waiting for approval while competitors capture market position
Decision authority: Velocity reduced 5-10x with multi-layer approvals

Only 20% of corporate studios offer startup equity. This single constraint significantly limits talent attraction—the most common challenge among corporate studios.

Simoncelli describes the solution as operating at "two speeds":
"One moves quickly for venture building, guided by milestones and market validation. The other checks in periodically for strategic fit. The boundaries should be clear from the start, and then the team needs freedom to execute within them."

The balance Simoncelli emphasizes:
"The strongest ventures work with their parent company, not despite it. When ventures have access to brand, customers, and talent combined with autonomy, they gain real advantages. But it is a balance. Too much integration leads to incremental ideas. Too much distance and the venture loses momentum."

This week's newsletter breaks down the complete governance framework—from structural separation to board composition to delegation frameworks that enable speed while maintaining strategic alignment.

Read the full article below.

How Corporate Venture Studios Navigate the Tension Between Speed and Control Corporate venture studios face a fundamental challenge that determines su

Open article: The Governance Framework for Corporate Venture Studios: Balancing Autonomy with Strategic Alignment by Matthew Burris • 18 min read

The Governance Framework for Corporate Venture Studios: Balancing Autonomy with Strategic Alignment

Most venture studio "data" is weak.
Tiny data sets positioned as benchmarks.
And that is why LPs still hesitate. 👇 

A handful of data points is not enough to base an allocation strategy on, even if it is quality data.

They don’t fund "vibes." They fund asset classes with proven unit economics.

If we want to stop being treated like a science experiment and start being treated like a legitimate Asset Class, we have to show our work.

We have the Frameworks. 
Now we need the raw numbers.
The Venture Studio Forum has partnered with researchers from MIT, Harvard, and Stanford to build the definitive dataset for our industry.

This isn't a vanity survey.
It is the engineering blueprint for the next decade of company creation.

We are targeting 500+ studios. We need your data to build the benchmarks that will unlock institutional capital for everyone.

If you are a serious operator, get in the count.

Tag the most serious Studio Operator you know in the comments. 
The one who is heads-down building infrastructure.
Not the loudest one. 

We need their data to build the benchmarks that will unlock institutional capital for everyone.

If you want the data to exist, you have to help us find the source.

P.S. Link to the survey is in the comments. Don’t wait for Q1.

Be sure to follow me to see the results of the survey.

Global Venture Studio Survey with MIT, Harvard, and Stanford Researchers

The four customers framework conflict for University led Venture studios

There are four core customers in any studio:

1. Investors
2. Studio staff and GPs
3. Entrepreneurs
4. Follow-on capital

But when a university launches a studio, they often end up playing the role of:

✅ Investor → by funding the initial studio build  
✅ Operator → by staffing and running the studio themselves  
✅ Entrepreneur → by pushing university-owned IP into the pipeline

That’s three out of four roles, each with different needs, incentives, and success metrics.

And if all those roles are optimized for the university?

You risk misaligned comp for GPs, unattractive deal terms for founders, and a cap table that puts off follow-on investors.

In short, unintentionally sabotaging the studio’s success.

Anyone designing a Venture Studio inside a university needs to be mindful of the conflicts that arise when one party fills multiple customer roles.

It’s not about avoiding involvement, it’s about designing responsibly.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

The 4 customers framework(universities).pdf

Your team spent millions on market research this year. Did any of it arrive before the decision was already made?

Most corporate market research suffers from fundamental limitations. Survey methodologies capture stated preferences rather than actual purchase decisions. Partnership evaluations rely on incomplete information. M&A targeting gets guided by theoretical analyses instead of ground truth customer insights.

The result: research that arrives too late, lacks useful product and customer level insights, and misses what actually drives purchase decisions.

An emerging approach is changing how sophisticated organizations generate competitive intelligence. Corporate venture studios systematically capture and analyze thousands of real customer conversations, creating proprietary market understanding that informs decisions across corporate development, strategy, innovation, and product functions.

This represents far more than improved market research. It creates a strategic intelligence engine that operates at the "moment of truth" inside actual customer purchase decisions rather than observing from the outside.

The scale creates powerful competitive advantage. A well-designed venture studio intelligence engine processes thousands of structured customer conversations annually, each following proven discovery methodologies that extract maximum insight about customer needs, purchase processes, competitive alternatives, and willingness to pay.

The rise of corporate venture building has accelerated dramatically. According to the Global Corporate Venture Builder 2025 report, roughly one third of corporations with investment arms now create ventures from within. The Wharton School's Mack Institute estimates over 20% of Global 500 companies engage in venture building.

Read the full breakdown in this week's newsletter.

Who have you overcome the intelligence gathering challenge in corporate innovation and venture building?

The 4 Customer Framework Conflict For Corporate Led Venture Studios

Corporate Studios Self Sabotage.
They are their own customer.
And don’t see what kills them.

Corporate venture studios are complex by design.

The Four Customer Framework becomes critical when one of those customers plays multiple roles, especially the corporate parent.

In a typical corporate venture studio, the company might:

✅ Be the sole funder  
✅ Provide or hire the staff and GPs  
✅ Choose the entrepreneurs or pull them from internal teams  
✅ Reabsorb portfolio companies instead of spinning them out

That means the corporation is acting as the studio investor, operator, entrepreneur, and follow on capital source, all at once.

This destroys the essential tension between customer roles.

For example:

- Staff compensation is aligned with parent company metrics, not venture success.  
- Entrepreneurs may not receive equity in what they're building.  
- Portfolio companies aren't structured to survive outside the parent if they need to.

Even worse, if follow-on capital isn’t part of the design, the portfolio isn’t built for market reality. 

So if a company needs to spin out, not in, you’re scrambling to redesign it.

That’s when a venture studio is set up to fail, even before launch.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

The 4 CF Conflict For Corporate Venture Studios.pdf

University IP doesn't die in the valley of death. 
It dies from lack of a champion.

Here's the uncomfortable truth about why most university innovation stalls:
The academic researcher—brilliant, world-class—often doesn't care about commercial impact.

Publications? Yes. Citations? Absolutely. Tenure track? Critical.
Building a company? Career risk.

And when they do care, they're often championing innovations with no market potential. Because they're subject matter experts, not market experts.

But here's the structural problem underneath it all:
No single entity at the university has the mandate—and the capability—to go end-to-end. To identify the right IP, build the company, recruit the team, secure the capital, and set it up for success outside the university walls.

Tech transfer gets close. But they stop at licensing. Someone else has to build it.

That's the gap a university venture studio fills. 
End-to-end accountability. 
End-to-end execution.
Not handoffs. Ownership.

What's the biggest handoff gap you've seen in university commercialization—either at your institution or others you've observed?

Drop a comment or DM me—I'll share our report on how universities are building single-accountability systems.

Elevating the Venture Studio Ecosystem | $500M+ Strategic Impact | M&A, Innovation & AI | Trusted by 500+ Studios

I entered 2025 with a lot of unknowns. I'm leaving 2025 with a great team by my side, meaningful progress on advancing venture studios as an asset class, and the foundation to make 2026 an absolute breakout year.

A huge thanks to the rest of the 9point8 Collective team JT Benton Neal Ghosh Blair Merlino and Evan Allen. What we achieve together is vastly greater than what we can achieve independently.

Open article: The Rundown - December 2025 by 9point8 Collective • 3 min read

Corporate Venture Studio vs. Corporate Venture Capital 

A surprising stat:

Around a third of corporations with Corporate Venture Capital also have a Venture Studio.

Both serve different purposes, and they're distinct operationally, strategically, and financially.

Corporate VC is about gaining strategic access to an external startup, one that the corporation might one day acquire, partner with, or monitor closely.

A Venture Studio works differently, Instead of buying in, you’re building from the ground up. 

Usually in a category where the corporation already has deep industry knowledge.

Two powerful tools, but useful for very different parts of the corporate growth strategy.

For more in depth comparison, check the carousel below

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

CVS vs. CVC.pdf

Fastest way to validate your Venture Studio

Start with your thesis.

It should clearly define the domain where you have an unfair advantage and where real value can be created.

Then pressure test three things:

1. Does the thesis match the opportunities in that space?
2. Are you the right team to go after it?
3. Can this actually produce venture-scale returns?

Use your track record as proof.

As entrepreneurs: what have you built?
As operators: what results have you delivered?
As investors: have you made sound bets in this space before?

The next step is market-fit for your studio strategy.

If you're targeting an industry like sports, be specific.

Who are you building for?
What types of companies?

Make sure the market is big enough to support multiple venture-scale businesses. 

If not, make sure your return profile still lines up with your strategy.

Talk to potential investors. Talk to founders.

Forget pitching, ask for critique. 

Listen closely. 

They’ll tell you if the model makes sense long before they write a check.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

Fastest way to validate your Venture Studio.pdf

Excited to join this speaker lineup in Vienna with other venture studio luminaries!

Innovator, Strategist, Corporate Venturing | MD @ whataventure fund

Excited to share what we’ve put together for the Venture Mindset conference in Vienna this January!
On January 15, we will be hosting a session on company creation funds as part of the company creation fund track. I have had the pleasure of curating the line-up and am genuinely proud of the group we’re bringing together. Experts with an exciting track record from the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, all with strong perspectives on how studios, funds and corporates are building new ventures.

The session theme:
Beyond capital – the new era of company creation

On stage with us, besides Stefan Peintner and me Matthias Hille:
• Matthew Burris (USA) – On how the studio model drives better venture performance and capital efficiency
• Michael van Lier (NL) – Lessons from running a studio and scaling a venture portfolio
• Florian Fischer (DE) – Why VCs are increasingly backing and co-investing with venture studios
• Dr. Felix Lau Lau (DE) – The operator perspective from inside the studio
• Jonas Krensler (CH) – How corporates set the right expectations when choosing venturing as an innovation vehicle
• Matthias Hille (AT/DE) – Our take at whataventure fund: building multiple ventures in one vertical with corporate partners

We’ll wrap up with a panel and Q&A moderated by Stefan Peintner!
📆  15th January 2026, 14:30–16:00
📌  Vienna, part of The Venture Mindset conference (13–15 Jan)

Looking forward to the conversations. Join us if you’re working on building new companies or designing the vehicles that make it possible.

#VentureMindset #CompanyCreation #VentureStudios #VC #CorporateInnovation #VentureBuilding

taplio

The Battle

Martin Gallardo

Matthew Burris

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMartin Gallardo's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMatthew Burris's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Martin Gallardo

Matthew Burris

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Martin Gallardo's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMatthew Burris's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMartin Gallardo's LinkedIn Performance