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

Most innovation programs fail not because of lack of ideas, but because they lack a system for venture creation.

I help innovation leaders in corporations, universities, and economic development organizations build venture studios that scale and deliver. Backed by data, frameworks, and insights from studying over 500 venture studios globally.

As Senior Director of Research & Data at the Venture Studio Forum, I'm building the empirical backbone of the venture studio asset class. VSF is a 501(c)(6) trade association representing 1,500+ members who have built 650+ companies, 11 unicorns, and $48 billion in enterprise value.

My work establishes venture studios as a formal asset class through:

-Asset Class Analysis in partnership with MIT and Harvard, delivering the first institutionally credible research for LPs and institutional investors
-The Venture Studio Index (VSI) — the first open standard and formal definition for venture studios
-Studio Data Platform (2026) providing structured datasets and benchmarks for researchers and operators
-State of the Studio Report (2026) tracking trends, performance, and sector segmentation
-Policy recommendations for state and federal innovation agencies

Concurrently, as Partner and Head of Insights at 9point8 Collective, I translate this research into practice. We've designed and launched 25+ venture studios. Our approach builds clarity, alignment, and momentum at the intersection of innovation, capital, and impact.

I've spent 20+ years at the intersection of innovation, strategy, and venture building. I launched NCR's first internal accelerator (generating $90M from its first cohort), secured 27+ patents across AI and fintech, and developed investment frameworks that institutional investors now use to allocate capital into the studio model.

Speaking & Workshops: I deliver keynotes and workshops on designing high-performing venture studios, the future of venture creation ecosystems, and turning knowledge engines into commercial engines.

🎤 Book me to speak: VentureStudioForum.org/speaking
 📊 Learn from our research: newsletter.venturestudioforum.org
 🌍 Join the community: venturestudioforum.org
 💼 Work with us: 9point8collective.com

Matthew Burris

Venture Studios have a 100x advantage over accelerators and venture funds.

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

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• Created an Elevator Pitch for Bob Kagle, founder of Benchmark Capital and Kettering Alum, to be an intern at the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as a freshman
• Received an offer for $2M to pursue technology platform that would increase the capability and improve alignment between Semiconductor and MEMS technology

Completed all coursework and received MBA while working overseas in the Middle East on a three year continuous deployment.

IEEE

National Defense Industrial Organization

Product Development & Management Association

Navigation Institute

Monitoring of a project by video analysis

Voice-based Transaction Terminal Ordering

Dual Control Security Processing

Internet-of-things (IoT) enabled lock with management platform processing

Secure Zone Access Control

Visual-based security compliance processing

Secure zone monitor

Laser sintering apparatus and methods

Cartridge for an additive manufacturing apparatus and method

Apparatus and methods for manufacturing

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

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.

Resources by Matthew Burris

Access studio expertise at scale. Our paid membership provides direct support, fractional guidance, and group sessions that effectively create advisory support from experienced studio builders, operators, and other studio operating partners.

We're talking about fundraising guidance, operational insights, legal structure frameworks, and deck reviews from experts who've built successful studios.

Join us in defining and elevating the venture studio asset class.

Join the Venture Studio Forum

The Venture Studio Perspective Newsletter

Burris organized, facilitated, and mentored at Startup Weekends across Indiana, working with over 450 aspiring entrepreneurs to turning their ideas in to viable businesses that resulted in more than $1M in investment from investors such as Mark Cuban. 

Model Comparison.pdf

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

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 Studios are surprisingly common in major corporations. 

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

Emerging venture studios often struggle to get off the ground.

And the reason for that is because they never solved the fundamental question:

Who are they really building for?

Venture studios have 4 “customers”:

→ Investors
→ Founders
→ Internal team
→ Follow-on capital

And optimizing for one can break another.

A studio that maximizes investor money without thinking through operating needs often ends up overbuilt and unfocused.

A studio that designs everything for founders may land early talent but struggle to raise sustainable capital.

A studio that assumes follow-on VCs will just show up rarely survives past Fund I.

And the studios that work, start with alignment.

They know what kind of investor they want (and what kind they don’t).

They design an operating model that delivers real support, without getting in the way.

They define what types of entrepreneurs they’re built to serve and what types they should avoid.

And they’re clear-eyed about the follow-on capital they’re targeting, so they can reverse engineer the conditions for it to show up.

Lastly: 

For investors evaluating studios, those 4 customers are a simple lens that cuts through the pitch decks.

→ Does the model make sense for the capital, the people, and the downstream funding?
→ Or is someone subsidizing someone else?

Too many firms focus on perfecting one relationship.

The best ones get the balance right.

Practical Applications for Studio Design and Due Diligence.pdf

6 Common venture studio design mistakes

1. Incorporating Fund Too Soon
2. Picking the Wrong Follow-on Capital
3. Picking the Wrong Founder Archetype
4. Raising Capital Too Early
5. Designing Something Too Fancy
6. Pitching the Model Instead of Yourself

For more in depth breakdown, check the carousel below

The more focused you are early, the better your odds.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

6 Common Mistakes Venture Studios Make Too Early.pdf

In June 2023, Business Insider reported tensions at the venture studio Fractal, where several founders said they had been “blacklisted” by later-stage investors.

That report set off a chain of closer analysis.

Here’s a case study, grounded in public information, that revealed there deeper design issue:

1) Follow-on Capital: 

Fractal promised founders that their companies could raise a Series A just 12 months after launch. 

That’s nearly 4x faster than the average startup timeline and half the time most venture studios take. 

Investors weren’t open to the companies that clearly were not ready for that stage.

2) Founder Incentives: 

Press reports suggest entrepreneurs held only ~15% equity. 

That made it harder to attract strong founding teams, and triggered concern from later-stage capital about founder incentives.

3) Operational Load: 

Spinning up one company per week with 100 staff reduced support per venture to ~2 full-time equivalents, assuming zero admin and operations overhead.

For an equity stake that was greater than a cofounder stake, the equity studio took didn’t match the operational lift they provided.

4)  Market Misalignment: 

Fractal’s thesis focused on “boring markets with unicorn potential,” but their target VC investors weren’t aligned with that narrative. 

Founders were caught in the middle.

None of these elements would have sunk the model individually.

But venture studios are integrated systems. 

When any one stakeholder group isn’t aligned, founders, investors, or internal teams, the consequences ripple through all of them.

And when alignment fails at multiple levels, the venture studio model breaks.

The Fractal Case Study.pdf

I'll be moderating at the Virtual VC Conf on March 31. Topic: “The Cap Table Problem: Do Venture Studios Make Startups Uninvestable for VCs?”  Join me and register free here:  https://vcconf.com?32

Launching startups🚀 without breaking their Piggy Bank. With SaaS, GenAI & fractional CTO services clients save up to 69% on development costs & secure $2.3M to $15.5M➕ within 1 year of funding through product consulting

Hey there, I’m Mohit – the guy who decided that tech headaches for startups were a thing of the past. 

Are you tired of wrestling with overpriced and unclear software development partnerships? 

I get it. 

That frustration is precisely why I founded SolutionValley.

Every day, founders reach out, fed up with their current software partners—overcharging, delays, and lackluster results. 

But what if you could experience top-notch quality, on-time delivery, stellar customer service, and transparency at a reasonable cost?

SolutionValley is the answer.

From the first day of my corporate job 13 years ago to this successful venture.

I've assisted over 40 U.S. companies in Mortgage, Healthcare, FinTech, and Education to build cutting-edge custom software, fostering growth and productivity.

Why Choose SolutionValley?

✅  Reliability
✅  On-Time Delivery
✅  Uncompromising Quality
✅  Cost-Effective Custom Development
✅  Dedicated Development Team Focused on Your Success

Let's Talk Software Solutions

If you're ready to elevate your business through high-quality software, let's connect. 

Book a call here or drop me a DM / email at mohitsrivastava@solutionvalley.com.

For meeting booking: https://calendly.com/mohitsrivastava/15min

My Expertise:

✓ Leadership/Team Building:
Global tech leader adept at scaling diverse teams in IT operations, Engineering, and Cybersecurity.

✓ Digital Transformation:
Crafted strategic IT roadmaps, optimizing processes across multiple industries.

✓ M&A and Partnerships:
Led IT integrations for strategic acquisitions, driving substantial savings.

✓ Security, Risk & Compliance:
Developed comprehensive cybersecurity programs, ensuring business continuity.

✓ Crisis Management:
Enabled seamless remote work during COVID-19 with zero downtime.

Let's shape the future of your business together.

Mohit Srivastava

My pitch was weak.

It sounded smart.

It still lost.

I used to sell features like a menu.

More buttons.
More dashboards.
More integrations.

I thought the build was the product.

Then I watched a friend raise $1.2M with 9 slides and a plain demo.

He did one thing I did not.

He sold the bet.

People buy the bet, not the build.

Here is the framework that fixed my pitch.

It has 3 parts:

Why-you proof
Why-now trigger
Why-market math

1. Why-you proof

This answers one thing.

You can win this.

Not because you want it.

Because you have unfair leverage.

In my last pitch, I said.

I have 10 years in the space.

Nobody cared.

In the next pitch, I said.

I ran ops for 42 clinics.
I saw 1,300 no-shows a month.
I built the workaround in spreadsheets for 3 years.
I already have 18 buyers waiting.

That is why-you proof.

2. Why-now trigger

This makes the buyer feel the clock.

Not hype.
Not fear.

A real shift.

In our case it was simple.

Labor costs jumped.
Margins got thin.
Teams stopped tolerating manual work.

The old way became too expensive.

That is why-now.

3. Why-market math

This makes the bet feel inevitable.

Not big words.

Clean numbers.

We showed this:

There are 11,000 target clinics.
Average value is $6,000 a year.
That is a $66M reachable market.

Then we went smaller.

We only need 120 clinics to hit $720K ARR.

That is market math.

One more thing.

Every pitch has a fuzzy part.

The part you avoid.

The part you hope nobody notices.

For me it was distribution.

So I named it.

Our bet is that partners drive 60% of signups.
We already have 4 partners.
They reach 2,800 clinics.
We convert 3% in 12 months.

When you say the fuzzy part out loud.

You stop sounding like a builder.

You start sounding like a founder.

Sell the bet.

Then build the proof.

--

♻️ Repost if you believe startups can create billion-dollar products without a big team or budget. 

✚ Follow Mohit Srivastava for entrepreneurial insights and execution tips. 

My goal is to inspire one founder each day to use AI profitably, helping them save money along the way.

You’re not early.

You’re finally able.

And that changes everything.

I learned this the hard way while building a product for my client :( that “launched too soon.”

We kept saying the same line.

“We’re early.”

It sounded smart.

It was also lazy.

Because timing is not a calendar story.

Timing is a capability story.

The market does not move when people agree with you.

It moves when something new becomes possible.

New behavior.
New tech.
New distribution.

One new capability can turn a “nice idea” into a must-have.

Here is the shift that fixed our messaging in 14 days.

We stopped pitching the future.

We named the new capability users just gained.

This is the simple framework I now use:

1. New behavior
↳ People started doing the thing without being forced.
↳ Example: Teams now work async by default, not as a backup.
↳ In our onboarding, completion jumped from 38% to 61% when we wrote for that reality.

2. New tech
↳ The cost dropped, the speed improved, or the setup became simple.
↳ Example: AI turned a 2-hour task into a 6-minute workflow.
↳ When the time-to-value fell under 10 minutes, trials converted 1.7x better.

3. New distribution
↳ The path to users changed.
↳ Example: One app store listing, one template gallery, one creator channel.
↳ One partner email drove 23% of our monthly signups because the channel finally fit the product.

Then we asked one brutal internal line.

What can our users do today that they could not do last year.

We wrote that sentence everywhere.

Homepage.
Demo.
Sales deck.
First email.

Not “we are early.”

But “you can now.”

That is what makes people lean in.

Remember:

If you sound early, you sound optional.

If you sound like a new capability, you sound inevitable.

--

♻️ Repost if you believe startups can create billion-dollar products without a big team or budget. 

✚ Follow Mohit Srivastava for entrepreneurial insights and execution tips. 

My goal is to inspire one founder each day to use AI profitably, helping them save money along the way.

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The Battle

Matthew Burris

Mohit Srivastava

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

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