21 Comments

Great stuff!

What are your thoughts about startup studios vs holding companies?

In other words, is there a reason you chose the startup studio route instead of just acquiring already existing businesses?

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As startups become more homogenous (they mostly already are), the process learning curve becomes more and more important. It makes a lot of sense that by eliminating that you can improve chances for success. The one place I think the Studio model suffers is that they are by definition generalists - many of the most transformative startups come from earned insights: people inside industries that understand things in a way not apparent to the outside world. That specialized knowledge can be key to unlocking markets and change.

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Greg, this is exactly what we are trying to build. We call ourselves a Digital Venture Firm. (Studio would be better.) We built about 30 products for other people and 8 for ourselves. I am interested to know of other companies then the ones you listed above would fit the mold so I can study them more. Metalab (Tiny) and BCGDV were the two we modeled our new website off of - but do you know others?

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This is mostly fall into a business design and design process. there is a fallacy that most people look at designers just designers by putting wireframe togethers, even designers look at themselves that way. Designers are makers, thinkers, concept builders, researchers, testers, idea generators, and business oriented. that is at least how I see myself.

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I really like how much you're focusing on the studio process at the moment.

It makes a lot of sense, as no-code and other developer tools mean ideas can rapidly build products that are sophisticated enough to experiment with and validate. But there are limits.

My opinion (as someone working at a product studio) is that we step in when:

a) it's time to make your no-code solution into a business

b) you're a startup with a great idea and enough capital to build from scratch and iterate over time

c) you're a corporate innovation department with an idea but are unsure about the startup approach, how to build and ensure quality (e.g. integration, scalability, data structure, generally not having crappy spaghetti code), and how to launch, grow and potentially spin out when you don't have the full corporate safety net.

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this is great!

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Become your own VC ! Great advice here.

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Psyched reading this

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Pi is a very good app

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Why something is telling me that's the future of studios will be community-first.

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Nice post!

But I still can’t find the fastest way to establish a couple of dozens of targeted custdev interviews in any industry.

I think it’s a major step before launching an MVP.

Any thoughts?

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Thought provoking concept

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Speaking of communities, I've recently researched some Reddit alternatives (As in, Reddit but without the jerks) — Gave https://upstract.com a try and really liked their approach of small but smart.

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this is interesting, how do team members get assigned or earn shares for each project they work on?

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How do you structure the 30 day sprint positioning and expectations? I've run a services business for 4-5 years, still struggle with the right mix of terms and structure.

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@greg - with this structure, are you aiming to hit it out of the park on every product or looking to organically build something akin to Tiny Capital - a group of small (read: not unicorns) businesses around a topic. A modern-day, internet-based conglomerate.

What's a good outcome for one of these businesses? $1m ARR? Or is that too small? Will you abandon products where there is a product-market fit, but the TAM is too small for venture?

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