Data methodology and limitations
How we created Venture Studio Index and what the data means
Venture Studio Index is a free, public database of venture studios and their startups.
The public database is available here, and includes the following information on hundreds of venture studios and their startups:
Venture Studios: Name, website, VC affiliation (if any), website, LinkedIn, # employees, date founded, city, state, country
Venture Studio Startups: Name, studio, description, date founded, amount raised, Crunchbase profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, website, # employees, end customer, industry, city, state and country
Data definitions and sources
Venture studios:
Name: name of the studio
Website: primary URL of the studio
Affiliation: name of the VC firm, corporate or government entity with which the studio is affiliated (e.g., Menlo Ventures for Menlo Labs, BCG for BCG Digital Ventures); blank if no affiliation
LinkedIn: LinkedIn company profile URL of the studio
# Employees: number of people currently employed at the studio, excluding anyone currently employed at their startups.
# Employee note: “Per LinkedIn” if the # employees listed on LinkedIn accurately reflects the count of people currently working full time at the studio. In certain cases, studios include advisors and employees of their startups among their LinkedIn employees, in which case we manually attempt to filter them out or locate another source of employee count such as the studio webpage, and noted accordingly
Founded: date the venture studio was founded. When only year is available, January 1st is used as month and day
City, State and Country: the location of the primary HQ of the studio. State available only for US based studios
Venture studio startups:
Name: name of startup
Studio: name of studio that launched the startup. If a startup was incubated by more than one studio, the startup is duplicated once for each studio
Description: short description for the startup
Founded: date the startup was founded. When only year is available, January 1st is used as month and day
Amount raised: total dollars raised in USD, per Crunchbase
Crunchbase: the URL of the Crunchbase profile for the startup
LinkedIn: the LinkedIn company profile URL of the startup
Website: primary URL of the startup
# Employees: number of people currently employed at the startup, per LinkedIn
End customer: “Business” for B2B companies, “Consumer” for B2C companies. Websites that monetize via advertising, but tailor content primarily to consumers, are listed as “Consumer.” Startups that serve influencers, creators or individual entrepreneurs are listed as “Business”
Industry: industry listed on the LinkedIn company profile of the startup
City, State and Country: the location of the primary HQ of the startup. State available only for US based startups
Status: “Active” for currently operating startups, “Closed” for startups who are shut down or whose website is no longer active, “Acquired” for startups who have been acquired (confirmed via press release or Crunchbase)
Methodology and limitations
This data was collected manually by a team of researchers familiar with venture capital and the technology startup ecosystem, starting in July 2022.
We identify venture studios via online research and industry conversations.
We define a venture studio as a firm who ideates, builds, and launches new startups. We include venture capital firms (who invest in external companies), whether or not they run an official studio arm, provided they also incubate companies. We include product agencies (who are paid by external clients), provided they also incubate and invest in their own startups.
We include in our list of startups only companies incubated by studios and exclude any external investments or client projects.
The data is subject to the following limitations:
Some venture studios keep their startups in stealth until they raise external funding, others choose never to announce them for strategic reasons. Affiliations in these cases are difficult to identify and we were not able to find all of them
The industry of a startup listed on LinkedIn is not mutually exclusive / collectively exhaustive. For example, software companies helping marketers may be classified as “marketing,” “internet marketing” or “software development,” depending on the choice of the startup. Until we implement a more robust industry classification, we suggest you to utilize your own industry framework appropriate for your analysis
We believe we are covering the majority of, but not all, studios and their startups. We are currently missing most startups incubated inside venture capital firms who do not run a formal venture studio
We are continually adding to our database based on findings from our research team and community. For additions and feedback, email data@venturestudioindex.com or leave a comment in the database.