This week: valuation of a studio, stealth startups, new academic research - July 21, 2022
Also: we found 65 more venture studios and 311 more startups
Venture studio news
New research paper suggests VCs overly rely on founder background when making investment decisions. One skepticism against venture studios is whether they can recruit high quality founders, who may instead prefer a larger stake by launching independently. This new research is potentially bullish on venture studios who invest across market selection and product development, in addition to founder recruitment. (University of Chicago, Matt Levine)
Morgan Stanley equity research on Rocket Internet. Rocket incubates European versions of proven US-based ecommerce business models, and is one of the most successful venture studios of all time. This equity research is old, from back when Rocket was a public company, but useful in seeing how wall street valued a venture studio platform. MS initially valued the studio platform (excluding any equity stakes), at 1x Rocket’s cash balance. Later they cut Rocket’s price target and valued the studio platform at zero. Rocket eventually de-listed, preferring private funds. (Morgan Stanley Equity Research - 2015, 2017)
Long thread debating ideal tech stack for a new venture studio. (Reddit)
Podcast interview with Patrick Chun, founding partner of Juxtapose (founded Orchard, Tend). Detailed discussion of their process, including observations, insights, obsolete assumptions, diligence, prototyping and founder recruitment. (The Consumer VC)
New roles at studios and pre-launch startups
Operator in residence - Alley Corp (founded MongoDB, Nomad Health and Zola)
Product lead (Stealth Startup) - Atomic (founded Bungalow, Hims, OpenStore and Replicant)
Future CEO for a pre-launch designer interviewing startup - Pioneer Square Labs (founded Boundless)
From the JD: “Critt.io closes the design hiring gap (and is more fun!). PSL has created an MVP async video review platform where designers can apply to job postings via video...Then, a panel of world-class designers reviews the submission and gives feedback via our slack-like "Critt Stream." The artifacts produced by the applicant and review panel provide a new level of visibility and discovery for hiring teams….Currently, we are piloting the product with three startups and one enterprise-size company.”
Database additions
This week we added 65 additional venture studios and 311 startups to the database, which now totals 173 studios and 853 startups.
Please note many recently launched studios and startups are still in stealth, so recent years are understated.
Notable studio additions:
Studio team of 63, founded in 2017, based in Berlin
Startups include Carrot, Mmhmm and Salty. 11 total startups, raised $337mm, employing 686 people
Studio team of 20, founded in 2014, based in San Francisco
Startups include Uplevel and Mighty AI. 16 total startups, raised $122mm, employing 267 people
Studio team of 27, founded in 2015, based in Seattle
Startups include Boundless and Jet Closing. 12 total startups, raised $167mm, employing 317 people
Studio team of 393, founded in 2007, based in Berlin
Startups include Global Fashion Group, Home24 and Spenmo. 17 total active startups, raised $1.6b, employing 10,561 people
Studio team of 14, founded in 2018, based in San Francisco
Startups include Spectrum and Stanza. 6 total startups, raised $74, employing 226 people
Data according to Crunchbase, LinkedIn and studio portfolio pages. See data methodology and limitations for more info.
We continually identify studios and startups from our team of researchers and submissions from the community. Please contact data@venturestudioindex.com or reply to this email with any additions.