Venture Studio Index - August 11, 2022
Interview with Rocket Internet startup CEO, a studio startup milestone, lessons from Stripe, 3 new EIR roles, 36 new studios and 158 new startups
Venture studio news
Wiz, a Cyberstarts studio startup, becomes the fastest company in history to reach $100mm ARR (Twitter)
Tegus interview with CEO of Rocket Internet studio startup.
Rocket was able to create a super interesting environment in terms of incubating and developing businesses from scratch. Their strategy was to hire super-talented people. So they usually went to the best companies, best consulting firms, best investment banking and offer super smart people opportunities to be partnered on those projects.
So the people that came to be found at Rocket at that time was also super clever, super interesting. And that was a very magical moment in terms of growth of business. But the targets were also super high. So we had super stretched targets in terms of growth. We had to deliver faster and faster and faster. So that also generated some stress over the company.
(Tegus)
How Stripe validates new product ideas. Reddit thread on “Customer Problem Stack Ranking” - a customer discovery method that can be utilized by EIRs and studio teams (Reddit)
YCombinator slashes startup accelerator class size by 40%. Reflects YC’s view on reduced seed stage investor appetite. We’ll see if the velocity of new startup launches follows suit (The Information - $)
Investors make better venture studio founders. Our analysis on the founder backgrounds of top venture studios (Venture Studio Index)
Interesting roles
25madison - Founder of Supply Chain/Logistics Tech Startup
We are looking for a future Founder & CEO who dreams of building a startup in the supply chain/logistics tech space. You’ll work closely with our team of experienced operators to ideate and validate a new business idea, leveraging our people, playbooks, process and network. We’ll provide you with the initial capital to get going, and once validated, support you in building, launching and scaling the company.
Fractal Software - SF EIR Lead
The Launch Lead role will oversee perhaps the most critical step in the launching of these businesses. Aspiring founders who have been previously recruited, vetted, and approved enter our Entrepreneur-in-Residence program. This is a ~60 day period during which they select between multiple approved startup ideas and multiple approved cofounders. Your role would own this formation and launch process, collaborating with the potential founders to decide the right business to build and the right cofounder to build it with.
Pioneer Square Labs - Future CEO: Recruiting Platform, Frontline Workforce
With the recent re-emphasis on US based manufacturing (onshoring, Covid impacts, increased infrastructure spending…), many companies were caught flat-footed in hiring new workers in innovative ways. Recruiting and marketing job positions on digital/mobile platforms is not core to manufacturing companies and finding skilled talent to leverage these platforms is even more difficult. Covid has severely limited in-person recruiting, compounding the problem and companies are desperate for better solutions.
PSL is building a new kind of recruiting company, with an early wedge in the entry-level, manufacturing space. We seamlessly move candidates from ads to engagement in a mobile first way, creating a fast and detailed pathway to the best job for them, in a proactive and personalized way.
Database additions
This week we added 36 additional venture studios and 158 startups to the database, which now totals 339 studios and 1,714 startups.
Note many recently launched studios and startups are still in stealth, so recent years are understated.
Notable studio additions:
Studio team of 94, founded in 2016, based in Oslo, Norway
30 total startups, employing >1,000 people, >€100m revenue
Focuses on corporate partnerships for new startup incubations
Studio team of 24, founded in 2020, based in Singapore
5 total startups, raised $55mm, employing 450 people
See data methodology and limitations for more info on the data.
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.