Venture Studio Index - November 15, 2022
Venture Studio Index - November 15, 2022
Fractal Software milestone, Blue Cross looking for a pilot partner, industry metrics, AI studio investment themes, and 7 new EIR roles
Welcome to Venture Studio Index - data and research on the venture studio industry. The free, public database of venture studios and their startups is here. If you aren’t subscribed, join the hundreds of studio executives, EIRs and future founders reading each week:
Venture studio news
Fractal Software, which specializes in b2b saas, has launched ~100 startups since being founded in 2020. Fractal does not publicize its startups, but the ones we’ve found in our database are workflow software and embedded fintech solutions for local service verticals like auto body repair shops, civic construction firms, HVAC, pest control, and school nurses (Michael Karnjanaprakorn on Twitter)
Enhance Ventures hosted a webcast on “The State of the Venture Studio World,” with good slides on funding and legal structures. One interesting statistic is that venture studios have raised over $21B, 50% of which has been raised by the top 5 studios:
(Youtube)
25madison, a New York based venture studio, launches its own brand experience agency, 25m Create. Several venture studios like Coplex and Dovetail extended from agency work to doing in-house incubations, and 25m Create is this extension in reverse. Agency work can be strategic as it leverages in house expertise to generate immediate revenue, and will likely serve as dealflow for future corporate co-build partnerships. More broadly, the “fully-scaled” studio generally pursues in house incubations, corporate co-builds, external vc investments and regional franchises (LinkedIn)
Redesign health publishes its company creation process, including phasing, partnership strategy and scoring framework:
Founder of Wright Partners, a Singapore and Jakarta based venture studio focused on corporate co-builds, reflects on their first two years. One knock against the studio model is that VCs are reluctant to invest in studio startups due to their large initial ownership. However, Wright sees increasing interest from VCs, “for ventures that can leverage corporate unfair advantage paired with good governance and a financial return” (LinkedIn)
Blue Cross executive discusses a current need where they’re willing to pilot with a new startup. Also discusses general best practices for how to pitch and structure pilots with health insurance payers:
“One of the areas that I have spent a lot of time thinking about is disruption in pharmacy. Pharmacy costs now make up ~1/3 of our total medical spend, and this is increasing every year…A player to help with the contracting, distribution and outcomes that has different incentives than the traditional PBM model could help make more of these models emerge and even disrupt areas with meaningful gross to net bubbles (IYKYK) that have been historically difficult to make meaningful impact on. Reach out if you want to talk thoughts!”
Interesting job descriptions
Slimmer AI - B2B Healthcare | Founder in Residence
B2B Healthcare themes we've been excited by (so far) due to their potential for AI:
Digitization of healthcare workflows (doctors/GP/physician-focused tech stack): Patient scheduling; data logging and clinical documentation; optimization of patient referral; recovery pathways; admin workflow optimization, preemptive diagnosis; intelligent process routing
Diagnostics and treatments (hospital/clinic-focused tech stack): Data integration, predictive analytics and clinical intelligence; clinical screening and diagnostics through data analytics; enhanced patient monitoring; tele health services; precision health, claims, and payment administration
Pharmaceutical tech stack: Automated clinical trial workflow and research; automated procurement and supply chain; ML-enabled drug discovery and research; precision medication and personalization of healthcare
Slimmer AI - E-commerce | Founder in Residence
E-commerce themes we've been excited by (so far) due to their potential for AI:
Inventory management: Demand forecasting; inventory planning to prevent stock out and waste; preventive supply-chain risk detection; sustainability assessment
Customer personalization: Customer-specific recommendations; conversational customer discovery platforms, localized omnichannel customer experience; customer retention analysis; sentiment analysis/purchase prediction; personalized content creation
Sales optimization: Potential use-cases: Omni-channel revenue intelligence; assortment optimization; purchase, sales and discount pricing strategy; fraud detection; pricing and loyalty strategy analysis
Slimmer AI - Supply Chain | Founder in Residence
Supply Chain themes we've been excited by (so far) due to their potential for AI:
Inventory management: End-to-end inventory visibility in real-time, demand sensing/forecasting, stock level analysis (under/over stocking), upstream delivery management and prediction
Procurement: Supplier/vendor management; strategic sourcing; asset tracking, maintenance, and management; contract management and spend analytics; procurement workflow optimization and automation
Logistics and warehousing: Tooling, optimization and automation of warehouses; Tooling, optimization and automation of transportation networks; route optimization and asset tracking; last-mile logistics network and analytics
Supply chain monitoring and orchestration: Predicting end-to-end supply chain lifecycle; distribution planning; Supply chain security and risk assessment; end-to-end orchestration platform
Founders Factory - Founder/CEO for Healthy Food Distribution Venture
Our vision is to create a network of fresh food automated “micro markets” underlying an engaging digital customer experience
Founders Factory - Tech Cofounder / CTO - Project Freebird
The Freebird Club is a peer-to-peer social travel and homestay club for the over 50s. It offers a new and accessible way of travelling for older people, a fun way to meet and enjoy social & cultural interaction at home & away, and a means to unlock value in their homes and earn income in later life. Positioned at the intersection of traveltech and agetech, where the silver economy meets the sharing economy, the Freebird Club seeks to address social issues such as loneliness, disconnection and lack of later life opportunities for older adults through a tech enabled community model.
Founders Factory - Tech Cofounder - Project Healthkey
HealthKey is an API-first platform that enables digital health companies (e.g. digital therapeutics, mental health apps, e-pharmacies) to be accepted and reimbursed by large payers (e.g. insurers, large employers, health plans). HealthKey aims to build a two-sided platform between payers and digital health companies to enable easier payment flows, procurement processes, and integration systems for both parties.
In essence, HealthKey could be described as the Okta or TrueLayer for the healthcare industry. Please find the full pitch here.
Submit new venture studio roles to jobs@venturestudioindex.com or reply to this email