I make Pre-Seed to Series B founders successfully fundraise by helping you build your fundraising operating system. | $350m+ raised with founders. | Follow me for tips on fundraising.

I have spent the last 10 years trying to find the "secret" sauce to making you fundraise for your company.

And you know what?

There's no secret. 

It’s just a matter of having: 

- The right preparation & processes
- A clear and concise narrative & storytelling
- Structured relationships built over a long period 

The real "secret", if there's any at all, is that you need to build a system around your fundraise to make sure you do the proper work.

A system means that allows you to: 

- Efficiently build the right relationships with investors and connectors
- Influence investors that YOU are a good bet
- Take them through your process in an efficient manner 

All the while keeping accountability of you doing the boring but important stuff.

During the $400m+ in venture funding I have been a part of, I was able to meet best-in-class  entrepreneurs. 

Some of these entrepreneurs have gone on to raise $100M+ in fundraising each. ​

All of them possessed operating systems for the fundraises. 

I’ve built such a system for fundraising founders. 

And I can help you build yours. 

But as with all things, getting started, maintaining consistency and keeping accountability is easier said than done.

The founders I have helped with their fundraises have gone on to raise $250M+. 

...And I'm doing all of this with a 100% MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE.

Now, are you serious about building fundraising for your startup? 

Let's make it happen.

(I CAN'T HELP YOU IF YOU HAVE ALREADY STARTED YOUR FUNDRAISE). 

👉🏼 Shoot me a DM, or head over to my featured section & check out our offer.

I'll see you at the top!

Gian Seehra

4 Custom GPTs for fundraising for your startup. 

→ How to get them:

1. Like this post
2. Comment “AI” so I know you're serious

It’s taken me 2 years to structure this the way real fundraises are done. 

To make your fundraise 10x more efficient. 

You’ll get:

1 - GPT that writes your origin story
(Trained on the exact narrative arcs that get investors bought in around your own experiences.)

2 - GPT that builds your pitch deck
(Not just the slides but a story-driven structure that you can use to create an investable deck)

3 - GPT that finds the right investors
(Sourced from hand-built lists, and online so you can find and meet the right investors for you. Bonus: includes warm intro scripts.)

4 - GPT that maps your investor network 
(So you don’t just pitch random people. You build network leverage before you ever ask for a dollar.)

These are for the founders who want to actually prep their fundraise correctly. 

So they don't waste precious time and can actually get the funding they need to successfully build their business.

Raise $1M+ in 90 days with my proven fundraising system. | VC-Backed Founder ($16M) & Tier-1 VC | $400M+ raised with founders. | DM “RAISE” to chat how I can help.

A founder told me to f*ck off when I rejected his Seed startup as a VC. 

(All because I was actually being honest). 

This is what went down. 

I met this founder and we had an intro call. 
At the end of the call I felt it in my gut it was a NO. 

Now here is where I'd do the usual VC thing of: 

"We'll think about it" 
"Sorry we need more traction" 
"You're too early" 

But instead, I decided to be honest. 

I told him that I didn't think he was good enough. 
I tried to be as nice as possible about it. 

(EDIT: I didn't say he 'was not good enough' directly, theres a lot more nuance to what I said, and it was much nicer!)

But he went APESH*T at me. 

Shouting... 
Many swear words... 

Telling me I'm just an idiot. 

He started telling everyone I sucked as a VC. It was going around for a long time. 

I wasn't rude to him at all, just thought I'd be honest. 

Now... 

Here's the problem. 

Every VC who rejects you felt the same way I did about that founder. 

But if they told everyone the truth they'd get a constant line of angry, aggressive founders. 

Just like this founder did to me. 

And I get it... 

And why wouldn't you? 

You are building something every day and know so much about the topic. 

Then: 

• Some random suit spends 30 minutes with you. 
• Doesn't know anything about your industry. 
• Asks stupid questions... 

Only to tell you they think you aren't good enough? 

The optics just don't work. 
So investors resort to fake reasons for why they said no. 

That is the reason you get generic rejections from investors. 

I'm not saying its good. 
But I'm telling you the truth. 

So when you are fundraising make sure investors never feel that. 

Whats the most annoying rejection you got from an investor?

Can I be honest about why those Pre-Seed investors are rejecting you?
 
It’s not traction. No matter how much they say it is.
 
(I know how brutal this sounds, sorry. But it’s the real reason behind the surface reason.)
 
It’s because, in their eyes, you’re not strong enough 𝘺𝘦𝘵 as a founder.
 
Let’s break that down.
 
Over 99% of Pre-Seed investors have funded teams with 𝘯𝘰 traction.  If traction were the gate, most deals wouldn’t exist.
 
Yes, there’s a rare % who do need traction to move. They shouldn't be Pre-Seed investors.

But most of them are just not convinced 𝘆𝗼𝘂 are the one to bet on.
 
Investing into startups is emotions. Gut. "VIBES".

But an investor can't reject you based on "gut feel."
 
So they reach for the fallback excuse: traction.  

Because saying “I didn’t believe in you” sounds cruel.  

Especially when there isn't any evidence at all. 

So its easier to just tell you a white lie. 
 
But the truth is, that same investor who rejected you last week due to you needing "more users/revenue/traction". 

Probably met another founder that same week with 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 traction than you...  

And said yes.  

Because something about 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 felt more inevitable.
 
So please stop getting angry that investors are rejecting you because you need traction. 

And realise its a lie to make it easier on their end.

A founder has NEVER raised a round because of an investor list they got from this platform. 

Please please please stop wasting your time with these. 

You are taking these lists and expecting the world. 

But most of these investors: 

1. Don't invest in your stage or round size
2. Don't invest into your geograp hy
3. Don't invest into your industry
4. Not actively investing

And what makes it even worse... 
You take these lists and think that is "work". 

Patting yourself on the back, telling yourself you've done so much!!

As if you've materially moved your fundraise forward. 

When in fact, you have done NOTHING of benefit. 

The only way to find and meet investor properly is to: 

1. Build an ALIGNED list of investors 
2. Organise your network, then increase it 
3. Map out who are give you warm introductions 
4. Active those introductions at the right time 

THERE IS NO OTHER WAY YOU WILL MEET ENOUGH INVESTORS! 

Period.  

Those 4 steps are the only thing you should be doing everyday if you want to actually fundraise. 

So please stop commenting on someone's AI slop investor lists. 

And do the work that founders who fundraise do. 

What are you finding the hardest when it comes to finding and meeting investors?

The founder of Antrhopic (worth $350BN) setup 22 intros and 21 of them said NO. 

Think about that for a sec... 

A company that is more successful that 99.999% of founders ever will be got rejected by pretty much everyone at the earliest stages.

Yet you think it won't happen to you? 

One of the biggest unlocks for fundraising is understanding that rejection is normal and not necessarily a bad thing. 

You don't need everyone to like you. 

You just need a couple people who believe in your vision.
And you being strongly committed to that vision.

That's how you raise.

But also build something even 1% as successful as Anthropic. 

How do you deal with investor rejections?

Tomorrow, I'm going to jump on with fundraising founders to make sure they ACTUALLY fundraise. 

Wanna join? 

Then comment "WORKSHOP" and I'll send you over the details. 

What's even crazier is its completely free 🤯. 

Come join us! 

P.S. It's getting pretty full already so please sign up quick!

In 2016, I'd failed my 2nd startup due to failing to raise. 
At that point I decided to quit tech all together. 

I then decided to travel to Whistler to become a ski-bum whilst I chose what's next for a "failure like me". 

It wasn't until meeting my future-founders on a gondola did I start my next company. 

Now?

I've raised $16M for two companies I co-founded. 

Helped founders raise over $250M. 

No “manifesting.”
No fake “overnight success.”
Just relentless work.

And the pursuit of finding what makes a fundraise happen. 

People say, “Just wing it”

I call BS.

Everything good thign in life comes when you sit down and actually understand what it takes to do something correctly. 

That preparation is what moves mountains. 

Want to be normal?
Do normal things.

Want to be successful? 
Do what the successful founders do. 

Agree… or is that just insane?

As a VC, the number one question in my head when I opened your deck was simple:

“Do I understand what makes you great?”

If the answer was no, you were finished in under 60 seconds.

Not because I am evil, as much as you want VCs to be. 

In fact, it was because I couldn't build structure in my head that I SHOULD care about. 

So when your deck jumps straight into product on slide 3, it is already dead.

“What if every viewing came with the full picture…”
“What if agents had all of this data…”

Who thef*ck cares? 

I do not know the problem you are really solving.
I do not know why you're better than the rest.
I do not know why you win.

So if you have not made me care before the product, all I see is noise.

And every VC is the same. 

This is a snippet of a roast of a deck I did with a founder. 

Want to get your own deck roasted? 

Comment "ROAST" and I'll send you how to send me your deck to roast myself. 

AND the full video of me roasting this pitch deck.

The biggest problem with pitch decks are that I never know what makes a founder of company great. 

They are generic, one dimensional and lack story. 

So they get put onto the "generic" pile. 

To never be looked at again. 

Below is a snippet of a pitch deck roast I did with a founder last month. 

If you want to get your pitch deck roasted by me, FOR FREE. 

Then comment down below "ROAST" and I'll send you the details. 

P.S. I go very detailed and am VERY direct.

If you uploaded your deck to a VC website and heard nothing back, this is the part no one tells you.

Right now you’re probably telling yourself it’s: 

• The market
• The timing
• That VCs are slow

Maybe they’ll “get to it eventually.” 

That story feels comforting. It’s also wrong.

When you upload a deck into a VC portal, you are not being evaluated neutrally. 

You are walking into the lowest-trust inbox ever. 

When I was a VC, those portals were where the worst decks lived. 

• Wrong stage. 
• Wrong sector. 
• Unfundable ideas. 

Endless nonsense that after opening dozens of those a week, your brain gets trained to expect garbage before you even click.

So when a genuinely good company shows up...
They never got a fair read. 

They inherit the fatigue, the cynicism, and the negative bias created by the last fifty decks.

That’s the part founders don’t want to accept when they upload their deck online. 

You’re not starting from zero.
You’re starting from negative.

And here’s the uncomfortable implication most people avoid saying out loud. 

If your deck is coming through a portal, a VC can immediately tell you don’t have a real network yet.

That signal matters more than your slides.

Uploading a deck to a VC website is not outreach. 

It’s what people do when they don’t know how to access the actual game. 

And once you’ve done it, you’ve already damaged your position without realizing it.

So my blunt advice to you fundraising in 2026.... 

Stop doing it. 

If you’re mid-raise and relying on portals right now, you don’t have a deck problem. 

You have a network and process problem, and pretending otherwise is why you’re stuck.

If this hit a nerve, DM me “NETWORK” and I’ll tell you how to solve this properly.

Most AI tools for fundraising miss the point.

They’re built by people who’ve never actually raised money.

So they focus on surface problems:

• Finding investors
• Writing emails
• Scraping data.

Useful in parts for sure. 
But that's not where fundraises fail. 

The hardest part of fundraising isn’t sourcing names.
Or spamming more investors via cold email. 

It’s building trust in real time.

It’s learning how to: 

1. Lead investor conversations
2. Read subtle signals, and
3. Manage momentum.

And that’s where AI is quietly about to change everything.

For the first time, founders can:

• Practise their pitch against a simulated investor
• Get contextual feedback on tone, pacing and clarity
• Map their structure before a single meeting happens

It’s like running 100 fundraise reps before your first call.

My own AIs are already hitting 80 % of my live sessions. 

Which means founders can now use them between sessions: 

1. To rehearse
2. To refine
3. To rebuild confidence daily

This isn’t about replacing experience.
It’s about compressing it.

The tedious, messy, high-friction parts of fundraising are about to become fast, structured, and learnable.

The human part (trust, emotion, narrative) becomes the main event again.

Would you use this type of AI for your own fundraise if let you use it?

The top 1 hardest part about raising startup funding: 

As a founder you are most likely a domain expert about your industry. 

1. Speaking to customers may seem easy. 
2. Understanding your problem is a given. 
3. Knowing what to do is systemised. 
   
Your founder life is organised and structured to succeed. 

But when it comes to fundraising its the complete opposite. 

And there's a major reason for that. 

You've got to where you are in your founder journey. 
BECAUSE YOU COULD FAIL. 

Those failures made you. 
Sculpted you. 

But with fundraising you don't have that ability. 

You only have one shot at each investor... 
If you fail that shot you fail your raise. 

And because you don't have the ability to fail. 
You have ZERO clue on what you need to do. 

So fundraising feels: 

• Slow 
• Chaotic 
• Unfocused 

You don't have an understand of what matters. 
And what doesn't.

So everything breaks. 

You barely get more than 5-10 investor meetings. 
Those rarely get past the first meetings. 
Your round gets dragged along. 

And suddenly your 6+ months gone... 

Having wasted all this time fundraising with nothing to show for it. 

This is why you need to ACTUALLY understand what you are doing right or wrong in a raise. 

That way you become structured like everything else. 

It's the only way to increase your chances to raise. 

What do you think you're missing in a round?

How many more random people are gonna start posting about how to grow on Linkedin in 2026? 

2025 was crazy how many randos with 2000 followers are doing it. 

For some reason they think they can just copy others and everything will be fine? 

Where's your expertise? 
Where's your love of doing something? 

You just see someone else getting likes so may as well do it as well? 

The scary thing is that I truly think 2026 may just beat it. 

What's your thoughts?

Venture Studio Architect - I help you design, launch, and grow your company creation studio.

Most innovation programs fail not because of lack of ideas, but because they lack a system for venture creation.

I help innovation leaders in corporations, universities, and economic development organizations build venture studios that scale and deliver. Backed by data, frameworks, and insights from studying over 500 venture studios globally.

As Senior Director of Research & Data at the Venture Studio Forum, I'm building the empirical backbone of the venture studio asset class. VSF is a 501(c)(6) trade association representing 1,500+ members who have built 650+ companies, 11 unicorns, and $48 billion in enterprise value.

My work establishes venture studios as a formal asset class through:

-Asset Class Analysis in partnership with MIT and Harvard, delivering the first institutionally credible research for LPs and institutional investors
-The Venture Studio Index (VSI) — the first open standard and formal definition for venture studios
-Studio Data Platform (2026) providing structured datasets and benchmarks for researchers and operators
-State of the Studio Report (2026) tracking trends, performance, and sector segmentation
-Policy recommendations for state and federal innovation agencies

Concurrently, as Partner and Head of Insights at 9point8 Collective, I translate this research into practice. We've designed and launched 25+ venture studios. Our approach builds clarity, alignment, and momentum at the intersection of innovation, capital, and impact.

I've spent 20+ years at the intersection of innovation, strategy, and venture building. I launched NCR's first internal accelerator (generating $90M from its first cohort), secured 27+ patents across AI and fintech, and developed investment frameworks that institutional investors now use to allocate capital into the studio model.

Speaking & Workshops: I deliver keynotes and workshops on designing high-performing venture studios, the future of venture creation ecosystems, and turning knowledge engines into commercial engines.

🎤 Book me to speak: VentureStudioForum.org/speaking
 📊 Learn from our research: newsletter.venturestudioforum.org
 🌍 Join the community: venturestudioforum.org
 💼 Work with us: 9point8collective.com

Matthew Burris

30,000 entrepreneurs in India. A curated circle of corporate leaders in Vienna. Two different worlds. One shared realization. 👇 

The global innovation ecosystem is done with "innovation theater." It’s time to stop betting and start building.

In October, I stood before thousands at the Tamil Nadu Global Startup Summit. The energy was visceral. Entrepreneurs and leaders were asking the same question: How do we move beyond incubators and actually industrialize success?

Fast forward to last week. I just returned from Vienna, where I had the honor of keynoting the venture studio track at The Venture Mindset conference hosted by the The Alpha Omega Foundation

The setting couldn't have been more different. Intimate, focused, and "bolder, not bigger," but the urgency was identical.

Whether I’m speaking to a government minister in India or a corporate executive in Austria, the conclusion is the same: The Venture Studio is the missing link.

Here is what I learned bridging these two worlds:

1. Engineer certainty rather than betting on luck. In Tamil Nadu the excitement was about volume and in Vienna it was about strategy. Venture studios shift from a power law of outcomes quantity of bets model to a power law of ideas where the quality of the idea becomes paramount as the studio engineers a more certain path to successful company creation.

2. It is not about innovation but governance. In our workshop in India we got hands on designing the actual pit crews needed to support founders. In Vienna speaking to corporate leaders the conversation focused on the Corporate Immune System. The Venture Studio is a Governance Firewall. More innovation theater is not the answer. You need a distinct architectural separation that allows for discovery speed that delivers execution consistency.

3. Build at wholesale instead of retail. The global hunger for this model comes down to economics. In India founders realized that studios can drive improved outcomes and engineer wins. In Vienna corporates realized that the venture studio model adds the build option to corporate development at a 10-20x economic advantage over CVC investments to partner or M&A’s buying options.

This trip marked a shift for me and for the Venture Studio Forum.

We are no longer just defining this asset class; we are activating it globally.
 From defining the "pendulum" between corporate and entrepreneur with Jonas Krensler to discussing the new era of company creation with Matthias Hille, the dialogue has elevated. Mic drop for Michael van Lier showing the contextual capture for modern venture studio insight generation.

The future of company creation isn't just about more startups. It's about building better companies.

📣 I am expanding my speaking in 2026.
Where should we go next? Let me know in the comments or DM me.

Thanks to Matthias Hille and whataventure — New business. Powered by entrepreneurs. for the support and Michael Chaffe for organizing a great event.

I help innovation leaders build venture studios | Senior Director, Research & Data @ Venture Studio Forum | Partner, Head of Insights @ 9point8 Collective | Keynote Speaker | Trusted by 500+ Studios

Venture studios are quietly changing the math on liquidity. 

Traditional VC funds typically take a 10% stake in a company and wait +12 years for a binary IPO or acquisition.

Venture studios can play a different game.

They start with meaningful equity (often 25–50%) in companies they help build from day one.

Even after dilution, that can translate to owning 20% post-seed, 15% post-Series A, and 10% post-Series B.

That ownership matters.

It gives studios real options when it comes to liquidity; far earlier and with more control than traditional VC models allow.

Instead of waiting a decade to return capital, studios can sell down small stakes along the way.

Now they don’t need full exits. And they don’t need to force them, either.

Because they own more, they can sell less and still return capital meaningfully.

They’re not just betting on outcomes. They’re designing for them.

What does this look like?

Take that 30% stake before the Seed round and assume it took $1M to secure it. 

Carts data shows a 19% dilution at seed and a 19% dilution at A. With the options pool already in place when the company is formed, the studio is left with a 19.7% position.

At Series A, with a premoney valuation of $45 and a round of $11M, the post money is $56M.

If the studio sells:

100% -> $11M
75% -> $8.25M
50% -> $5.5M
25% -> $2.75M

Assume $10M fund size for the studio, 60% of their companies reach series A, and a 50% early exit strategy can deliver $33M by around year 5 for a 3.3 MOIC, and an IRR of 11.7% while holding typical pre-seed VC level ownership in 6 companies. 

Early exits recapitalize venture studios, provide liquidity to LPs, and position studios to raise their next fund from a position of strength with vocal supporters..

For more content like this, follow at (Matthew Burris)

The Power of Liquidity Control

1960 REITs were "accounting scams." 
1980 PE was "barbarians at the gate." 
2026 Venture Studios are "unallocatable."

History teaches us that every major asset class looked "impossible" at inception. Yale didn't allocate to Venture Capital in the 70s because it was nice. They did it because the industry built the standards (ERISA) to make it safe.

Venture Studios are crossing that exact chasm right now. We have the returns (60% IRR). We lack the rails.

We are building the standards to move this asset class from "Emerging" to "Established."

Here are the 3 barriers we must break this year.

View newsletter: Venture Studio Perspective

I recently spoke with a studio that has built three unicorns to date. By any standard metric, they are an immense success. Yet, they told me it took t

Open article: The 3 barriers stopping institutional allocation into Venture Studios by Matthew Burris • 4 min read

The 3 barriers stopping institutional allocation into Venture Studios

LPs often misread venture studios as early-stage VC funds.

But the investor role here is different:

Not just capital + selection.

It’s capital + creation + control.

Studios don’t source companies, they design them.

That means:

→ Cap tables are pre-structured  
→ Exit paths are mapped pre-incorporation  
→ Capital is deployed with precision, not spray-and-pray

Fewer bets. Larger ownership. Earlier exits.

One allocator said it best:

“In VC, we analyze deal flow. In studios, we analyze design.”

P.S. Follow (Matthew Burris) for more venture studio insights

How Studios Manage Capital to Outperform Traditional VC

Most KPIs focus on fund returns.

But a venture studio’s real job is creation.

That means different benchmarks.

Think: how effectively you validate, build, and spin out companies.

Speed. Cost. Ownership efficiency.

More on the post below: 

P.S. Follow (Matthew Burris) for more venture studio insights

The KPI's of a Venture Studio

Venture studios are outperforming traditional venture funds on paper.

But what’s rarely discussed is how hard it is to operate one at scale.

Why? Because studios don’t just serve 1 type of customer.

They serve 4.

And if even one falls out of sync, the whole model starts to break.

Customer 1: Studio investors

They want venture like returns with less risk. But not all investors play the same game.

A corporate CVC backing a studio for strategic access will tolerate lower returns.

A pension fund expects performance benchmarks within strict timeframes and institutional compliance.

These differences impact everything, from studio roadmap to legal structure.

Customer 2: Studio teams and founders

This is the operating muscle.

They’re not taking on single company risk, but they expect compensation, ownership, and impact.

Overpay and the model loses capital efficiency.

Underpay and you lose the talent edge that justifies the whole thing.

Customer 3: Entrepreneurs

Their expectations vary wildly.

To an exec exiting corporate life, 10% equity can feel exciting.

To a 25-year-old founder, it can feel like a non-starter.

Studios need different offers for different archetypes, salary versus equity preference, derisking versus control, support versus independence.

Customer 4: Follow-on capital

Many studios fail here.

“Build for venture,” they say, without defining what kind, what stage, or what investor expectations they’re designing for.

Seed funds care about team, velocity and early product-market fit and a captable aligned for Series A.

Series A VCs care about traction, ownership structure, and team strength.

PE firms care about cash flows and ops efficiency and rarely concern themselves with the captable since they buy the whole company.

Receivables financing cares about the quality of your contracts and customers, not your captable.

These aren’t interchangeable needs.

Studios that don’t reverse-engineer this part build companies that can't raise. Full stop.

Every one of these four customers matters.

Miss one, and the alignment cascade starts.

Get them right, and the model works in the outcome.

The Hidden Complexity Behind Venture Studio Success

Venture studios are one of the most compelling ideas in early-stage innovation.

They’ve quietly delivered higher net IRRs than traditional funds, and now manage tens of billions globally.

But behind those numbers is a level of operational complexity that’s rarely discussed.

Unlike most asset managers or company builders, studios have to serve four entirely different stakeholder types at once and do it through a single operating model.

→ Investors (who want top-tier returns with clear governance)
→ Operators (who drive execution and operations)
→ External founders (who need speed, capital, and trust)
→ Follow-on capital (who expect venture-scale outcomes)

Each one has different incentives, expectations, and timelines.

A traditional fund aligns investors and GPs.

A startup aligns founders and early hires.

A studio has to do both, and then some.

The result is a structurally harder business, even if the outcomes look better on paper.

When every single customer must say yes for the business model to work, the details are critical.

Execution depends not just on sourcing or building the right idea, but on architecture: How equity, incentives, and accountability flow between parties that don’t report to each other.

Studios that succeed don’t just back companies.

They solve an unusual systems problem: how to coordinate four customer groups that rarely share a playbook.

For more content like this, follow at (Matthew Burris)

The Hidden Complexity Behind Venture Studio Operations

10 questions every studio must answer before green-lighting a venture.  

Not every idea is worth validating.  

Before diving in, venture studios should ask:  

1-Does this align with our thesis?
2-Can we actually execute this?
3-Is it worth pursuing?
4-Is it a fit for our follow-on strategy?
5-Do we have access to the right entrepreneurs?
6-Are we solving real problems for real people?
7-Is it actually studio-worthy?
8-Does this play to our unfair advantages?
9-What will we have to outsource or build from scratch?
10-Are we holding on because it's a good idea?

Studios exist to kill weak ideas early.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

10 questions.pdf

Every venture studio is designing for something.

But not every studio makes that design process explicit.

You can't copy-paste deal structures from other studios and expect them to work. 

They only make sense when built on the right foundations.

→ Who is your target follow-on investor.. and what are their expectations?

→ What kind of entrepreneur are you trying to recruit… and how do they value risk and reward?

→ What return model are your studio's backers expecting… and how does that pressure allocation?

→ What norms dominate in your sector… and are you aligning with, or pushing against, them?

→ How capital-heavy is your business… and how early does real validation emerge?

→ Where are you operating… and how do local dynamics re-shape founder expectations?

→ What role are you playing… as a founder, co-founder, or something else entirely?

→ And most importantly, are you delivering on the role you’ve claimed—or just taking the equity and hoping no one notices?

Each of these is a design lever. When you pull one, the others move.

Ignore one, and the whole system gets distorted.

Case in point, Fractal. Experienced founders and staff. Solid thesis. Missed follow on expectations and a ripple effect of challenges. 

Check it out in detail:

https://lnkd.in/eEwEPEc6

The best studios don’t just balance these drivers. 

They design with intention so their structures can stand under pressure.

8 Drivers Behind a Smart Venture Studio Deal Structure

Biggest structural issue that limits studio scalability.

It’s quality.

When you increase the number of ventures you’re building, you hit a ceiling fast.

You’re no longer able to provide meaningful support across them all.

Impact gets diluted. Results drop off.

And capital per venture shrinks, which limits your ability to de-risk or move fast.

As the studio scales, so does the team, or reliance on AI.

Both introduce process drift or output inconsistencies.

The bigger you get, the harder it becomes to preserve high standards.

That doesn’t mean scaling is impossible.

AI might help increase the ceiling. 

But it still comes down to craft.

Quality control becomes the bottleneck.

Once you lose that, you’re not a venture studio anymore.

You’re acting like an accelerator or a fund.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights.

3 structural issues that limit studio scalability.(more data provided).pdf

Venture studios aren’t for everyone

And they certainly don’t work like traditional startups

But most critics treat them as if they do

There’s a growing narrative that venture studios “don’t make sense” as an investment vehicle. 

And the skepticism is fair. 

But many critiques diagnose the wrong problems.

Start with the biggest one: focus.

Studio teams might test 100 ideas in 3 months, but not because they want more companies.

They’re trying to eliminate the bad ones quickly.

If something shows signal, the studio recruits a founder who becomes 100% focused on that company. 

They own the roadmap and the studio handles back office operations and shared resources.

Different jobs. Different priorities.

Another common myth?

That studios are high-volume idea machines.

The best ones aren’t.

They ship fewer companies because they’re more selective. 

Services bottleneck output, often by design.

You can’t scale conviction on command.

Every real studio decision ultimately comes down to a binary filter: 

Does this have an unfair advantage?

If yes, they go all in. If not, they kill it.

Because real studio outcomes aren’t driven by process… they’re driven by leverage.

This means that the successful studios have the right: 

Network. 
Talent bench. 
Access into a market that wouldn’t be possible outside the studio environment.

Those are the drivers that matter.

But many critics try to evaluate studios like regular startups.

And that’s the wrong lens.

A studio might look like one company on paper.

But economically, it behaves more like a fund:

    → Returns compound over time
    → Value accrues across a portfolio
    → Terms matter more than valuation

And if you're getting GP-like exposure (co-creator equity in every current and future build) it's a different category entirely.

None of this makes venture studios universally investible.

But when structured correctly, they’ve shown higher hit rates than seed funds; not because they have better ideas, but because they know which ideas deserve their leverage. 

If that leverage doesn’t exist, there’s nothing to back. 

But if it does, the model works in a way most critiques never address.

4 truths mot critiques miss.pdf

Most venture studios don’t fail from idea shortage or founder gaps

They fail from misalignment between customer groups. 

There are 4 customers every studio has to serve:

→ Founders
→ Investors
→ Staff/Operators 
→ Follow-on investors

And when you optimize for one in isolation, it comes at the expense of another.

The solution isn’t balance, it’s dependency mapping.

That starts by identifying how decisions made for one customer affect conditions for the others.

You can’t bring in a technical founder, pair them with a consumer idea, and expect it to work.

You can’t target both growth equity and early-stage VC and expect them to fund the same company.

These aren’t minor frictions, they’re structural constraints.

And the strongest studios work backwards from the capital market realities they want to access.

Instead of asking “what company to build,” they ask:

→ What type of investor do we want to attract in the next round?
→ What benchmarks and metrics does that investor expect?
→ What kind of company can deliver those inputs?
→ What kind of founder can build that company?
→ What kind of studio structure is required to support that founder?

This is the alignment stack.

And most breakdowns happen when studios try to climb it out of order.

Mapping dependencies also reveals where operational debt comes from.

Trying to serve both deeply technical founders and brand-first consumer operators?

You’ll likely miss the mark on operational model, hiring infrastructure, or go-to-market support for both.

No amount of workshops or sprints can patch over a model that isn’t designed to resolve customer constraints.

That doesn’t make the venture studio model flawed, it just makes it sensitive to coherence.

Studios will evolve through multiple iterations of their model, not despite this complexity, but because of it.

Alignment isn’t a one-time insight… It’s an ongoing design discipline.

The Alignment Framework Managing Customer.pdf

When a studio asks, “What’s the right deal structure?...

The answer is almost always: it depends.

But too often, there’s a chase for universal metrics.

A studio reads that someone took 25% at formation and assumes that they can do the same…

Even though:

→ That company might’ve had no pre-formation IP.
→ The studio might’ve handled everything from hiring to product.
→ Or it might’ve just handed off a memo and stepped back.

Equity alone doesn’t tell you that story.

Because there's no standard model, because there’s no standard studio.

Some operate like pre-seed funds.

Others embed deeply for years.

Some back ideas only once there’s founder-market fit.

Others start from domain-conviction and hire in.

And the capital requirements for an AI infra company are wildly different from a consumer social app.

So the structure has to match the stack: strategy, sector, stage, capital plan, team contribution.

You can’t shortcut that by copying numbers from a thread.

Instead, you should narrate your logic.

If a studio takes 15% on a late cofounder model with an additional 10% preferred stake from direct investment with governance rights, showing how that protects long-term alignment.

If it takes 40% on full-stack builds in heavy R&D sectors plus more preferred, explains how risk and operating lift are distributed.

There’s no single “correct” design, only coherence between who you are, what you build, and how your model supports it.

The best structures don’t follow market norms.

They follow the logic of the work and align with market acceptance. 

P.S. For more venture studio breakdowns like this one… 

Follow at Matthew Burris

Why most venture studio deals go wrong

Jonas Krensler it was a pleasure to deep dive studios with you and seeing your four pendulum question framework. Understanding the tradeoffs is critical and key to define at the start. Great way to stay building a strong foundation.

Strategic leadership in venture studios + hands-on startup creation to connect corporate assets with startup speed and deliver rapid results | Venture Building, ProdMgmt, BizDev

Great to meet and present alongside Matthew Burris in Vienna — sharing perspectives on the future of venture studios at the Venture Mindset conference.

From governance and funding logic to founder roles and expectations — it’s clear the studio model is evolving fast. And there’s a lot we can learn from bridging US and European approaches.

Special thanks to Matthias Hille for curating a stellar venture studio track — and to the teams at WhatAVenture and Alpha Omega for creating a space for real exchange. Already looking forward to the next one.

#venturestudios #venturebuilding #corporateinnovation #VentureMindset #alphaomega #companycreation

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