The Venture Studio Forum

Chief Content Officer

9point8 Collective

9point8 supports early stage investors, accelerators, and venture studios through services and technology. We focus on entity design, strategy, talent development, and diligence.

Partner

Venture Studio Associates

CogBias AI

Bad questions lead to bad answers which lead to bad decisions. 

Break the cycle.

Ask better questions and see truths hidden in the answers.

CogBias AI is a platform for industry specific application development to detect Cognitive Bias in product development, hiring, legal, healthcare, and marketing research.

Co-Founder - CPO

Savvy Tinkers Studios

We partner with experienced professionals to build AI powered B2B SaaS Startups. Building first portfolio companies now. 

We partner with:
✔️ Experienced professionals with at least 10 years of experience
✔️ A problem they want to solve where they have 3 years of relevant experience

NCR Corporation

Formed the New Ventures Group, a startup studio inspired group focused on delivering early innovations to deployed products. Supported by the CEO, COO, CTO, and business unit GMs on the heals of the success of the launch of the first internal accelerator program.

✔️ Proposed and led NCR’s first accelerator program with the full support of the CEO and ELT. Delivered $90M in revenue from the first cohort with multiple teams taking products to market.
✔️ Launched the New Ventures Group operating as a hybrid startup studio responsible for transitioning multiple concepts to product owners, supported M&A evaluations, and market analysis.
✔️ Provided opportunity and framework to establish partnership to deliver strategic inroads to retail opportunities and new revenue streams worth over $2B.

Innovation Principal

Led innovation efforts across retail, financial, and hospitality lines of businesses. Secured executive support for partnerships and responsible for over 20% of patent filings for FY 2019.

✔️ Proposed an M&A to the CEO, GM of Retail, and Head of M&A backed with a business case that resulted in a partnership agreement with a potential revenue of $80M ARR in year 1. 
✔️ Found a $9B cost savings opportunity in the North American banking industry. Secured over 10 patents, built a business case, and secured executive support to pursue opportunity.
✔️ Trained internal teams on Flashpoint customer discovery techniques to leverage behavioral economics techniques to minimize cognitive bias in customer discovery

Innovation Leader

Providing internal product teams innovation and new product development support during NCR’s transition to an ‘as-a Service’ business model. 

✔️ Joined a team of intrapreneurs participating in the Flashpoint accelerator program, interviewing 175 customers and identifying 10 opportunities worth a deeper look.
✔️ Built the business case for three opportunities in finance and the convenience fuel retail industries, each with a potential of generating more than $100MM in SaaS revenue.
✔️ Led cross-functional hardware and software development teams to architect, prototype, and develop solutions leveraging computer vision, data analysis, deep learning, AI, and mobile development.

Innovation Engineer

Savvy Tinker Consulting

We worked with industry organizations and major investor groups to generate investing, company design frameworks, training, and though leadership content.

✔️ Distilled best practices across Private Equity, Venture Capital, Search Funds, Startup Studios, Accelerators, and Startups for new venture creation processes.
✔️ Adapted a quantitative venture investing approach for the strategic design of new company creation,  product development roadmaps, and focused customer discovery.
✔️ Created an evaluation framework for metal additive manufacturing use cased based by examples and data. 
✔️ Published core market and capabilities analysis on metal additive manufacturing achieving recognition from industry experts.
✔️ Presented findings at LiveWorx in 2018.

Independent Consultant

Flashpoint at Georgia Tech

Sole experienced founder on corporate team participating in the Flashpoint startup accelerator program the focused on adapting and applying behavioral economics and cognitive bias insights to improve the quality of customer discovery and user research in startups and new product development efforts.

✔️ Interviewed 175 customers using behavioral and cognitive bias limiting approaches. 
✔️ Mapped internal and external customer ecosystems to understand factors that shaped customer behavior and decisions.

Intrapreneur, Corporate Innovation Team @ Cohort 8

SPIN Collective Partnership

SPIN Collective was a collection of serial founders offering innovation and special projects consulting.

✔️ Delivered a strategy for $50MM annual cost savings for an agricultural client
✔️ Identified innovation special project opportunities with projected revenues of $500M ARR and $150M ARR respectively.
✔️ Identified a strategic gap in private equity operations strategy to deliver an additional 1-2x multiple through a targeted product innovation strategy based on work from McKinsey.
✔️ Developed financial model for growth value creation based on strategies found in private equity, search funds, venture studios, startup factories, and startup studios.

Innovation Consultant

MatterFab

MatterFab focused on designing industrial metal 3d printers targeting production and industry applications in the injection molding, aerospace, medical, and automotive industries.

✔️ Designed & built multiple prototypes capable of printing +98.5% dense solid stainless steel parts optimizing over process 200 variables.
✔️ Secured $2.5M in LOIs in under 8 weeks from mid-sized businesses and large enterprises.
✔️ Secured strategic partnerships & funded R&D agreements with Fortune 50 company.

Founder

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

I’m an entrepreneurial strategy and innovation leader with 20+ years of experience designing and scaling ventures, partnerships, and corporate initiatives that have generated over $500M in strategic value.

As Chief Content Officer at The Venture Studio Forum, I lead the world’s largest global venture studio association—now 400+ members representing $48B+ in value creation across 675 companies and 8 unicorns. I drive content, standards, and community that define the venture studio asset class and position it for institutional adoption.

Previously, I launched NCR’s first internal accelerator—generating $90M from its first cohort—and secured 27+ patents across AI, fintech, and computer vision. I’ve built and scaled startups from zero to funding and strategic partnerships with Fortune 50s, and developed investment and diligence frameworks that institutional investors now use to allocate capital into the studio model.

I work with investors, founders, and innovation leaders to design, launch, and scale venture studios tailored to their goals, environments, and constraints. I bring unmatched breadth of exposure across 500+ global studios to create models that align incentives, avoid fatal design flaws, and drive long-term success.

Let’s connect if you're designing a studio, evaluating the model, or scouting strategic talent to take innovation, venture, or corporate development goals further.

Matthew Burris

Merge a Venture Studio + a University
Freshmen -> work in startups. 
Senior Capstone -> cofounder.

I had this dream over a decade ago.

Now I know it was a perfect merger of a Venture Studio with a University.

It began with my own University experience.

I went to Kettering University. A school known for its mandatory co-op program where you had to have 2.5 years of work experience and complete a thesis at your employer to graduate.

The program is intense and incredibly valuable.

One of my fraternity brothers saved his employer $10M per year with his thesis project. Do that, and a great job offer is guaranteed.

What if that thesis was not a project at an employer, but cofounding a company within the university's venture studio program. A real company, with funding, and hands on support from the entire student body with advice from the faculty and studio staff? 

Freshmen's co-op work terms would be in startups doing basic work. Sophomores would be taking on projects. Juniors are leading teams. As seniors they start their own company.

The university funds the venture studio, which takes equity in each company, with equity for the seniors who get cofounder shares and the students working could earn a share as well.

Deep experiential learning. 
Students get years of real work experience.
Seniors graduate with equity in companies they built.
Success compounds for the students and the university.

Decent success delivers solid results.
Great success would create one of the larges endowments of any university.
Set tuition to zero, and the equity driven returns can cover operations costs.

Can you imagine such a venture studio and university merger?

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

View newsletter: Venture Studio Perspective

Picture two graduation ceremonies, five years apart. In the first, a business student crosses the stage having completed an entrepreneurship concentra

Open article: The Venture Studio University: What happens when you merge the venture studio model with experiential education? by Matthew Burris • 18 min read

The Venture Studio University: What happens when you merge the venture studio model with experiential education?

Most university innovation hubs run on hope. 
Not operations.

I've walked through dozens of beautiful innovation buildings. Glass walls, coworking spaces, demo labs. Millions invested in the physical space.

But here's what I see behind the scenes: programs that teach and advise, but don't actually build.

The difference shows up in the math.

A typical accelerator provides 1-2 hours per week of support to each portfolio company. For 12 weeks.

A venture studio? 20-80 hours per week. For 12+ months.

That's not mentorship. That's co-creation.

Accelerators and incubators are dependent on entrepreneurs stepping up and delivering. They hope the founders figure it out.

But hope isn't a strategy. It's a prayer.

Studios take an active role in building the products, forming the teams, and de-risking the ventures themselves.

The building is beautiful. But without an operational engine doing the actual work of company creation, you're not placing bets, you are hoping that someone else follows through to give you a win.

If you're working in university innovation: what's the biggest gap you've seen between innovation infrastructure and the operational capacity to actually build companies and deliver innovation outcomes?

Reply or DM me—I'll send you our From Lab to Market report.

Elevating the Venture Studio Ecosystem | $500M+ Strategic Impact | M&A, Innovation & AI | Trusted by 500+ Studios

The full details on the standards for Venture Studios are here.
The Venture Studio Index whitepaper, an open standard for venture studios is available now.

Expanded and updated based on investor feedback.
The official whitepaper on the Venture Studio Index and its release as an open standard for venture studios is here.

Since its formation, the Venture Studio Forum has had a mission to elevate and advance the asset class of venture studios.

Part of that mission is creating and managing standards for the asset class.

The Venture Studio Index is the first major release in support of this mission.

The VSI is designed to make it much easier for investors to understand, compare, and invest in venture studios. The VSI leverages frameworks, terminology, and expectations that are already familiar to investors. 

The new frameworks, such as the Venture Studio Cost Structure Model, build upon decades of investor knowledge and finance practice to reduce confusion and focus attention on how studios add value to the companies they build.

And embedding our definition of venture studios as a core aspect of how studios are evaluated, by drawing attention to the three core roles all venture studios must play as entrepreneur, operator, and investor in every company they build. 

This is just the first step. 
Join us in advancing the asset class. 
Join the Venture Studio Forum today.

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Talks about #startups, #venturestudio, #startupstudios, #venturecapital, and #productmanagement

The venture studio ecosystem has reached a pivotal milestone with the release of the Venture Studio Index (VSI) as a comprehensive open standard for s

The Venture Studio Index Whitepaper:
Establishing the Open Standard Foundation for an Emerging Asset Class

Nestor Guarien Taveras Sepúlveda

What happens when universities start acting like venture studios?

There’s a unique opportunity forming at the intersection of venture studios and universities.

Imagine a university where every student spends their academic career inside a fully integrated venture studio. 

From freshman to senior year, they move through roles, starting as support staff, eventually becoming co-founders of companies being built from within the studio.

For their thesis, each student helps launch a real company. 

The university contributes early-stage capital and takes an equity stake in every venture created by its students.

It would generate real-time feedback on what’s working in-market, giving students hands-on experience with real innovation and growth. 

And because value is being created at the company level, the university benefits from both financial exposure and relevant, applied research output.

This model isn’t just good for student learning. 

It can become the primary engine to fund the university’s operations and research for the long-term, without relying solely on tuition, donations, or government grants.

Over time, it’s possible to layer these venture studio models into existing universities. 

But if you’re starting fresh, this kind of model could be integrated from day one.

The upside is a system where education, innovation, and commercialization are fully aligned. 

Students leave with real experience (and maybe real equity). 

And the model sustains itself.

What Happens When Universities Start Acting Like Studios.pdf

Corporate studios the Intel engine strategy 

A major value-add of a corporate venture studio is its access to real-time market intelligence.

This often gets overlooked.

But when a venture studio is consistently running customer discovery across an ecosystem, the insights generated don’t just inform the companies being built.

They can be distilled and fed directly into corporate innovation.

That means better product roadmaps, clearer corporate strategy, and smarter venture investment decisions.

In some cases, this market intelligence can actually be more valuable than the startups the studio launches.

Which is why it’s so critical to build the studio in a way that unlocks that value.

One of the best places we’ve found to place a studio in is within corporate development.

Think about it:

Corporate development already owns the M&A function (buy).

They typically also run CVC (partner).

What they’re often missing is build.

A venture studio rounds out that strategy by giving the org a third option.

And because that activity generates real-time market intelligence, it becomes a direct line into both the CVC and M&A strategy.

You end up with a full-stack innovation engine, buy, partner, and now build, powered by intelligence that compounds across all three.

Corporate Studios The Intel Engine Strategy.pdf

Corporate Venture Capital doesn’t go far enough  
but Corporate Venture Studios might be the solution  

Corporate development teams have long had two key levers: 

They can buy (M&A) 
OR 
They can partner (Corporate Venture Capital).

But there’s a third move many overlook: the build function.

That’s where venture studios come in.

When buying isn’t the answer and there’s no clear partner to invest in,
but the opportunity is strategically important… a venture studio fills the gap.

It allows corporate development to take action on what doesn’t yet exist in-market.

With a venture studio, the corporation can build it themselves, driven by strategy, owned internally, and guided by market need.

It fits neatly between M&A and venture investing.

More importantly, it expands the strategic toolkit of corporate development itself.

Why does this work so well?

Because corporate development already has alignment with the internal strategy. 

They have access to budget. And they know what strategic bets need to be made.

That makes them the ideal home for a venture studio.

It’s not about replacing M&A or venture; it’s about completing the playbook.

With a strong buy, partner, and now build function, Corporate Venture Studios unlock new levels of flexibility and scale.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

Why CVC doesn’t go far enough.pdf

6 Common venture studio design mistakes

1. Incorporating Fund Too Soon
2. Picking the Wrong Follow-on Capital
3. Picking the Wrong Founder Archetype
4. Raising Capital Too Early
5. Designing Something Too Fancy
6. Pitching the Model Instead of Yourself

For more in depth breakdown, check the carousel below

The more focused you are early, the better your odds.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

6 Common Mistakes Venture Studios Make Too Early.pdf

The Founder Studio vs. Co-Founder Studio

Here’s a simple breakdown:

1. Founder Studio Model:

- The studio ideates, validates, and sometimes builds the product before partnering

- The incoming founder is may be more of an operator or growth-stage exec

- Equity is shaped by how much groundwork the studio has already done

- The studio holds more control having put more work in up front

2. Co-Founder Studio Model:

- The studio and entrepreneur partner early, near idea stage

- Both sides collaborate on ideation, validation, and building from day one

- Equity is usually more balanced from the start

- Decision rights are more evenly shared up front

Matching the stage of the venture to the type of founder you need is where long-term success starts.

P.S. Follow for more venture studio insights

The Founder Studio vs Co-Founder Studio.pdf

What is an acceptable ownership stake that a studio takes?

That depends entirely on context.

Venture studios don't operate under one model.

Equity structures can’t be one-size-fits-all, too many variables shape what’s fair, sustainable, and aligned.

Trying to anchor to a single percentage without knowing the studio structure or sector dynamics leads to broken outcomes.

You need to look at all four “customers” of a deal:

1. Studio investors want venture-scale returns for earlier, riskier capital.
2. The studio team needs comp that reflects deep, hands-on work building from scratch.
3. Entrepreneurs should receive a mix (salary, equity, benefits) that beats their alternative paths.
4. Follow-on capital requires cap tables and governance that fit their mandates.

If you underserve one, the deal structure breaks down.

There are also 8 pressure points that shift the right outcome:

1-Target Follow-On Capital Source
2-Entrepreneur Profile
3-Studio Investor Expectations
4-Industry Norms
5-Capital Intensity
6-Regional Ecosystem
7-Studio’s Founder Role
8-Studio Role Execution

Is the studio just an accelerator?
Are they hiring the team and validating the idea?
Buying a distressed asset?

Each case justifies a different equity model.

Want the full worksheet and article? Drop a comment on your challenge with venture studio deal structures, and I'll send it to you.

What is an acceptable ownership stake that a studio takes.pdf

University IP doesn't die in the valley of death. 
It dies from lack of a champion.

Here's the uncomfortable truth about why most university innovation stalls:
The academic researcher—brilliant, world-class—often doesn't care about commercial impact.

Publications? Yes. Citations? Absolutely. Tenure track? Critical.
Building a company? Career risk.

And when they do care, they're often championing innovations with no market potential. Because they're subject matter experts, not market experts.

But here's the structural problem underneath it all:
No single entity at the university has the mandate—and the capability—to go end-to-end. To identify the right IP, build the company, recruit the team, secure the capital, and set it up for success outside the university walls.

Tech transfer gets close. But they stop at licensing. Someone else has to build it.

That's the gap a university venture studio fills. 
End-to-end accountability. 
End-to-end execution.
Not handoffs. Ownership.

What's the biggest handoff gap you've seen in university commercialization—either at your institution or others you've observed?

Drop a comment or DM me—I'll share our report on how universities are building single-accountability systems.

Venture Studios serve four customers.
This is the heart of all venture studio challenges.
And your first true test as a studio.

It all goes back to the basics.
Who do you really support?
Does it work for them?

Any no means you have a fundamentally flawed business.
You might not know it for years, but the writing is on the wall.

For venture studios this boils down to delivering a service, building companies, in a way that works for:

The investors in your studio.
The founders and staff that run the studio.
The entrepreneurs you partner with to build companies.
The follow on capital sources that your companies will leverage to grow.

All in the service of delivering value through the equity you create.
One 'no' is not just an issue, it is the announcement of impending disaster.

Getting this right is not optional. Iterating might work for a boot strapped startup, but once you start taking and deploying investor capital, you have to play a grown up game. 

A game with real regulations and rules.
A game where investor capital must be treated with respect.
A game with government organizations that enforce the rules. 

To win the game, you must know the rules and know your customers.

Take the time. 
Learn from them.
They will show you what will work.
It is worth it.

Venture studios represent one of the most promising innovations in company creation, with compelling performance metrics that have captured investor a

Open article: The Four-Customer Challenge for Venture Studios: Why Understanding and Aligning Venture Studio Customers is Critical for Success by Matthew Burris • 14 min read

The Four-Customer Challenge for Venture Studios: Why Understanding and Aligning Venture Studio Customers is Critical for Success

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