Evan Allen’s Post

"Run the damn test!" is one of our mantras at 9point8 Collective and one that is especially critical when trying to create something new... You can debate your theories and explain your rationale until you're blue in the face or you burn up precious runway, but the point is, if you're creating something that is truly innovative, you don't know. You probably CAN'T know. After all, it's... new... 💡 In this article from Elliott Parker at High Alpha Innovation (titans in the #VentureStudio space), he uses two powerful examples to explain the “skeuomorphic” phenomenon: we seek to apply new technology to things that we already know 💻 In the early days of the internet, magazines were "printed" online with the same layout as the print version. Sometimes, they'd even include a page turn animation in an attempt to replicate the real world experience. 📺 The first movies were nothing more than plays on stage that someone recorded. Then, filmmakers realized this new technology allowed them to follow the actors' movements through different environments. The point is, these ideas made sense in theory. But only through lots of expermentation and user feedback did people learn that there were better applications for the respective technology. If you really want to innovate, you've got to run the damn test! Fast, cheap, and weird! #Innovation #Studios #Venture

As I've discussed in my last few posts, #VentureStudios provide a strong framework for their #founders. A critical component of this framework is the #Studios #CorporateDevelopment function. 🏭 Corporate Development contributes to Studio and venture success by establishing and nurturing relationships with external entities who might engage with certain ventures and help pave the way for growth and long-term sustainability. This function often includes a few key components: 💸 Investor Relations: Cultivating a pipeline of investors aligned with the Studio's innovation area(s) and collaborating with the ventures to ensure they remain "investor ready" 🤝 Strategic Partnerships: Developing connections with relevant community resources, like economic development engines, academia, and corporations, to gain ventures access to additional funding sources, advisors, and complementary IP. This function may even explore joint ventures opportunities. 🛒 Acquisitions: Whether acquiring a product, a service, or an entire venture, this group is focused on building relationships with businesses who stand to benefit from the products generated by the Studio's ventures. In many cases, working with these corporations can also help identify unsolved problems that should be considered for the next cohort of ventures. #CorporateDevelopment #VentureSuccess #InvestorRelations #StrategicPartnerships

🏘 As the saying goes, "it takes a village." And it holds for #startups. 🤝 #Founders must build an ecosystem around their business by engaging potential customers, talent, strategic advisors, corporate partners, investors, perhaps even government authorities (and lots more), but doing so meaningfully requires dedicated time and focus. 🌎 This is yet another area where #VentureStudios give founders a leg up: Ecosystem Development. By establishing an Ecosystem Development function, Studios can ensure that founders have access to everyone they need to succeed. They typically do this in a few ways: 🏙 Community Engagement: maintaining an updated calendar of community events (both geography- or industry-based) and networking opportunities to help Studio personnel and founders form strategic relationships. 🎟 Events: hosting events to establish and maintain status as a thought leader and showcase new ventures. These events help foster relationships with investors, talent, strategic partners, and potential customers. 🚀 Branding and Marketing: developing a strong brand and evangelizing it is essential, but doing it well requires experience and can often be expensive. By providing this support at the Studio level, founders benefit from the Studio’s brand recognition while developing their own individual brands, all guided by experienced professionals.

⚖ #Founders constantly have to balance building their product with building their business. 👀 At first glance, these two may look like one and the same, but they are actually quite different. 🔬 Building a #product is all about piecing together the #MVP and proving out the hypothesis. Can I build X to solve Y problem for Z persona? Will they pay me to solve this problem? If so, how much? 📈 Assuming the answers to those questions are "yes," "yes," and "enough," a founder's focus then shifts to scaling and improving the product. How can I provide a more complete solution? How can I solve this problem for more or for different users? Can we solve the problem more efficiently? 📃 Building a business is... a lot different and focused on making sure there is a functional, legal entity to support the success of the product. Accounting, contracting, entity formation, taxes, payroll, and HR are absolutely CRITICAL to get right but are ultimately a distraction for founders in the early stages of launching a business. 🏋♀️ Enter, #VentureStudios, which provide Platform Support to help build the business, freeing up the founder to focus on building their product. 🏊♂️ I'll dive in on Platform Support in a coming post...

If you want to build a big business, it's important to make sure that whatever you start building actually has the potential to become a big business. 🎯 As company creators, #VentureStudios are involved in target selection - deciding which companies to build - and they provide Research & Strategy teams to help their founders take big swings and start with a leg up. Research & Strategy functions typically focus on: 💪 Unfair Advantages: finding opportunities that match nicely to a studio's strengths. What technology have we built that can be re-purposed? Who is in our ecosystem that can help us ink the first customer? What trends are we aware of that others are not? 🏇 Finding Mustangs, not Unicorns: bucking the "boom or bust" mantra that drives #VentureCapital and identifying market gaps that can be closed by a business built on solid fundamtentals to produce a return Y/Y. After all, a business doesn't need to be worth $1B to be worth a lot of money. 🚸 Don't Play in Traffic: why battle it out in a crowded market when you can dominate a niche (but large) space? Studios often seek to create ventures that can establish a defensible position in a sub-market while others are busy chasing shiny objects. Pretty appealing headstart for a founder, no?

Thank you Jeff VanNote for the thoughtful post. Working alongside you has been a blast, and we are excited for what's to come! While the post wasn't intended to be motivational, it certainly was. Making founders feel this way is what inspires us to do what we do. Always fun getting to add unexpected fuel like this to the tank. Onward...

Before diving in on how #VentureStudios support founders, I must also answer the question many of you have in your minds right now... "Wtf is a venture studio?" It's a perfectly fair question...the studio trend is still relatively new, and I've come to learn that most studio leaders have to answer frequently. #VentureStudios create companies, playing the role of Co-Founder and actively participating in opportunity identification, strategy development, company formation, product building and testing, fundraising, growth... you name it. To do this, Studios typically maintain a roster of top-notch entrepreneurs, advisors, product managers, marketers, engineers, designers, analysts, lawyers, accountants, and finance experts that can be categorized into a few key buckets: ⚗ Research & Strategy 🛠 Building, Testing, & Scaling 🌎 Ecosystem Development 🤝 Corporate Development 📚 Platform Support I'll go deep on each one in my next few posts. 👀 If this content is at all interesting to you, please stay tuned or drop me a line. Talking about studios is one of my favorite things to do, so don't be shy!

Yesterday I posted about how failure is inherent in entrepreneurship, and I promised to share more about how #VentureStudios help #startups avoid failure.   💭 When I posted, I had my next few posts outlined in my head. Or at least I thought I did. That's when a friend and mentor, Court Vanzant, commented and helped me realize I was about to skip a step: defining failure.   ✏ So, first thing's first: "failure" is really just a construct. To borrow from Court, "failure exists only in the mind, yours or others…Failures only stick if you cease to mine them for the gold buried in the rubble (lessons learned) or if you quit (letting the story end on someone else's terms)."   He's exactly right, and that's exactly how Studios help startups.   🍎 By teaching: Studios pair founders with experienced entrepreneurs and industry experts who serve as advisors, helping them to define the opportunity in front of them and shape their strategy. These advisors have almost certainly mined through plenty of rubble in their careers and share the lessons they've learned to help founders steer clear of avoidable errors.   🙌 By encouraging: Building companies is hard. Roughly 90% of businesses do not survive. Studios foster collaboration and camaraderie, providing a forum for founders to share their stories and inspire one another to power through tough times, and if something truly isn't working, help them pivot to something more promising. Tomorrow, we'll get back to the regularly scheduled programming on Studio mechanisms and their secret sauce

🏎 My first failed product: a go-kart I built and took (part way) down a massive hill in my neighborhood. S/o Derek Sweet for taking the plunge with me. ☎ My first failed pitch: a PPT deck I made to try to persuade my parents to get me a cell phone in 7th grade. Mama Allen saw straight through that one. Point is... I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Building things from scratch and taking calculated risks are two of my favorite things to do. And when that's the case, you fail a lot. And I do mean A LOT. We created 9point8 Collective to build #VentureStudios and support #founders by sharing what we've learned to help them bring their visions to life. Because we've failed, others don't have to. At least not as often or as painfully. How exactly do venture studios accomplish that? More to come...