Venture Learning Studios

Is it time for venture studios to enter the learning world?

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Steve Blank, an adjunct professor at Stanford University, a senior fellow at Columbia University, and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, explained what a venture studio does.

According to Blank,

“In the last two decades, three types of organizations – incubators, accelerators, and venture studios – have emerged to reduce the risk of early-stage startup failure by helping teams find product/market fit and raise initial capital. Most are founded and run by experienced entrepreneurs that have previously built companies and who understand the difference between theory and practice.”

“There are thousands of accelerators across the globe. The business model for most is to select startups that can generate venture-class returns – i.e. grow into companies that can potentially be worth billions of dollars. For most accelerators, admission is by application and interview.”

“Incubators are similar to accelerators in that they provide space and shared resources to startups, but usually no or very small amounts of capital. Their financial models are based on membership fees that grant access to a shared coworking space, resources, and access to other founders and operational expertise.”

“Venture studios create startups by incubating their own ideas or ideas from their partners. The studio’s internal team builds the minimum viable product, then validates the idea by finding product/market fit and early customers. If the idea passes a series of ‘Go/No Go’ decisions based on milestones for customer discovery and validation, the studio recruits entrepreneurial founders to fun and scale those startups.”

“…think of a venture studio as an ‘idea factory’ with their own full-time employees engaged in searching for product/market fit and a repeatable and scalable business model.”

“Most venture studios create and launch several startups each year. These have a greater success rate than those that come out of accelerators or traditional venture-funded companies. That’s because unlike accelerators, which operate on a six- to 12-week cadence, studios don’t have a set timeframe. Instead, they search and pivot until product/market fit is found. Unlike an accelerator or a VC firm, a venture studio kills most of their ideas that can’t find traction and won’t launch a startup if they can’t find evidence that it can be a scalable and profitable company.”

Of course our profits in the education world are measured by producing smarter and stronger young learners.

Our learning world is desperate for venture studios to be formed to support entrepreneurial endeavors like learning pods and micro schools. To assist with their formation, venture studios could be supported by public/private partnerships where state and local taxing authorities work with non-profits and private foundations to form learning studios filled with new ideas on how to best support young learners.

It would be nice if colleges of education would get interested in hosting these types of venture studios, but it seems very few are. Arizona State University is probably the most advanced higher education institution when it comes to hosting learning leaders with different ideas than those of the traditional system.

Today, many state governments are finding themselves with budget surpluses. Wouldn’t it be nice to take some of that surplus, partner with private foundation support, along with non-profit assistance, and launch a venture studio focused on promoting a new learning system?

I’m afraid our learning future lays in the balance.

Til tomorrow. SVB