A venture studio is a company that builds new startups itself. Instead of waiting for founders to pitch, the studio finds a problem, validates it with customers, and builds the first product with its own team and capital. Then it puts a dedicated founder or operating partner in charge and stays on as a co-founder, not just an investor.
Scalable Ventures is a venture studio focused on B2B SaaS, founded by Vik Chadha in 2010. We co-build each company with an operating partner who leads it, reuse a shared stack and playbooks across the portfolio, and plan for revenue and profitability rather than for the next funding round.
“I’ve been where you want to go. Having co-founded Backupify (acquired by Datto) and UnifyCX (formerly GlowTouch), I bring real-world experience to every partnership.”
Vik Chadha, Founder and CEO
A venture studio is an organization that creates companies on purpose and repeatedly. It keeps a small permanent team covering product, engineering, design, go-to-market and finance, and points that team at one new company after another. Ideas come from the studio’s own research, from problems its people have hit while running businesses, or from partners who understand a market well. The studio pays for the early work, usually before there is a company to invest in, and holds a founding equity stake in return.
That sequence is what separates a studio from every other startup model. A venture capital firm invests in a company that already exists and is run by its founders. An accelerator runs a fixed-length program for startups that already have a team. An incubator gives very early founders a base and some support. A venture studio does the founding work itself, then hands day-to-day leadership to the person best placed to run the company.
Studios exist because the hardest part of an early startup is rarely the idea. It is the long list of execution decisions in the first year: what to build first, how to price it, who the first ten customers are, which engineer to hire. A team that has made those decisions many times makes them faster and with fewer expensive mistakes. It can also stop a weak idea after a few weeks of customer interviews, before anyone has spent two years and a seed round on it.
Some studios are generalists. Others pick one kind of company and get very good at building it. Scalable Ventures builds B2B SaaS: subscription software that businesses pay for every month, sold to a defined buyer with a clear, expensive problem. Staying with one business model means our pricing, sales and product playbooks carry over from one company to the next, and every launch teaches us something the following one can use.
Vik started Scalable Ventures in 2010 after co-founding UnifyCX (formerly GlowTouch), which grew to more than 6,000 employees, and Backupify, which he co-founded with Rob May in Louisville in 2008. Backupify moved to Boston after raising venture capital and was acquired by Datto in 2014. Those two companies showed him both sides of company building: growing a services business on revenue, and scaling a venture-backed software company to an acquisition. For his personal take on why he chose the studio model over raising a fund, read Vik’s essay on choosing the venture studio model.
Most studios follow a version of the same arc: find and validate an opportunity, build the product, take it to market, then spin the company out or keep scaling it. What differs is how strict the gates are between stages. Ours has five stages, and a company moves forward only when the evidence from the current stage supports it. The durations are the ranges we plan around; real companies run faster or slower depending on the market and the buyer.
4 to 8 weeks
We start with a problem, not a product. Market research, competitive analysis and customer discovery interviews test three things: whether the problem is real, whether buyers will pay to solve it, and whether the unit economics can work. We design the business model and a first go-to-market plan here, and we stop ideas that fail these tests.
Runs alongside validation
Each company needs one person who will lead it. We pair the opportunity with an operating partner or co-founder who knows the customer, and fill the remaining gaps from the studio team. Open roles are listed on our opportunities page, with the equity on offer described up front.
8 to 12 weeks
The first product covers the core workflow and nothing else. We build it on our standard stack (Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js or Python, PostgreSQL, cloud infrastructure with CI/CD), recruit beta customers, and test pricing with real buyers. Product-market fit signals decide what gets built next.
12 to 16 weeks
Once customers are using the product, we build the machinery to find more of them: an acquisition funnel, a CRM and repeatable sales process, content and demand generation, and customer success. Financial reporting and KPI dashboards go in at the same time, so decisions rest on numbers.
6 to 12 months, then ongoing
Scaling means lowering acquisition cost, expanding revenue from existing accounts, adding partners and channels, and preparing for enterprise buyers (security, compliance such as SOC 2 and GDPR, deeper integrations). From here a company either raises outside capital and runs independently with the studio as a shareholder, or keeps growing on its own revenue.
Added together, the first four stages put a typical company six to nine months from its first customer interview to a working sales and marketing motion. Compare that with a solo founding team, which has to work out the stack, the sales process, the finance setup and the hiring plan from scratch while also looking for customers.
The last stage is where studios differ most. Some companies raise outside capital and run as independent businesses, with the studio as a shareholder and adviser. Others keep growing on their own revenue with the studio staying closer to operations. HiveDesk, for example, is profitable with six-figure revenue. We decide which path fits each company based on its market and what the operating partner wants, not on a fixed studio rule. The technical standards, stack and the metrics we track at each stage are documented in how we build companies.
Capital is the smallest part of what a studio contributes
We have built what you are building
Profitability as a growth engine
Frameworks used across our companies
Exit options kept open from day one
All four models back early-stage companies, but they enter at different moments and do very different amounts of the work. The short version: a studio builds, a VC funds, an accelerator trains, and an incubator hosts. The table shows how that plays out.
| Venture studio | Venture capital | Accelerator | Incubator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where the idea comes from | The studio, often before a team exists | The founders | The founders | The founders, often at idea stage |
| When they get involved | Before the company exists | After early traction, at seed or later | Early, with a team and prototype in place | Idea or very early stage |
| What they provide | Capital, a building team, shared tools and playbooks | Capital and board-level guidance | Mentorship, a small investment, a network | Space, advice and shared services |
| Day-to-day involvement | High: works inside the company | Low: board meetings and calls | Medium, during the program | Low to medium |
| Time frame | Years, through spin-out and beyond | Years, through follow-on rounds to exit | A fixed term ending in a demo day | Flexible, often open-ended |
| Equity | A founding stake, shared with the operating team | A minority stake in each round | A small stake set by the program | Often none, or a small stake or fee |
| Best fit | Operators who want a co-founding partner | Founders with traction who need capital to scale | First-time teams who want structure and contacts | Very early founders who need a base |
A VC firm’s core skill is selection: it sees many companies, picks a few, and supports them from the board. That works well for founders who already have traction and need capital to grow. A studio’s core skill is construction. It is involved before there is traction, and its people do product, sales and finance work inside the company. Because a VC portfolio depends on a few very large outcomes, VC-backed companies are often pushed to grow faster than their economics support. About three out of four venture-backed startups fail to return investors’ capital, according to Harvard Business School’s Shikhar Ghosh (2012). A studio can afford to build companies that win with smaller, profitable outcomes.
An accelerator takes an existing team through a fixed program, adds mentorship and a small investment, and ends with a demo day. Its value is structure, a peer group and introductions, and it suits founders who have already decided what to build. A studio has no cohort and no end date. It shares the work for as long as the company needs it, and its involvement tends to grow, not shrink, in the months after launch.
Incubators are often run by universities, cities or economic development groups. They give very early founders a desk, advice and shared services, and many take little or no equity. They help you get started; they do not build with you. If you need a base and a community while you work out an idea, an incubator is a good fit. If you want a partner who will write code, run sales calls and own part of the outcome, that is a studio.
Does the extra involvement show up in results? One industry data point: a 2020 GSSN white paper reported that 72% of studio startups that reached a seed round went on to raise a Series A, compared with 42% of conventional startups (GSSN, Disrupting the Venture Landscape). Studios also stop more ideas before they reach a seed round, so treat that figure as a sign of what the model does well rather than a promise.
This page covers the definitions and how the model works. For a deeper look at studio and VC economics, ownership at each stage, and worked scenarios, read our full venture studio vs traditional VC comparison.
No. Startup studio, venture studio, venture builder, startup factory and startup foundry all describe the same model: one organization creating several companies over time with a shared team, shared tools and its own capital. The term a studio uses is mostly a branding choice. You will see all of these used for the same thing, and the mechanics do not change with the label.
Three nearby models do differ and are worth separating. A corporate venture studio builds new businesses for a large company, which usually owns most of the result. A venture building agency builds products for clients in exchange for fees rather than equity, so it does not share in the outcome. A university venture studio is closer to an incubator for students and alumni, offering space, mentoring and sometimes small grants.
Scalable Ventures is an independent studio. We build our own companies with our own capital and take equity alongside the operating partners who run them. We do not build for corporate clients or charge fees for building.
A studio is a good fit for three groups of people, and a poor fit for a fourth.
Experienced sales, product or engineering leaders who want to be a CEO or co-founder but do not want to spend a year on setup. You bring domain knowledge and the drive to lead; the studio brings a validated opportunity, a product and a team to start with. This is the most common path into a studio company.
First-time and repeat founders with a B2B SaaS idea or early customers who would rather have an operating co-founder than a passive investor. A studio is especially useful if you are strong on the customer side and need help on product and engineering, or the reverse.
Angels and funds who invest in B2B software and want companies that have already passed customer validation, have a working product and are led by an operator with a team behind them. If you want to follow studio companies as they raise, get in touch.
Who it is not for: founders who want full control of every decision, or who are set on a single idea regardless of what customers say. A studio is a real co-founder with a real opinion and a real stake. If you want capital and distance, a traditional seed investor is the better choice, and that is a perfectly good choice.
The studio model is not better than the alternatives in every case. Here is what you gain and what you give up, from the side of the person who will run the company.
The equity question deserves the most attention before you sign anything. A fair split reflects what each side actually contributes: who found and validated the opportunity, who funded it, who built the product, and who will spend the next five years running the company. Vesting should apply to everyone, including the studio’s team. Our equity calculator and the co-founder equity split framework are a good place to start that conversation.
If you searched for B2B SaaS venture capital and landed here, one clarification first: Scalable Ventures is a studio, not a traditional venture fund. We do not raise money from limited partners and write checks into a large portfolio. We invest our own capital and, more importantly, our own operating time into a small number of B2B software companies, most of which we start ourselves.
In practice that means the investment arrives as a mix of cash, product and engineering work, go-to-market execution and finance support, at the stage when most B2B SaaS companies find capital hardest to raise: before revenue, or with a handful of early customers. Alongside the studio companies, Vik also invests in other technology companies, some personally and some through Scalable Ventures. Those investments are listed on our portfolio page.
Vik also holds two separate roles in B2B software investing. He is a General Partner at Unbridled Ventures, an angel investing fund that invests up to $500K in seed and Series A rounds of businesses across the United States, and an Investment Advisory Partner at Poplar Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early and growth stage cloud-based recurring revenue software companies. Those firms make their own decisions through their own processes. If your company has traction and needs a fund rather than a building partner, they are worth a look.
For studio partnerships, this is what we look for.
Technical or deep industry expertise
A strong engineering background or deep knowledge of the buyer and their workflow
Startup or relevant corporate experience
You have built something before, or led the function the product serves
A capital efficiency mindset
Sustainable growth and healthy unit economics over raising for its own sake
Coachable and collaborative
Open to a real partnership and to operational input
B2B SaaS
Business software with a recurring revenue model
$1B+ market opportunity
A large addressable market with clear room to grow
Evidence of demand
Customer interviews, early customers or other product-market fit signals
A scalable business model
A clear path to healthy unit economics and profitability
Louisville/Kentucky
Strong local ecosystem support
Southeast/Midwest
Regional focus areas
Remote-first
Strong execution capability
Exceptional opportunities
Regardless of location
The operating history behind the studio
These are companies built inside the studio, at different stages. Some are live and growing, and some are earlier and looking for the operating partner who will lead them. Vik’s earlier companies, Backupify and UnifyCX, predate the studio and appear on the portfolio page as founder track record.
Workforce management SaaS
Automatic time tracking, scheduling, attendance and productivity monitoring for remote teams, used by contact centers, IT services firms, agencies and back-office teams. Live, profitable, with six-figure revenue.
Go-to-market platform
AI-powered go-to-market platform for deep tech and innovation-led startups, covering market validation, pricing and GTM strategy. Pre-MVP, and looking for a business-focused co-founder.
Business templates
Marketplace of professional financial, IT and compliance templates, including TCO analysis tools, salary planning templates and IT policy libraries.
Referral programs for MSPs
Done-for-you referral program platform that helps managed service providers turn client and partner referrals into recurring revenue, with software for tracking referrals and automating payouts.
Global delivery network
Resource hub and network that educates, qualifies and connects mid-market companies to proven global CX delivery and workforce management providers.
Conversion optimization
Full-funnel conversion optimization platform that finds and fixes revenue leaks across the customer journey using data-driven A/B testing. In concept stage.
Home management
Digital home records, maintenance tracking, vendor directory and planning tools for homeowners. Pre-MVP, and looking for a technical or product co-founder.
A venture studio is a company that builds new startups itself. It finds a problem, validates it with customers, builds the first product with its own team and capital, and then puts a dedicated founder or operating partner in charge. The studio acts as a co-founder and keeps a founding equity stake. Scalable Ventures is a venture studio that builds B2B SaaS companies.
A venture capital firm invests money in a company that already exists and is run by its founders, then supports it from the board. A venture studio starts the company, does much of the early building work itself, and stays involved in day-to-day decisions. VCs usually arrive after there is traction; studios are there before there is a company.
Yes. Startup studio, venture studio, venture builder, startup factory and startup foundry all describe the same model: an organization that creates several companies over time using a shared team, shared tools and its own capital. The labels differ by region and by the studio's own branding, not by how the model works.
Accelerators run fixed-length programs for startups that already have a team, offering mentorship, a small investment and a demo day. Incubators give very early founders space, advice and shared services. Neither one builds the product with you. A venture studio does the founding work alongside the operating team and stays involved for years, not for the length of a program.
More than a seed investor, because the studio does founding work and funds the earliest stage. The exact split depends on what the studio contributes (the idea, capital, product, team, customers) and what the operating partner brings. At Scalable Ventures we agree the split for each company, including vesting, before building starts, so nobody is surprised later.
Through the equity they hold in the companies they build. When a studio company is acquired, goes public or pays distributions from profits, the studio earns a return on its stake. Because the studio shares its team and tools across companies, each new company costs less to start than a standalone startup would.
Our process plans for 4 to 8 weeks of validation, 8 to 12 weeks to build and test the first product with beta customers, and 12 to 16 weeks to build the go-to-market engine. That puts most companies six to nine months from first customer interview to a working sales and marketing motion. Scaling takes considerably longer.
Yes, if it is a B2B SaaS business that fits our criteria. Most studio companies start from opportunities we identify, and the open co-founder roles are listed on our opportunities page. We also talk with founders who already have an idea or early customers and want a hands-on building partner. Apply and describe what you are working on.
No. Scalable Ventures is a venture studio: it invests its own capital and operating time in the companies it builds. Vik Chadha separately serves as a General Partner at Unbridled Ventures, an angel fund, and as an Investment Advisory Partner at Poplar Ventures, a venture capital firm. Those are independent firms with their own investment processes.
There are three ways in. Join a studio company that needs an operating partner from our open co-founder opportunities; apply with your own B2B SaaS idea or early-stage company; or contact us as an investor or partner. The partnership process typically takes 4 to 6 weeks from first contact to launch.
Questions? Email partners@scalable.ventures