Writing
Notes on venture creation, the studio model, and what the research says. Some of this is academic, some is practitioner-facing, some is just me thinking out loud.
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The Attribution Problem
A venture studio builds twelve companies over four years. Three reach meaningful scale. The studio points to its process: the structured ideation, the stage gates, the shared services layer, the CEO matching. The narrative is…
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The Production Function Problem
The Cobb-Douglas function has anchored growth economics for a century. AI may be breaking its core assumptions about how capital and labor relate.
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Lucky Knowledge
Three exits don’t prove pattern recognition. Venture capital’s feedback loop is too long, too noisy, and too confounded to distinguish expertise from luck.
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Outcome, Output, Process
AI compresses the production layer of knowledge work. Human value migrates to specification and validation. The seniority premium is widening, not shrinking.
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What Kind of Institution Is This?
Venture studios don’t fit neatly into existing categories. They may represent something historically novel in how companies get created.
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Venture Studios as Compound Real Options
Each stage gate in a venture studio purchases the right, not the obligation, to invest further. The real options framework changes how you think about studio returns.
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The Fat Middle
Venture capital chases outliers. But the structural opportunity may be in the derisked middle of the distribution, where studios can build repeatable value.
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AI Changes the Cost of Building, Not Just What Gets Built
When AI drops the cost of building a company by an order of magnitude, the interesting question isn’t what gets built. It’s what changes about who builds it.
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Venture Capital’s Rate Problem
The venture capital model was designed for a different rate environment. What happens to fund economics when the assumptions underneath them shift?
Longer work
Unfounded: The Venture Studio Model. Book in progress. An honest examination of what the evidence says about venture studios: what works, what doesn’t, and what we still don’t know.
Quantitative Analysis of Venture Studio Success Factors. Authored research paper. In revision for publication.