Why did Vik Chadha choose the venture studio model over a traditional VC fund?

After co-founding UnifyCX and Backupify and making a number of angel investments, I noticed that the companies where I was deeply involved operationally performed significantly better than the ones where I just wrote a check and attended board meetings. Early-stage companies need help with first hires, technology decisions, first customers, and the business model, day to day. A venture studio is the only structure that lets me be that involved across several companies at once, so I built Scalable Ventures that way in 2010.

How does Scalable Ventures build a company?

Every company goes through four stages with clear exit criteria. We identify an opportunity through research and customer discovery, assemble a team that pairs domain experts with technical talent, develop the product on shared infrastructure and design resources, and execute go-to-market with sales and marketing playbooks refined across more than a dozen launches. We don't advance until the evidence supports it.

How does the studio model make companies more capital efficient?

Studio companies share a common technology stack, design system, and back-office infrastructure. Convertify and Commercify, for example, share authentication, billing, and analytics. Because go-to-market mechanics, finance functions, and advisory networks already exist inside the studio, our companies typically reach their first meaningful revenue milestone on 40 to 60 percent less capital than comparable VC-backed startups.

What is harder about running a venture studio?

The hardest part is finding great operators, because great ideas without great operators don't become great companies. Studios are also bandwidth-constrained, since your attention is the bottleneck rather than capital. The model is harder to explain than traditional VC, the equity structure is more complex because the studio keeps a significant stake, and you have to get market timing right.

How do you decide between a venture studio, traditional VC, and angel investing?

It depends on your strengths and temperament. A studio fits an operator at heart who wants to be in the trenches building across multiple companies. Traditional VC fits a capital allocator who prefers evaluating opportunities and giving board-level guidance. Angel investing fits someone who wants to support founders with smaller checks and light-touch involvement, without an institutional commitment.

What advice would you give someone starting a venture studio?

Start with one company, not five, and prove the process before expanding. Build the shared infrastructure early, hire operators rather than just idea people, and be honest about your bandwidth. I can meaningfully contribute to only three or four companies at a time. Plan for graduation from day one so every company can eventually run on its own.

Where can I learn what a venture studio is in general?

This post is my personal account of why I chose the model and how Scalable Ventures runs it. For the general explainer on what a venture studio is and how it compares to accelerators and funds, see the venture studio page at scalable.ventures/venture-studio.

Why I Chose the Venture Studio Model, and How Scalable Ventures Runs It

First-hand Experience

Founder and CEO of Scalable Ventures since 2010(Built and invested in 12+ companies across SaaS, AI, healthcare, and creative industries)

I run Scalable Ventures as a venture studio because the companies where I was deeply involved operationally kept outperforming the ones where I only wrote a check. A studio is the one structure that lets me stay that involved across several companies at once. We originate many of our own ideas, validate them with real customers, build the first product on shared infrastructure, and then recruit a founder or co-founder to lead the company once there is early signal. This post is my personal account of that choice: why I made it, how we actually run the studio day to day, and the tradeoffs that nobody mentions when they pitch the model. If you want the general explainer on what a venture studio is and how studios compare to accelerators and funds, the Scalable Ventures team keeps that on the venture studio page at scalable.ventures. Here I want to stick to what I've seen from the inside.

The Choice I Faced in 2010

When I started Scalable Ventures in 2010, I had three options. I could raise a traditional venture fund and write checks to other founders. I could keep building individual companies one at a time. Or I could try something less common. By then I had co-founded UnifyCX, which grew from one location and a few employees to more than 6,000 people internationally, and Backupify, which Datto later acquired. I had also made a number of angel investments. Looking across all of it, I noticed a pattern. The companies where I was in the work every week did significantly better than the ones where I showed up to board meetings. It wasn't because I was smarter than the founders I backed. Early-stage companies face a specific set of problems: hiring the first team, making foundational technology decisions, finding the first customers, structuring the business model. Having someone who has done those things before, working alongside you day to day, is an enormous advantage. A board member who meets with you monthly can give strategic advice. They can't help you evaluate your first engineering hire on Tuesday, debug a pricing strategy on Wednesday, and make a customer introduction on Friday. I wanted to be that involved. The lesson I took from UnifyCX and Backupify was that the hardest part of a startup isn't the idea. It's the execution infrastructure around the idea. A studio formalizes that infrastructure so every new company starts from a higher baseline.

The Simplest Way I Explain It

A traditional VC writes a check and waits for quarterly updates. A venture studio rolls up its sleeves and builds alongside you, sometimes before there is even a "you" to build with. That inverts the usual startup sequence. Instead of waiting for a great pitch deck to walk through the door, we go looking for market gaps first and then assemble the right team around the opportunity.

Four Ways I've Backed Companies

Venture Studio

Builds companies from scratch with shared resources and operational support

Traditional VC

Invests capital in existing startups and provides board-level guidance

Accelerator

Short-term programs with mentorship and small investment for early-stage startups

Angel Investing

Individual investors providing capital and advice, typically at the earliest stages

How Scalable Ventures Builds a Company

We take every company through four stages, and each one has exit criteria. We don't advance until the evidence supports moving forward.

Venture Studio Process

Opportunity

Identify

Market research

Customer discovery

→

Team

Assemble

Domain experts

Technical talent

→

Product

Develop

Technical resources

Design & UX

→

Go-to-Market

Launch

Marketing strategy

Sales process

1. Identify the Opportunity

We find opportunities through market research, industry networks, customer discovery, and trend analysis, and we validate that the problem is real and that buyers will pay to solve it. In practice, I spend a large share of my time talking to operators and founders across our network and listening for recurring frustrations. The best startup ideas rarely come from brainstorming sessions. They come from patterns you notice after hearing the same complaint from the fifteenth person. Our own operating history is the richest source. HiveDesk came from the need for remote workforce management that we lived through while scaling UnifyCX across multiple countries. The ideas aren't theoretical. They come from operational pain we've had ourselves.

2. Assemble the Team

We pair domain experts who understand the industry with technical talent who can build the product. Finding the right founder or co-founder is the single most important decision we make. Sometimes we recruit externally through our co-founder opportunities program; sometimes the founding team emerges from our network. What we never do is force a founder into a company they aren't passionate about. The studio gives us the luxury of patience. We can hold an opportunity in development until the right person appears rather than rushing to fill a seat.

3. Develop the Product

New builds don't start from zero. Our companies share a common technology stack, design system, and back-office infrastructure. Convertify, our conversion optimization platform, and Commercify, our AI go-to-market platform for deep tech startups, share authentication, billing, and analytics. That shared layer saves each company months of engineering time and tens of thousands of dollars in redundant tooling, and it lets the team spend its energy on the features that make the product different.

4. Execute Go-to-Market

We launch with marketing and sales playbooks refined across more than a dozen launches: templated sales processes, content marketing frameworks, and a network of early adopters who trust us enough to try something new. Globalify, our global delivery network and resource hub, got its first paying customers through warm introductions from existing portfolio relationships, with no cold outbound. I also stay close to the early commercial motion myself. When we launched Elinkages, our partner operating system for ecosystem-led growth, I personally ran the first 30 sales calls to understand objections and refine positioning before we hired a dedicated sales lead. Most investors can't offer that kind of founder-level involvement, and it's a big part of why I chose this model.

What the Studio Model Gets Right

I won't pretend the studio is strictly superior to every alternative. But here is what I've found it does better.

Higher Success Rates at the Earliest Stage

When you control the idea, the team, and the initial execution, you remove many of the variables that kill startups. You're not betting on whether a first-time founder can figure out product-market fit alone. You're applying a repeatable process honed across multiple companies, catching problems earlier, and making sure no founder faces a challenge we haven't seen before. One example: a portfolio company hit a wall when its enterprise sales cycles stretched to nine months. Within weeks we restructured the pricing model and introduced a product-led growth entry point. In a typical startup, that pivot could take a full quarter of board discussions and consultant engagements.

Capital Efficiency

Across our portfolio, companies typically reach their first meaningful revenue milestone on 40 to 60 percent less capital than comparable VC-backed startups. The reason is simple. They don't spend six months and half a million dollars working out basic go-to-market mechanics, building a finance function, or recruiting an advisory board, because those capabilities already exist inside the studio. Every dollar goes toward what actually differentiates the business: product, customers, and domain expertise.

Faster Iteration

When something isn't working, a studio can change course quickly because decision-making is simpler. There's less board politics, no investor signaling concerns, and less founder ego tied to the original vision.

Compounding Knowledge

When one company discovers a new acquisition channel or runs into a regulatory hurdle, that knowledge reaches the rest of the portfolio within days, not years. Every company we build teaches us something that makes the next one better, and our playbooks for go-to-market, hiring, technology architecture, and customer development have been refined across all of them.

Network Access

Our relationships with organizations like YPO, Poplar Ventures, and Venture First mean studio companies get access to customers, advisors, and capital that would take a standalone startup years to cultivate.

What's Harder Than Anyone Tells You

Finding Great Operators

In traditional VC, you invest in founders who already exist. In a studio, you have to find founders for the companies you're building or develop them yourself. This is the hardest part of the model. Great ideas without great operators don't become great companies. We've learned to prioritize founders who are comfortable with ambiguity and genuinely want an operational partner, not just a check. Some excellent founders want full autonomy, and that's fine, but the studio isn't the right fit for them.

Bandwidth

When you're operationally involved in several companies, your attention is the bottleneck, not capital. I've had periods where three companies needed intensive support at the same time, and there weren't enough hours in the week. Our answer is a systematic prioritization framework. Companies at inflection points (approaching product-market fit, closing a major partnership, preparing for a fundraise) get concentrated attention. Companies in steady execution run more independently. The discipline is being honest about where studio involvement has the highest marginal impact.

Explaining the Model

Studios are still less understood than venture funds. Explaining the model to potential co-founders, employees, and investors takes extra effort. "We're a venture studio" still gets blank looks in many rooms, usually followed by "so... is it an accelerator?"

Equity Complexity

When a studio creates a company, the studio typically keeps a significant stake, which leaves less equity for the operating team. Structuring that fairly, so operators are motivated and the studio is compensated for what it contributed, takes careful thought every time.

Market Timing

Picking the right opportunity at the right moment is hard. We keep a rolling pipeline of opportunity hypotheses and validate them continuously. Some sit in the pipeline for years before conditions are right. That patience is a competitive advantage most standalone founders can't afford.

Studio, Fund, or Angel: How I'd Decide

The choice isn't about which model is better in the abstract. It's about which one fits your strengths, your goals, and your temperament.

Which Model Fits You?

Do you want to build companies or invest in them?

BUILD

Do you want to be operationally involved day-to-day?

YES

VENTURE STUDIO — you want to be in the trenches

HOLDING COMPANY — own and oversee, but hire operators

INVEST

Do you want board seats and strategic influence?

YES

TRADITIONAL VC — invest and advise at the board level

ANGEL INVESTING — write checks and offer light-touch support

A studio fits if you're an operator at heart: you love product decisions, team building, and customer conversations, and you want to do that across multiple companies at once. You have to accept the bandwidth limits and genuinely enjoy the variety. Traditional VC fits if you're mainly a capital allocator whose best skill is evaluating opportunities, selecting founders, and giving high-level guidance. You get a larger, more diversified portfolio and less control over execution. Angel investing fits if you want to support founders without an institutional commitment: smaller checks, advice when asked, and freedom to do other things with your time. I've done all three. Angel investing is the most hands-off. A fund gives you more influence but still leaves execution to others. The studio is the most demanding and the most rewarding, because I can see the direct connection between my work and the company's outcome.

Lessons for Anyone Starting a Studio

Start With One Company, Not Five

The temptation is to start building several companies immediately. Resist it. We started with a single company and didn't build the second until the first was operating independently. Prove the process first, then expand.

Build the Shared Infrastructure Early

The studio's advantage is shared resources, so invest in them before you need them: design systems, deployment pipelines, financial operations, legal templates. That upfront work pays off in every company you build afterward.

Hire Operators, Not Just Idea People

A studio generates more ideas than it can execute. The constraint is always operational talent, the people who can take an idea and turn it into a functioning, growing business. Put a disproportionate share of your effort into finding and developing them.

Be Honest About Your Bandwidth

I can meaningfully contribute to three or four companies at any given time. Some studio founders think they can handle more, and they usually learn otherwise the hard way. Know your limits and structure the studio around them.

Plan for Graduation

The goal is companies that can eventually run on their own. From day one, develop internal leadership, document processes, and gradually reduce the studio's involvement. A company that permanently depends on the studio isn't a success. It's a liability.

Where I See Studios Going

What was a niche approach a decade ago is becoming mainstream, and a few trends are pushing it along. AI is making small teams far more productive. A studio team of 5 to 10 people can now do what took 20 to 30 a few years ago, which makes the model even more capital-efficient. I've written about this in AI Tools Running My Companies, and it's why Scalable Ventures is doubling down on AI-powered B2B SaaS, where our operating experience and technical infrastructure compound the most. Remote work allows distributed studios. Our team works across multiple locations, and the companies we build can be based anywhere, including the Midwest, which I think is underrated as a place to build (see The Midwest Advantage). Founders are more open to studio-built companies. As more successful companies come out of studios, the stigma of "not being a traditional startup" is fading, and talented operators are more willing to join. I expect more studios to appear, especially in specialized verticals where domain expertise creates a durable edge. The best ones won't be judged by how many companies they launch but by how efficiently they turn ideas into sustainable businesses.

The Bottom Line

The studio model isn't right for everyone. It's bandwidth-constrained, harder to explain than writing checks, and it makes equity more complicated. But for operators who get energy from the daily work of creating something from nothing, it's the most effective and fulfilling model I've found. After more than 15 years of building this way, I wouldn't trade it for a traditional fund. The connection between effort and outcome is too direct and the learning is too fast.

What Is a Venture Studio? - The Scalable Ventures explainer on the model
Investing in the Next Generation of Founders - What I look for in founders
How to Run Multiple Businesses Without Losing Your Mind - Managing attention across companies
What Is a Serial Entrepreneur? - Lessons from building across multiple ventures
B2B SaaS Scaling Playbook - Scaling from $1M to $10M ARR
Startup Playbook: From Idea to Product-Market Fit - Early-stage guidance

Work With Scalable Ventures

If you're interested in the venture studio model:

Explore the portfolio: See active companies and experiments we're building
Access resources: Download frameworks and templates we use across portfolio companies
Advisory services: Learn about strategic advisory for founders at various stages
Get in touch: Reach out if you're a founder or potential co-founder interested in collaboration
Learn more: Read about my background and approach to building companies