Venture Studios: The format for professional entrepreneurs

When one is passionate about a subject and has a vocation, profession, and mission, and all converge, it can be said that one has a life purpose. This happens to me with the topic of entrepreneurship. It has been my love and hatred, never elusive; it always bothers me because I cannot help but love it, even though it has hurt me. It is not a toxic love. It is a love that has forced me to grow, to improve myself, to want to learn more and be better. This journey of personal growth, which is an integral part of entrepreneurship, is what I want to share with you in this post.

In my entrepreneurial career, I have dealt with countless challenges. All types. From a lying employee who corrodes the environment to the corruption of officials who create fake control necessities to justify bothering you. All these are not compared to what it implies to define the style of entrepreneur that I wanted to be. There are entrepreneurs of all kinds: merchants, who buy low to sell at market prices; the micro, small, medium, and large. Those who were self-made, starting from scratch. The creatives who saw a need and created a great solution. Entrepreneurs who love to keep creating and growing. Anyway, there are many more...

To answer that question requires an effort of deep self-awareness. Of course, no one can create competitive advantages in multiple areas. Each person could have no more than 2 or 3 strong, very competitive areas worth knowing, growing in, and exploiting.

As an entrepreneur, I have criticized myself because finding my style took me a while. My style revolves around creating sustainable companies, no matter what sector they belong to. That is to say, I am interested in the company, not so much in economic activity. From how it was conceived and later managed to how it was re-powered. And of that company, its conception catches my attention the most. In other words, I am an entrepreneur who detects needs and creates solutions in competitive business schemes. That's what I am as an entrepreneur. I study and apply knowledge every day to keep improving in that area.

I am not the only one who has felt an affinity for this aspect of entrepreneurship. The known business models around this type of interest are Incubators, Accelerators, and, later, Venture Studios. Of the three models, the last one is the most complete, and I will explain why.

Among their main activities, Venture Studios has the following:

1. Involve capable people.

2. Detect the need.

3. Create solutions.

4. Generate a lot of value in the solution.

5. Ensure the creation of the ideal solution for the market.

6. Create a scalable business model for this solution.

7. Engage more capable people.

8. Grow the solution to its full capacity.

All these mixing processes start with the observation and study of the potential client through informal methods of brainstorming and return to a validation of hypotheses with statistical standards to validate their results. Not to mention that the recruitment is based on the state-of-the-art for the best talent recruitment globally. In the end, it is a coordinated work of teams of talented people, very well focused. Venture Studios doubles the return on capital when compared to the other options.

I believe there is no better way to be a professional entrepreneur than to adopt the Venture Studio model at whatever scale possible. On a personal level, this is similar to being an excellent project manager specializing in executing projects for business creation and development. I took this option, I loved it, and I recommend it. This option is available to everyone. I say this because Google created its certificate in this area of ​​knowledge and made it available at Coursera.org, in this educational platform, they grant scholarships if you don't have the resources. It is not the only company that has done this. The International Red Cross has its Project Management course available on its virtual education platform (https://ifrc.csod.com/client/ifrc/default.aspx), which is free and certified. The latter focuses on humanitarian projects, but their essence is the same. Anyone interested in advancing in their profession as an entrepreneur should consider a Project Management course and analyze if it suits them. The creation of a Venture Studio can remain a guide to follow.

More information?

1. Learn more about Venture Studios by following the Polymath Ventures story at https://polymathv.com/venture-studio-model/.

2. Learn a little about the difference between an Incubator, an Accelerator, and a Venture Studio in this Harvard Business School case study: "R / GA: Corporate Venture Studio vs. Accelerator" by Andy Wu, Grant Son, and Aastha Thakkar.