In the webinar series of March 2022, our guest speaker Alper Celen, founder of Enhance Ventures, talked us through the latest data on the Venture Studios which was collected in the scope of the research for the new Enhance Whitepaper.

Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and join our LinkedIn group to not miss the next webinar sessions. But now, let’s dive right into this very recent one, here’s a summary of what Alper shared during the webinar…

Shall we start by defining what a Venture Studio is?

The first thing needed for researching venture studios is having a clear definition of what they are.

“A venture studio is an institutional cofounder that proactively invests in and builds ventures by using expertise of a central services organization that uses a playbook for repeatable venture building steps” is the definition used by Alper in his presentation.

Having this definition in mind, we can then move forward with another question: why do Startup Studios exist? Startups have two fundamental problems:

• Ideation, validation, and team building are often overlooked
• Funding & mentorship are very limited in the early stages of venture development

Venture studios address these two problems in three ways. Firstly, the first steps of ideation and validation are a core part of the venture studio model. Secondly, venture building is proactive in finding what’s needed in the market. Finally, studios execute better than average because they use tested processes in building ventures.

Venture Studios are a new norm

The startup studio movement started in 1996 and has built momentum in the last decade. The model is growing rapidly, especially in the last few years. At least 724 startup studios are currently present worldwide. We can now go through some of the interesting data about them.

The growth of venture studios has been well distributed around the world with Asia growing the fastest. Europe has caught up with North America in the number of ventures studios over the past 10 years and is expected to overtake in the coming 2 years.

Startup studios have raised 21 billion dollars in funding, but the distribution is highly concentrated: the top 5 funded studios half of all studios' funding and the top 20 have raised the 80%.  This trend is starting to change, with more and more venture studios getting funded, thanks to more recognition of the model.

But why should investors bet on the Startup Studio model? For two reasons: they can provide better economics to the investors and they have higher chances of success. For example, studios get higher equity in their ventures, more than typical VCs. Also, studios can attract top talent that standalone ventures cannot.

The future of the Startup Studio model

Ten years ago around 130 startup studios were active in the world. Today, more than 720. How many startup studios will there be in the world in ten years? Based on Alper’s analysis there will be more than three thousand ventures studios in the world, with more than $100B in funding.

With this prospect in mind, we can end our journey through the Venture Studio ecosystem review. If you still have questions, make sure to watch the recording of the webinar. Alper also promises that this content and others will be included in the revision of Enhance’s studio white paper to be revised this May. The recordings of previous sessions are available within StudioHub premium membership packages.

About the Speaker

Alper Celen is the founder of Enhance Ventures, a venture studio building the future of finance and commerce for MENAPT region based in Dubai and Riyadh. Enhance’s portfolio includes Joi Gifts, Clevr, Blue Terra, Right Farm among others.

Previous to Enhance, Alper was the founder of foodonclick.com in Saudi Arabia (acquired by Delivery Hero in 2015).  Alper is an active high-tech startup investor and advisor. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Alper was a management consultant and had various leadership roles. Alper has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and BS and ME in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia. He is an active volunteer for TechStars, Startupbootcamp, and MIT.