Time = Money: Why Building a Company with a Venture Studio is Worth It

As a recruiter at Forum Ventures Studio, I spend my days recruiting founders for our companies. I’m not just looking for talented founders, but the right founders for each company—someone with deep industry experience who can validate an idea with us before launching a company, and then co-build it. That’s no small feat. When we do find the perfect fit, there’s often some initial sticker shock around the equity we retain.

But here’s the thing: Working with a venture studio is different to any other way of starting a business. We’re investors, co-founders, operators, and company builders. And when you break down what we provide, the value becomes crystal clear.

What does a venture studio actually do?

Many founders hear “venture studio” and assume an accelerator. That’s a common misconception. However, while accelerators are incredibly valuable (we know this first hand), they typically come in after a founder has built an MVP and is looking for support with go-to-market, getting early traction, and raising more capital. 

A venture studio, on the other hand, comes in much earlier—sometimes before there’s even an idea. The studio takes a founder from market validation, to identifying and engaging with potential customers to uncover pain points and validate your solution, to building a scalable MVP that’s ready for real users. From there, the studio model continues with deep support on sales, GTM, and growth, through to fundraising and hiring your foundational team. 

The team you get from day one

With a venture studio, founders start with an entire team of builders and operators right off the bat, validating and building together. That’s a massive advantage, because without a studio, the entire zero-to-one journey before fundraising is often done alone or with one other co-founder—a much slower, more stressful, and significantly riskier process. 

By the way, there are other ways to accelerate and reduce risk when building, like incubators and accelerators, but none that can give you an entire dedicated team up front. 

Here is what your team will look like with our venture studio:

✅ A seasoned co-founder who has built 11+ companies before 

✅ A full team of experts, including a CTO, engineers, product designers, sales, operations, hiring specialists, and more

✅ A network of investors, advisors, mentors, and early operators who have built and funded successful startups, and are ready to help you scale

The time saved by executing with a full team from day zero

When you decide to start a company without a meaningful amount of capital at your disposal, you often need to delay hiring until after you’ve raised funding or generated revenue. That means building with a lean co-founding team for quite some time—a slower, more stressful, and riskier process.

A venture studio offers a different path: immediate access to experienced builders, operators, and technical talent, allowing founders to move faster from day one.

While there are many ways to accelerate the early stages of company building—incubators, accelerators, university labs, and more—we took a look at the two ends of the spectrum: building with a full studio team vs. going it alone with a small founding team. What we found was clear: across key milestones like developing an MVP, entering the market, preparing for fundraising, and hiring your first team, the studio model consistently shortens timelines and increases speed to execution.

In many cases, founders working with a venture studio reach critical milestones several times faster than those building solo.

The time saved by executing with a full team from the start isn’t just convenient—it’s a strategic advantage. It gives founders the ability to move quickly, gain traction, and raise capital sooner, all while reducing the typical friction and risk that comes with building in isolation.

A Faster, More Effective Hiring Process

When it comes time to fly the venture studio coop and hire your first full-time team post-fundraising, the advantage of working with a studio continues. Since you've already worked closely with experts in each role, you’ll have a much clearer idea of what you need in those first hires –– experience, skillset, and fit. This streamlines the hiring process, helping you avoid common missteps and ensuring you bring on the right people faster and more efficiently.

On top of that, a venture studio provides dedicated hiring support to guide you through the process, helping you find and secure the best candidates without slowing down your momentum.

Venture studios aren’t for everyone. But for founders looking to move fast, minimize risk, and build something real from day one, it’s an opportunity that’s worth every piece of equity you give.

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If you're interested in becoming a Studio Founder, check out our newest founder opportunities here

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