Venture studios beyond the hype: Key challenges and a way forward

Venture studios, typically referred to as organizations that act as founders or co-founders by building new ventures in partnership with external entrepreneurs, are rapidly emerging as a new model of venture creation. Yet, rarely do venture studios look alike. Amid growing hype, a variety of players are seeking to brand themselves as venture studios, resulting in conceptual ambiguity and a lack of shared standards. This heterogeneity creates significant challenges for standardization and stakeholder alignment in assessing how these diverse models operate and how they differ from other established venture-supporting organizations like incubators and accelerators. Drawing on a two-step research design – combining an archival analysis focused on 8 globally recognized venture studios exemplars, and a case study of 14 Italian studios – we decode the venture studio model and identify its core design choices, activities and the key challenges driving its heterogeneity. Our findings reveal three main challenges: (i) the identity-less builder, where venture studios struggle with an unclear mission as ‘startup factories’; (ii) the phantom founder, where misaligned incentives emerge post spin-out; and (iii) heterogenesis of ends, reflecting conflicting short- and long-term objectives. We conclude by proposing a set of guiding questions for designed to support entrepreneurs, venture studio investors, and follow-on venture investors in evaluating or engaging with venture studios, contributing to the development of shared mental models and emerging best practices.