What is Venture Design?
Introducing the discipline of venture design.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.
I have been working with venture teams for more than two years at PwC New Ventures. Although I was informed I would be working with ventures during the job interviews (which was why I picked the job), little did I know that I would get so deep into a field now called venture design.
After prototyping and experimenting with numerous ventures, and witnessing ventures succeed and failed, I develop my understanding about venture design.
In this article, I’d like to share with you my understanding of what venture design is, and what it is not.
What is venture design?
A venture is a high-risk business without a working business model. Like any business, a venture needs to create value for its customers by solving real problems and capturing enough value to be profitable, despite that the customer, the problem, and the value it creates are TBD.
As highlighted in the figure above, ventures carry negative net cash flow during the valley of death. The goal of venture design is to help ventures to go through the valley of death at as low a cost as possible with the…
