Discover Build Together
The one and only website dedicated to startup studios
Have you ever been asked “Hmmm so what is a ‘startup studio’ exactly”? Maybe you’ve wondered it yourself. I know many people do. Our own friends have no idea what it means (they just think we work for the Internet). Startup studios (or “foundries”, or “factories”) are becoming a world phenomenon and there is no reason the ecosystem should not be informed about it.
We just launched BuildTogether, a website where you can find resources, a newsletter, and a database of all startup studios in the world.
Let’s start with a definition:
A startup studio is a structure whose aim is to repeatedly build companies. Thanks to its infrastructure and resources, startup studios increase a startup’s chance of success and optimize its creation and growth.
Synonyms: startup foundry, startup factory, venture studio, venture builder
False cognates: incubator, hands-on VC, accelerator, mentor
A few startup studios worth knowing:
The famous studio made in Berlin by the Samwer brothers recently went public. Although controversial — because based on copycats — its model is definitely a “startup studio”: frequently building startups using its own infrastructure.
Betaworks does both “building” and “investing in” startups. Among its “studio’d” startups, you’ll recognize Instapaper, Giphy, or Dots. All built by “Hackers in Residence”.
Expa was built on Garett Camp’s experience in founding Uber and Stumble Upon. It is not the only studio built by an entrepreneur who got addicted to building startups!
Another great example of a successful studio, founded by tech superstars Peter Pham and Mike Jones, is Science. As the founders revealed in an interview, Science has “an operational and strategic way we build companies, and there is a set structure behind this.” This is exactly what we call a startup studio.
Of course, we can’t help but mention ourselves! We’ve been exclusively building startups (focusing on SaaS and B2B marketplaces) for 3 years — relying on our own infrastructure, team of experts, and founders’ wisdom (Thibaud Elziere founded Fotolia, sold to Adobe; Quentin Nickmans brought several failing startups back to life).
Who is BuildTogether for?
- Startup studios insiders: We’ve built the website and the database for us first. That is to say: if you work for/with a startup studio, you’ll be interested. If you work for a startup coming from a studio: same story.
- Startup studios wannabes: You might also want to know more about startup studios if you are planning on joining a studio, as an employee or as a founder.
- Investors: Angels and VCs are becoming more and more interesting in investing in fast-growing companies built by true entrepreneurs, with higher chances of success. Startup studios are definitely a topic of interest.
- Medias: More and more journalists are studying the studios model to assess its impact on business and the startup ecosystem in general. BuildTogether is the #1 resource for any info about startup studios, updated daily.
What will you find on BuildTogether?
Startup Studios Ultimate List
First, we gathered all startup studios in one big list, accessible here. We do our best to maintain is up to date — please feel free to leave a comment to help us ☺
This list contains basic info on every studio: location, contact, twitter handle, start date, founders, companies, etc.
We also tried to add criteria that seemed relevant to startup studios:
- is the structure focused on “building” startups (as opposed to “investing” or “mentoring”)
- is the structure doing the startup-building process on a regular basis
- is the structure building an actual infrastructure
All criteria are assessed from “None” to “Strong”.
Weekly newsletter
In addition to this database, we are carefully watching the news (using our awesome monitoring tool Mention) and gathering what’s important in a weekly curated newsletter.
When you sign up, you’ll receive 5–7 great articles a week about
- the theory of startup studios (often written by journalists or research centers)
- startup studios’ stories (often found on their blogs)
- news from startups originated in studios (it’s always interesting to see where they’re going)
Hope you’ll find it interesting. Don’t forget to sign up to the newsletter and share the news with your startup studio friends.
If you wanna know even more, follow this Startup Studio publication on Medium.
